How to Prepare Your Products for the Holidays

When the holiday season arrives and eager shoppers start browsing stores to find new goodies and gifts, store owners will do everything possible to make sure that their store is among the ones where they land. There’s, of course, lots of work to be done beforehand to ensure a great shopping experience. You have to double-check and triple-check that everything on your store runs smoothly, there are no glitches, the checkout process is seamless, etc.

But during the holiday rush, don’t forget about one extremely important (actually the most important) thing – your products. No matter how many ad dollars you spend to get people to your store, product page is the last place you can convince the shoppers your products are what they need. So let’s take a look at some of the ways you can make your products more attractive for the holiday shoppers.

1. Make your products search-friendly

Cool product names are often part of the brand, but customers visiting your store have to be able to find what they’re looking for too. So make sure your products are named in a way that your store’s or marketplace’s search engine can find them easily.

For example, Amazon has even created suggestions on how you should name your products to make them discoverable on the marketplace. Take a look at this Startup Vitamins product listing on Amazon, which follows Amazon’s recommendations on how you should name your product.

If you sell on a marketplace, check to see if they also provide similar suggestions. And if you have your own store, do some test searches on your site. Enter some keywords, see what comes up in the search results, and do some name-tweaking if necessary.

Speaking of search engines, check our blog post that goes over holiday-related keywords that you might want to incorporate on your store.

2. Double-check for typos or old information

This almost goes without saying, but you should correct typos or other mistakes in your product titles and descriptions. Little things like good grammar and consistent spelling make your store look more professional and trustworthy.

Of course, a small typo is unlikely to be a deal-breaker for someone, but if they appear too often, it can turn off potential buyers. Plus, if there are typos in your product names, it might prevent them from turning up in search results. So take advantage of free software like Grammarly that can automatically detect grammar, spelling, punctuation, and word choice errors in your writing.

Another thing you should pay attention to is your product descriptions. To begin with, make sure they include product information that is up to date. But most importantly, have product descriptions that read well and are attractive to your target audience. If it’s appropriate for your brand – be humorous or even a little cheeky.

Your efforts to be more elaborate and human with your product descriptions will show that you care about the customers, treat them with respect, and understand their needs.

3. Add inside or outside labels

When Cyber Weekend comes around, customers will be hopping from one store to another looking for the best deals. And when you’ve visited a few stores and made some purchases, later when the products start arriving at your home, you might even forget where you actually bought them.

The good news is, there are ways you can make your brand stick in the shoppers’ minds even after the purchase has been made and they’ve left your store. One of the best things you can do is brand your products. Adding your logo or brand name on your apparel can go a long way. Plus, it gives your brand extra exposure when your customers use your products.

The good news is that there are ways you can make sure your brand sticks in the shoppers’ minds even after the purchase has been made and they’ve left your store. Branding your products with your logo and name can go a long way. Plus, it gives your brand extra exposure when your customers use your products.

If you sell apparel through Printful, you can add inside or outside labels to your products. Inside labels are available for shirts that have tear-away labels. This means that in the production process, we’ll tear off the manufacturer’s label and print yours instead.

Inside label printing is also available for some of our cut & sew items, like leggings.  

Outside labels, on the other hand, don’t have any specific information requirements, and they are available for pretty much all of the shirts that we sell. Inside and outside labels cost $2.49 extra per shirt.

Another cool way to showcase your brand on t-shirts is sleeve printing. Add your logo to the shirt in addition to a main print, and you’ll make sure that your brand is always visible. Sleeve printing also costs $2.49 per print.

You can see which products support which type of branding in the product catalog. Select the product category you’re interested in (for example, men’s t-shirts) and then look at the filters on the left side of the page where you’ll see a category “Branding options.”

4. Add holiday-themed products

It’s not too late to add some new products to your store either! And with different kinds of holidays approaching, you can jump in on the festivities with some appropriately-themed designs.

Depending on who your target market is, there are different trends you can look into and give them a fresh spin (or start your own). Ugly Christmas sweaters are still a huge thing, so if you have an amusing design in your mind, put in on a sweatshirt or a hoodie. You can always experiment with different products too.

If you’re a Printful user, play around with our Design Maker. We recently added new seasonal shapes and clipart that you can use to jazz up your products.

5. Check your print files

During the holiday rush, there’s one must-do that you just cannot forget about – checking if all of your print files are intact and synced correctly. Go through all of your listings and double- and triple-check the files you’ve synced with Printful. You don’t want your customers to end up with a different product than the one they actually ordered. That can result in unhappy buyers, additional customer support work, loss in profits for you if you have to refund or replace the item, and potentially even a bad review on your store.

6. Upsell and cross-sell

When people are already in the mood to buy, encouraging them to spend a little more should be even easier. So upselling and cross-selling is something that you should definitely think about during the holiday season.

Upselling means that you encourage your buyer to purchase an item that is better, bigger, or more expensive than the one they originally intended to buy.

Cross-selling means selling additional, usually related products to your buyer in addition to the original item.

So take a good look at your products and think of how you can upsell or cross-sell to your customers. See which products go together, and offer them to the customers when they’ve shown interest in one of them. You can also group your products into categories and look for chances to upsell.

Take a look at our blog post that goes through 7 upselling and cross-selling strategies that you can use for your store.

Depending on the ecommerce platform you use, there will be different ways to set this up. For example, there are many apps dedicated to this on the Shopify App Store (including free options), so it’s up to you to choose the one that you like the best.

7. Add size guides

One disadvantage that online stores have in comparison to brick-and-mortar ones is that buyers can’t see the products in person and try them on. This is why sometimes customers are a bit hesitant to make a purchase online, especially with apparel products.

But you can reduce this customer anxiety by adding size guides to your products. This way, customers will be able to see the measurements of the garment and find the right size for them.

For most ecommerce platforms that Printful integrates with, you can automatically add a size guide when you push a new product to your store. You’ll see a checkbox to add a size guide in the step where you’re asked to write the product’s description. For already created and synced products, you can add the size guide yourself.

Review your return and exchange policies too so they’re up to date and corresponding to your wishes. You can also take a look at Printful’s return policy and model yours in a similar way if your products are fulfilled by us.

Over to you

Whether this is your first holiday season, or you’ve been down this road before, go through your products to make sure the listings are compelling and accurate. Most importantly, put yourself in your customer’s shoes and think what else you can do to make your products irresistible and the shopping experience unforgettable.

Do you have any additional advice on how to prepare your products for the holidays? Share in the comments below!