Planning for the holiday season always seems like a never ending task. You select your holiday inventory during the summer months; plan your advertising in August and schedule dates for events; give your staff a brush-up on merchandise knowledge and sales tactics; and after all that, you even have to decorate your store.
Come January, you need a vacation!
For several years we've been tracking dates, times and jewelry types that should be advertised between November 1 and December 31. Over the next week or so, each Daily Gold Nugget will be dedicated to a single group of days and the strategy you should employ on your website.
The tips we give you this September should be enough time to help you with writing copy and gathering the necessary photography for November and December.
As we work through our series of tips, you will need to set up areas of your website that showcase specific sets of jewelry corresponding to each tip.
We feel you should be directly involved with preparing the information for your website (just like you are directly involved with selecting jewelry and other ad planning), but in November and December you should delegate the task to someone else.
Your homework for today is to figure out who you are delegating the update task to come November and December. Sign them up for website training. Your website company should have training available or at least supply online help documentation. Of course we don't mean "programming" you website; we simply mean updating it through a content management system of some type. They are usually as simple as using Microsoft Word.
Starting tomorrow, for as many days as it takes, we will sift through our data from the past 7 years and provide dates, times and ideas of what to post on your website each week throughout the holiday season.