How to Succeed in Delivery During Peak Season

Peak season is make-or-break time

When leveraged properly, peak season can be an incredibly fruitful time for retailers to say the least. With consumers shopping in huge numbers, this sales period is full of opportunities for increased revenue and new client acquisition. In fact, fourth-quarter sales often account for one-third of retailers’ total sales! 

Knowing the challenges and trends of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the holiday period can help your business prepare for peak-season success and take advantage of the rush.

The challenges of peak season sales

Retail businesses face significant challenges during peak season, which can put a lot of pressure on operations, margins, and customer satisfaction. Some major hurdles include: 

• Inventory and staffing stress: Warehouses can struggle to handle the demands of order surges—training temporary workers to meet higher demands can be costly and forecasting for these demands has the risk of inaccuracy.
• Omnichannel inconsistencies: Today’s shoppers are engaging with brands from multiple channels. If your in-person, online, and mobile experiences aren’t seamlessly synced, this can lead to poor customer experience and the risk of losing sales.
• Customer service issues: With an influx of shoppers comes an influx of customer needs. From chasing down lost orders to returning items, peak season puts high demand on retailers to increase and improve their customer service offerings.

Peak-season trends you need to know

Getting ahead of this year’s trends for peak season could mean the difference between sinking or swimming over the next couple of months. 

A rapidly increasing trend is the number of shoppers who use AI tools to create shopping lists and compare prices across retailers. In a survey of 5,000 consumers, 35% said they’ve used AI technology while gift shopping. Being able to compare prices across retailers so quickly means retailers must always be up to date on their research and pricing products competitively.  

Online spending also continues to climb, with e-commerce now making up more than a quarter of total UK retail sales. With higher online sales comes an increased need for parcel delivery— forecasted volumes for 2025 show a 5.7% growth. It all adds up to a huge opportunity and a strong case for retailers to leverage the peak-season frenzy.

Our top 4 tips for peak-season success

After uncovering the challenges and trends, it’s imperative you put together a peak-season strategy that addresses the specific needs of your business. Here are our top tips to help you get started:

1. Learn from last year.

To ensure peak season brings in high sales, increased profits, and repeat customers, you’ll need to answer several questions, such as: 

• What products should you discount amid rising inflation? 
• What in-store experiences should you offer to increase footfall? 
• How do you avoid long queues at checkout?

If you’re selling online, you might also consider the following:

• How do you prepare your website for increased traffic? 
• How can you optimise your pages to boost add-to-cart conversions? 
• How should you plan your inventory to avoid surplus or disappointing out-of-stock messages? 
• How can you live up to your delivery time promises? 

While there’s no magic formula for peak-season success, you can always learn from the lessons of your past to prepare your business for what lies ahead. Start by answering the above questions with data from previous years.

2. Focus on value over steep discounts and gimmicks.

With an influx of available options due to the increase in e-commerce product availability, making your brand stand out from the crowd is essential to developing a repeat-customer base. 

What does your brand bring that others don’t? Maybe it’s your company’s dedication to sustainability or excellent shipping and return policies. Find what makes your company shine and prioritise these important points alongside your sales and offers. A customer might jump at savings for a single purchase, but it’s your brand personality and values that keep them coming back year after year.

3. Tap into low-cost marketing and AI tools.

By 2030, 53% of British consumers anticipate shopping mainly through social media channels. That’s more than half of the shoppers! Social media shopping is on the rise, and it’s actually pretty easy for retailers to take advantage. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok have straightforward user interfaces for setting up paid product ads. Even just creating an account for your business and posting on these apps can help boost sales organically at no cost to you. 

With the rise in AI technology, it’s integral that you provide these types of tools to your customers to improve user experience and encourage repeat shopping. Offering a chat tool that can answer straightforward questions for your customers while they shop on your website is a great first step. Other AI technology includes virtual try-on tools that help customers see themselves in your products and voice search technology that allows customers to quickly find what they’re looking for, even if they’re on their smartphone. 

4. Get delivery backup from a trusted partner.

At Stuart, we know peak season is currently in full swing, and that you may have already found a delivery solution. But what if you do particularly well this year? If you’ve focused on developing your e-commerce, you could well exceed the order volumes your logistic partner has committed to delivering.

If that happens, will they be flexible enough to deliver your additional parcels in time?

Stuart’s delivery solution can take care of your extra orders to maintain a high quality of service throughout peak, and we can get you onboarded in no time at all. Don’t wait until your orders are stuck in a warehouse; get a head start instead.

Ready. Set. Peak! 

Thanks to our years of experience facilitating the delivery of retail products and our long-standing relationships with clients across Europe, we’ve developed a keen understanding of the logistical challenges faced by retailers during the year-end peak. 

If you’re ready to get started, we’re ready to step in! Reach out to our teams today or book a delivery directly on our dashboard.