Holiday inventory preparation is always a headache problem for online merchants. As the huge quantity of products and customers increase significantly in peak seasons, the eCommerce sellers will deal with more than an issue but if they can overcome those challenges, they will gain over-expected revenues and profits.
Our article will list out necessary tasks for online merchants to prepare for holiday inventory step by step.
Things To Do For Online Merchants To Strengthen Holiday Inventory
Decide The Main Product Lines
The attractive product line is the decisive element for your holiday sales success. Depending on each nature of the holiday season, there are different product lines that you need to consider which items should be stocked most. You may need to pay attention to your target customers, based on their behaviour to forecast their tendency, then you can decide the main product lines for each segmentation.
Moreover, the common trends may have some effects on customers’ choices. Therefore, online sellers should add some trendy items in holiday inventory to satisfy customers’ demands.
Contact With Suppliers
Before starting the holiday sale season, online merchants should prepare for products with their suppliers after deciding on main product lines. You should notify the suppliers about your stock plan and advanced requirements in peak season to help them prepare for the products as soon as possible.
Moreover, it would be better if you can allow suppliers to access your inventory management and keep track of your stock status; then, they can provide items immediately.
Set Stock Quantity
The next step in holiday inventory preparation is setting stock quantity. The most trustworthy sources to help you estimate the must-prepare number of products is former selling or inventory reports in previous holiday sales seasons. You can set the same level of stocks or make any adjustment based on the current situation for your stock quantity.
Moreover, maybe you need to analyze and conduct market research to forecast upcoming demand, especially in the current changing world.
Run Backorder
Besides the main plan, a backup plan is truly crucial for any project. Holiday inventory preparation is not an exception. Backorder is the powerful backup plan in peak season, that can allow customers to buy your products despite them being sold out.
If you use Bigcommerce platforms, you can utilize BackOrder app to set all your products as a backorder. Therefore, whenever they are out of stock, the customers can make orders as normal and receive them after a later date. This approach can help you maintain customers relationship, increasing customers satisfaction and your stores’ revenues.
Speed Up Shipping Process
Holiday inventory is super busy. Besides automating order fulfillment to save time, online merchants should speed up the shopping process to enhance the smooth flow of products and maintain customers’ satisfaction in these rush days.
Also, the sellers should keep in touch with third-party logistics to keep track of the shipping process, make immediate adjustments and reduce late delivery via accessible order tracking systems.
Conclusion
While different holiday seasons have different selling characteristics, our recommendations will work well in the inventory preparation of any type of holiday. Also, you can adopt all those approaches to both daily and holiday inventory plans to increase your productivity and keep high revenues all year round.
