E-commerce holiday planning for Shopify

6 tips to boost holiday sales

Planning for Shopify

Want your customers to Shopify ‘til they drop this holiday season? Your best bet is to prepare ahead of time and start brewing up the perfect blend of sales and marketing strategies. Here’s your step-by-step guide to holiday success on Shopify.

Add holiday flair to your visuals

Holiday-themed decorations and visuals can help customers get into the spirit of holiday shopping and gift-giving.

Create holiday-themed background images and product shots to infuse your Shopify store with a festive vibe. To really drive sales, consider updating your imagery throughout the season to focus on each big holiday event, like Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, Hanukkah, and more. 


Also, consider creating and using eye-catching banners to highlight your holiday sales and promos. These will grab the attention of busy shoppers and help direct them to wherever you want them to go — sales pages, gift guide landing pages, featured product pages, and more.

Plan your Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales

Drive more shoppers to your Shopify store by planning and promoting sales events geared toward Black Friday and Cyber Monday shoppers. You'll need to decide which products to offer in your promos, the types of deals to offer, and how to best reach your target audience to let them know about your sale.


You could try offering a 35% off discount when shoppers spend $200, or a free gift card with every purchase. Or, try encouraging repeat shoppers by offering daily deals throughout the four-day sales event.


To help you decide on the best promos to inform and entice shoppers about your sales events and promotions, create a marketing strategy a few months ahead of the season. Plan your campaigns and meet up regularly with your design and marketing team. That way you have ample time to brainstorm and execute the best sales ideas for your store.

Set up upsell and cross-sell workflows

Research shows that product recommendations can account for up to a third of revenues for e-commerce stores. Consider adding product recommendations to upsell your inventory to your customers by showing them other items that are frequently bought together. Or cross-sell your products by showcasing related products that customers might be interested in. The simple step of recommending additional products to your shoppers can have a significant impact on how many items end up in their cart at checkout – plus, it can help your customers cross off more items on their gift shopping lists. It's a win-win!


To ensure you have the optimal upsell and cross-sell workflows ready to go for the holidays, you can always consult with a Shopify expert. These professionals can help you install the right tools to get your personalized recommendation engines fired up and ready to go!

Optimize your Shopify store

To get the most out of the online holiday shopping rush, it's important to optimize your Shopify store to attract the most traffic to your store and products.


A skilled Shopify developer can ensure your site is ready to handle the surge of holiday shoppers. Remember: You don't want your site to go dark during the holiday shopping rush! These professionals can also fix any lingering errors and issues, add custom functionalities, and manage your Shopify apps.


You'll also want to ensure your store and products are optimized for search so your products show up for shoppers looking for what you have to offer. Shopify SEO experts can help optimize your product descriptions to get everything dialed in so you can capitalize on the surge in holiday traffic.

Create dedicated holiday landing pages

By creating a dedicated landing page for holiday sales, you can more easily showcase your special deals for your customers all in one place. That way, you can enable bargain hunters to shop conveniently and highlight your best sellers. 


Create a custom landing page that's eye-catching and features imagery that's geared toward a specific holiday. Next, write sales copy that converts to fill your landing page with compelling and click-worthy promotional copy. And remember to fill your landing page with your store's most enticing products and deals.

Prepare your holiday marketing campaigns

Create a holiday email marketing plan and a social media marketing plan. Determine an ad budget and where you should spend it to reach the most shoppers. Do everything you can to maximize your reach based on your budget and goals during the holidays.


To get some help, consult a social media specialist or an e-commerce marketer to help you develop and execute your big holiday marketing push. They can draft social media posts and automated email sequences, or they can help you determine the best ads to launch to have the greatest impact on your Shopify store.


There are multiple marketing channels you can use to promote your Shopify store, products, and deals during the holiday shopping season. Use them all!

Ready to cover more of your holiday bases? Visit the full Smart Season hub.