Get By With a Little Help by Kelly Cook. Painting.
Planning on taking off some time during the holiday season? Great! You deserve it. But you also need to make sure your business is ready for a break. Here’s what you need to do:
Communicate: let your customers know when you’ll be gone. Start by posting on social media about the vacation you’re taking or how excited you are to see your family and take a break from orders. Then put an announcement up on your site that tells customers when you’ll be gone and when they can expect orders to ship. Don’t forget to update any automated messages to reflect your vacation times. And let your custom or personalized order customers know directly about their order.
Prioritize: first, don’t take on any new work. No custom orders and no new pieces. Make a list of crucial things that need to get done – orders that need to be shipped, social media or blog posts that need to be written and scheduled, pieces that need to be finished, etc. And then prioritize them so that the most important things get done first.
Automate: site visitors and customers during your holiday break still need the best service you can give. Anticipate their needs by answering Frequently Asked Questions somewhere easy to find on your website. Link to it from the front page and from the shopping cart if you can. Put your business email on an autoresponder that lets people know you’re on vacation and when you’ll get back to them. Don’t forget to link to your FAQ’s.
Tidy: there’s nothing worse than returning from a vacation to a cluttered, stressful mess. Make sure you take a half hour to tidy up your workspaces.
What else do you do before you take time off from your business? Let me know in the comments.
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