Preparing For Holiday Shipping in 2021: Key Steps For Businesses

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has changed supply chains around the world, making it essential for companies to rethink the way they manage operations. With the holidays coming up, companies of all sizes will need to ensure that they’re prepared for holiday shipping. After all, seasonal shopping has started earlier every year. The National Retail Federation found that 40% of consumers start their holiday shopping right after Halloween. Additionally, holiday sales are predicted to rise at least 4% for 2021 year. To ensure that businesses have satisfied customers, there are a few steps they can take before the holiday season.

Learn Holiday Shipping Deadlines

The major carriers such as FedEx, DHL, USPS, and UPs all post lists of their holiday shipping deadlines. This tells businesses when packages have to be in the mail in order to be delivered by a certain time. Companies that offer express shipping should also find the best overnight express tracking systems to use. Work the shipping deadlines into the website and have a strict cutoff time to ensure that all orders are sent out on time.

Estimate Demand

In order to coordinate the shipping, companies will need an approximate idea of how many items they can expect to ship. This information is dependent on past sales data, market data, market studies, and the conversion rate for sales. However, even with this data, more people than ever before are buying online instead of going to shop in person. Have a margin of error for the demand and be able to scale up the operations if needed.

Focus on the Website

The hardware and software systems that companies use need to be reliable. Identify all of the things that, if they went down, would slow the business down to a crawl. Before the holidays, hire an IT professional and invest in anything possible to increase the uptime of the system and prevent crashes to the site. If selling trendy items, there will likely be an increase in web traffic. Focus on making the website look good and it’s easy to purchase items from the site.

Update Inventory Policies and Coordinate Fulfillment

Most companies have a limit on how much product they can produce and sell. Use the estimated sales volume to ensure that inventory is available. Many companies stock extra inventory a month or two ahead of time for this reason. Regardless of whether the business handles fulfillment or it’s a third party, review the process and ensure that it moves smoothly. Having a good rhythm before holiday shipping ensures that products will go out without a snag.

These are all the steps companies can take to be prepared for holiday sales and shipping. One final piece of advice is to test the company as a customer before the holidays. Make sure the experience is as expected and adjust where needed.

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