5 Tips for your Online Business during the Postal Strikes
With up to 17 days of postal strikes scheduled to occur between now and the start of December, INCLUDING over the Black Friday Weekend, this post looks at 5 different things you can do as and online business owner to help relieve the pressure!
1) Add a static banner to the top of all web pages
If there's ever going to be any kind of disruption to the service you provide, it's really important to make your customers aware of this as soon as possible. This helps to manage their expectations of when they can expect to receive their orders by giving them an upfront warning that things are not 'business as usual'.
Royal Mail have made it extremely clear that not only will customers be affected on strike days, the knock on affect will also be felt on days around the strike days as they struggle to clear the back log. Therefore, adding a static ticker tape style banner to the top your website is a real no brainer.
Although the messaging is promotional rather than functional, this example by fashion retailer Monki below shows how effective simple clear notifications like this can be:
Example of notification banner
2) Update your delivery pages and FAQs
By updating key information areas of your website such as delivery and FAQ pages you are able to provide your customers with a more detailed update about how your service may be affected during the postal strikes.
This can be great time saver to direct customers to if you suddenly start receiving an influx of delivery queries. It also helps to have the "small print" in place for any disgruntled customers who may not have been aware that their order may be impacted by the postal strikes.
3) Encourage customers to "Shop Early"
Make sure you're using all of your marketing channels to alert your customers to the changes of service and encourage them to shop early. Emails, Socials, even paid ads - you don't want to miss out on Christmas traffic and sales because your ideal customer base weren't aware of the impact of the strikes.
4) Factor strikes into Stock Management
Don't forget, if YOU'RE having a hard time getting your products out to your customers, your wholesalers could be having a hard time getting their stock to YOU!
Large businesses will have placed their orders long before the news of postal strikes was on the cards, however if you're a smaller online business, chances are you could be relying on 'top up' and last minute stock orders right the way through to your Last Shipping days.
This year it will pay to keep in close communications with all of your suppliers to be aware of any potential hold ups with stock as soon as possible. You might also want to limit any last minute bulk orders to ensure you aren't left with an excess of stock arriving AFTER your peak sales period.
5) Considers "Delivery Free" products
Not to be confused with Free Delivery, by "Delivery Free" I'm referring to products that can be sent to Customers WITHOUT the need to post.
Gift vouchers, downloads, Experiences, Classes can all be purchased and sent to the end customer via email, therefore by-passing the postal service completely! Options like this also work well when marketed to your customers as "Stress free Christmas gifting".
...and finally
You might be tempted to try and avoid the postal strikes by avoiding Royal Mail completely this Christmas and switching to a new delivery service. However, the fact is that a lot of usual suspects; Evri, Yodel, DPD are ALREADY experiencing a huge influx of parcels as lots of other people have the same idea. Meaning unfortunately you're probably no better off making the switch.
Keep and eye on the Royal Mail website for all up to date strike information.
THANKS for reading! If you have any other ideas on how to help small businesses deal with the Postal Strikes this winter, let me know in the comments below.
Or if you'd like to know more about ways in which I can help your business meet its online goals, get in touch to arrange a FREE Consultation.