11 tips for Canadian businesses to survive the holiday season

Even though your business is making spirits bright and delivering plenty of delight, we all know the holiday shopping season is a marathon, not a sprint.  

While you’re gearing up for an influx of customer orders, here are our top 11 tips to ensure Canadian small businesses like yours can not only survive—but thrive.  

Now, hand over those sugar cookies and let’s get started.  

11 tips for Canadian businesses to survive the holiday season

1. Get your digital ducks (assets) in a row.

There’s no time like now to ensure all your holiday-specific content, promotional emails and social posts are looking great and ready to go. Also take the time to review your product descriptions, as well as quantity and availability information.  

Another thing to consider: take (or update) photos of your products to put on your website. As brilliant as your writing may be, high quality imagery is what sells. According to financial services platform Square, only 11% of items are sold online without an image!  

2. Test out (and improve) your page loading speeds.

All that delicious holiday food might make you lethargic…but your web page load speeds should be as snappy as possible. Around 70% of customers say that how quickly (or slowly) a page loads has a direct impact on their decision to buy, or bail out.  

You can test your page loading speeds using free tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights. For your reference, a page speed score of 90 or above is considered excellent, while 50 – 89 is a score that needs improvement.  

How can you improve your page loading speeds? One of the easiest ways is by resizing and compressing your images into more compact formats.  

3. Make shipping details crystal clear.  

There’s no sense in beating ‘round the bush when it comes to shipping details. Be as transparent and straightforward as possible.  

Some companies will include language like “free shipping over $X” in their website headers as a way of encouraging sales. They’ll even have a dedicated page or FAQ about shipping to help set customer expectations and cut back on questions.  

Details you can include are:  

• Where your business is located. 
• Where exactly you ship your goods (just the local area/province-wide/or all of Canada).  
• Shipping rates. 
• Any terms and conditions.  

4. Set a clear holiday shipping deadline.  

Even in a world of next-day shipping, there is a limit to how soon something can be delivered. After all—holiday season is, without question, the most hectic time for Canada Post and couriers alike!  

Now—when it comes to your business, who wants to be packing orders right to the bitter end? Especially when you should be donning an ugly sweater and over-eating.  

For all these reasons, you need to set a clear holiday shipping deadline. This tells your customers when they need to order by to avoid holiday disappointment.  

A great practice is to display your shipping deadline clearly on your website, in your checkout process and in any transactional emails you send.  

5. Offer an option to gift items.  

Your customers may want to order items for delivery to multiple addresses.  

So, make this process seamless to encourage your customers to do as much of their shopping at your business as possible. Want to provide a little extra holiday sizzle? Consider adding in the ability to include a customized note or gift wrap for an extra fee. 

6. Offer curb-side pickup.  

If you can make it happen, curb-side pickup is a great way to avoid shipping delays completely (as well as having to pack and ship orders) while developing a personal relationship with your local customers.  

7. Provide holiday gift guides.  

We love a good gift guide here at CIRA! Why? Because they can provide ideas and inspiration to gift-givers who might find themselves stumped, struggling and otherwise at a loss.  

 So, think about creating a set of short, curated guides of your own. Start by digging into your sales data and seeing which gift categories may make the most sense for your customers.  

For example—are they searching mainly for self-care items? Personalized gifts? This can help you know which content to feature into your gift guides while creating an SEO-friendly entry point for shoppers.  

8. Promote gift cards.  

We think gift cards are nifty for a couple reasons. For one, they provide gift-givers with the ultimate flexibility. Second—they can help spread out order fulfillment until after the holidays, giving you that much more room to breathe!  

9. Set up cart abandonment emails.

In their zeal to score the best deal—or maybe out of pure forgetfulness or distraction – holiday shoppers may end up abandoning their shopping carts. Get them back on the righteous path to a transaction with cart abandonment reminder emails! Many e-commerce platforms, like Squarespace, offer this feature.  

Cart abandonment emails don’t have to be too elaborate or guilt-ridden. Go with something short, punchy and humorous to remind customers to come back and complete their purchases. You might even consider sweetening the deal, too, with a small discount or coupon code.  

10. Share your story and show how your products are made.  

Like we’ve been saying all along, most Canadians love supporting local businesses like yours. So, let them know who you are and where you’re from to develop a personal connection.  

Also—be clear on where you source your materials from and how they’re made. If your products are locally-sourced and/or environmentally friendly, those are hugely positive selling points that absolutely should be part of the story you tell.  

11. Show you’re Canadian.  

Our final piece of holiday shopping advice is to show customers beyond a shadow of a doubt that you’re a Canadian business. Know the quickest and easiest way to do that? You got it: with a .CA domain.  

Not only does a .CA proudly declare your Canuckishness to the rest of the world, but it automatically lets your customers know that all prices will be in Canadian dollars and shipping will be (reasonably) fast. Also, did you know that Canadians prefer to shop on .CA websites? A recent Strategic Counsel survey showed that Canadians are four times more likely to shop on a site with a .CA domain than a .com. 

With all that in mind—we wish you the best of luck with the holiday shopping rush! May you deliver surprise and delight with every successful transaction.