As the Christmas season rolls around again this December with everyone doing their best to find just that perfect gift, spend time with family as well try to relax a little bit from work I, along with many other booksellers and retailers in general are still busily doing what we do which is trying to capture those Christmas sales!  Christmas time is a great time to make up for slow sales throughout the year.  It seems that everyone seems to get online and shop for gifts as well as doing a little shopping for themselves while they’re online.   Christmas sales have usually been great for me and this year has been on exception.  I tweeted about an almost record 2 week period in my @sellyourbooks account here recently.

To really try to capture those seasonal buyers I do a few things in order to make my books more enticing and thought I would share a little of my strategy.  So far, it’s been paying off!

1. Lower your Prices – Every customer would like to have the lowest price possible but it seems to be especially true at Christmas time.  Maybe it’s the overzealous Black Friday deals or the deeply discounted prices on Cyber Monday.  Whatever it is, customers are looking at price as the #1 factor in buying gifts.  Price is always important but more so during the holiday shopping season.  To capture as many of those sales as possible, run temporary sales where you put a blanket discount on all of your books (if you can).  With my business model, I get books very cheaply and can remain competitive AND profitable almost all the way to the bottom which gives me a lot of wiggle room.  I already offer very low prices on my common used books but for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, I shaved off a considerable amount that I was charging on all of my 5,000 or so books through my repricer.  I saw increased sales which typically offset the lower price that I charged.

2. Tweak your descriptions – I don’t do this but I have seen others that have.  Put in your descriptions things that may trigger customers to think about gifts even if they aren’t specifically looking.  Have you ever went online to search for something for yourself and then see something that says “Makes a great gift!” that reminds you of that gift you still need to get a friend or relative?  It happens all the time for me!  My mind goes in so many different directions and gift buying usually is the first to go south.  Seeing a simple statement like that makes my mind automatically go to a Christmas gift and one of those “Oh Yeah!” moments.

3. Stock up seasonal items earlier in the year. – This tip is a little late considering there’s only 11 days until Christmas but can be a great advantage to you come Christmas time next year.  Have you ever noticed how the Amazon sales rank goes through the roof for anything that has the word “Christmas” in it?  I just sent some CDs to Amazon that were over 15 years old that had artists such as Barbara Streisand and Boyz II Men doing Christmas songs and the sales rank was unbelievable!  Don’t believe me?  Go to TitleZ and check the sales rank for the year.

I hope that I was able to give you some good tips and gave you some ideas on how you can modify your tactics to target for the holiday shopping season.  I know that these aren’t the only small things that you can do to increase sales during Christmas so what are the small things that you do specifically during the Christmas time to lure in potential customers?  I’d love to hear about it!