Push to Christmas - Emergency Preparedness

Cyber Monday is over, you have a little calm before the last-minute-Christmas-shopper storm. Now is the time to do your emergency preparedness. Getting ready for those frantic shoppers needing their orders on time and those customers who ordered and expected their order by the holidays is essential for making your business' holiday season finish smoothly. One of the best ways to do this is to let customers know approximately when they will receive their order. Do this on your home page, your product pages, in the cart, and on the email receipt.

• Home Page Delivery Notice - on your home page, or in a main area on your website, advertise when is the approximate last day to place an order in your store and safely receive it by Christmas.
• Product Page Delivery Notice - some products ship quicker than others.  If you drop ship products, have custom products or products that ship at a different time, you will want to let customers know.  Include some text near the add to cart button letting customers know approximately when to expect each individual product if they ordered it that day.  Or, for each individual product, list the last day that product can safely be ordered to arrive by Christmas.
• Shopping Cart Delivery Notice - this should be the most exact delivery notice because at this point you have the customer's shipping zip code.  Include on this screen the delivery date as exact as possible.  Make this notice clear so that customers can assess if their gifts will arrive when they want.
• Thank You Delivery Notice - include the approximately delivery date in the email receipt if possible.

Another thing you may want to offer this time of year is expedited delivery. This will put some of your last minute shoppers very excited.

Good luck preparing for the final push of the hectic holiday season!