How To Prepare Your Online Business for Spooky Season

Something wicked is coming this way: it’s Halloween! The spooky season is just around the corner, with the promise of Christmas on its heels. Often All Hallows Eve is overlooked by businesses in favour of more popular holidays like Easter and Christmas. Yet, unbeknownst to some, even minor holidays like Halloween can cause an increase in sales and attract new leads.

Although a traditionally American celebration, the number of Brits planning to attend Halloween parties or participate in Halloween-related activities like pumpkin picking, watching horror films, and handing out sweets to trick-or-treaters, is expected to grow by 43%. As a result, online businesses can expect a surge in internet sales as Brits prepare themselves for a sociable Halloween season.

Not only will consumers be looking to purchase a variety of Halloween-themed goods, but they will also be scouring the pages of your online store for other products in preparation for the next holiday season: Christmas. Therefore, if your business doesn’t want to miss out on the revenue Halloween can provide, it’s essential that you prepare your online business for the spooky season.

But how can you go about doing so? This article outlines several ways to help you prepare.

Photo by Clint Patterson on Unsplash

Make Your Products Halloween-Themed

Unless your business specialises in selling costumes, you might wonder how to make your products more appealing to consumers shopping for the Halloween season, especially if the products you sell aren’t particularly ‘spooky’. Whether you retail jewellery, baked goods, furniture, or alcoholic beverages, even if your products aren’t Halloween-focused, you could try to make a ‘spooky’ variation of them during this holiday season.

Whether you release a limited-edition Halloween-themed clothing line, offer baked goods for upcoming Halloween parties or supply relevant spooky decorations using custom labels from manufacturers like RGS Labels.

Companies like those above can help businesses transform everyday products into limited releases for upcoming holiday seasons since they provide a fully customisable service that allows businesses to get the correct self-adhesive label solution for their product requirements. From plain self-adhesive labels to thermal transfer labels, consider looking at their website or contacting a team member directly to see how their services could help support your packaging/branding today.

Write Halloween-Themed Blog Posts

Your website is one of the essential tools in your arsenal for attracting new leads. It helps to establish your brand name and promote sales, which can be increased if you have a regularly updated blog with relevant and engaging content. Producing content about upcoming holiday seasons can help you attract a significant amount of seasonal traffic to your website, and make your business look more appealing to consumers.

As Halloween approaches, you should be tailoring your content to make the holiday season more fun for customers. This may seem challenging if your products aren’t related to Halloween, but can be easily overcome with creativity and a sense of humour.

For instance, if your business specialises in the food industry, you could create blog posts about how to throw a successful Halloween party or what spooky treats to serve at your child’s Halloween-themed birthday party. This way, you can sneak in any Halloween promotions you might be running throughout the holiday season and use your products to create topics to write about for some subtle self-promotion. Or educate your consumers about the origin of Halloween!

Photo by David Menidrey on Unsplash

Give Your Website A ‘Spooky’ Makeover

One of the most straightforward ways to show your customers that you’re releasing Halloween-themed products, having a sale, or running a seasonal promotion is by giving your website a ‘spooky’ makeover. Cobwebs, dangling spiders, ominous animated smoke and skeletons are perfect ways to give your online business a more ‘Halloweenie vibe’ and are an excellent way to show your consumers that you're getting into the holiday spirit - pun intended!

Whether you manage your website in-house or outsource, you could take your site’s Halloween makeover one step further and add spooky sounds, change the colour, design Halloween-themed banners and add thrilling pop-ups advertising your seasonal offers. Yet ensure you don’t go too overboard, as although Halloween is a fun season to express your creativity, these changes are only temporary!

Update Your Social Media

Another way to prepare your online business for the spooky season is by connecting with your consumers via social media. There are 53 million active social media users in the UK, so your online business mustn’t forget about promoting via these channels to avoid missing out on any leads or sales.

Whether you post a Halloween-themed poll that your followers can participate in, Halloween-themed puns or jokes, or videos or gifs with humorous captions with a link to your seasonal products so that consumers can find them easier. You could also run contests relating to your brand; for instance, if your business specialises in dog food or treats, you could run a pet Halloween costume competition and offer a prize for the spookiest-dressed pooch!