Christmas shopping has very little to do with Christmas anymore. People are shopping as early as October and going to continue shopping until the end of December, practically every single day. While most small businesses are low on staff and in some cases are almost primarily family run, this is no longer a valid reason to be closed on Christmas Day. No one is asking you to open your physical store, but this doesn’t mean the option of buying from you needs to be closed too.
Take a look at how you can still make your goods available to customers if your store isn’t opened. If you have an online payment gateway for instance, you are enabling business interactions and purchases to happen while your store is closed. All you need to be doing is ensuring your backend is running well and possibly hire temporary staff for delivery. This is probably something you can manage while being on vacation at home as well. People can order from the comfort of their homes and have their shopping delivered to them without leaving the comfort of their couch.
Not convinced that you’ll actually be making money by doing this on Christmas Day? While lots of shoppers in their home countries are already buying online, especially via their phones, people on vacation will have the need to do so even more. Foreign vacationers mean that you have more potential customers that your usual local customer base, who will also plan to be shopping.
Another segment you should consider are locals away from the country during the holidays. They could be studying or working overseas and not able to make it back home for the holidays due to some constraints. They still want to be doing their shopping and being able to sell and deliver to homes with a purchase overseas is the ideal way to capture this audience and convert them into customers.
What about late shoppers? The ones who are too busy going from party to party this December and only remember they need to do their shopping close to midnight on the 24th? Could you let them make a bunch of quick purchases and have you deliver them on the double?
Don’t miss out by not having your systems in place and adequate communications to know you are opened on Christmas Day and trust us on the way your bank balance will grow on this most important day of the year.