A New Year's Checklist for Growing Shopify Sellers

The holiday season is a peak time for Shopify sellers, with Black Friday and Cyber Monday alone bringing in $11.5 billion in sales.  

As the prime retail season ends and the year begins to wind down, finding a way to keep the momentum going in the New Year is crucial. The good news is that taking care of just seven tasks can help set you on the path to making 2025 your most successful year ever.

Here's what they are.  

1. Analyze Holiday Performance

Understanding how you performed during the peak season can help you identify future growth opportunities as well as weaknesses to improve upon in the new year.

Since you likely did a larger volume of sales in the last months of the year, you have a treasure trove of data to evaluate. As you comb through the numbers, be sure to take a look at these key metrics.

• Revenue growth compared to prior periods: Revenue growth is calculated using a simple equation: Current Period Revenue - Prior Period Revenue / Prior Period Revenue.  The faster you grow your revenue, the better, but at a minimum you'll want to make sure your revenue growth outpaces overall economic growth.
• Customer acquisition costs (CAC): This measures the cost of acquiring new customers. You can calculate it by dividing the total costs of your sales and marketing efforts by the total number of customers acquired during the relevant period.  The lower the CAC, the better as it shows your customer acquisition strategy is more efficient.
• Customer lifetime value (CLV): This is a measure of the total amount of revenue you expect a customer to produce for your company over the entire duration of their relationship with your business. You can measure historic customer lifetime value by calculating how much existing customers have spent. You can also use historical data to predict how much customers will spend in the future given their current behaviors such as average purchase value and your typical customer retention rate.
• Average order value during holiday campaigns: This measures the amount of money customers spend per transaction. It's usually higher during the holiday season.

When you look at these metrics, focus on which holiday campaigns drove more revenue and brought in the highest number of customers at the lowest cost. You can try to recreate the success of those campaigns in the coming year by implementing similar strategies and drawing on the same themes while adjusting them for the season.

You'll also want to consider what your highest-selling products are, assess inventory turnover, and prepare to replenish your stock so you're ready for 2025.

2. Optimize Marketing Strategies

With the holiday season -- and the accompanying consumer spending frenzy -- coming to an end, you'll likely want to optimize your marketing strategies since customers may not be as eager to open their wallets.

One obvious technique is to retarget holiday shoppers. You want to turn these buyers into repeat customers, so identify those customers who made purchases during the holidays to target them with loyalty campaigns and upsell them on related products.

You'll likely also need some new marketing campaigns to capture consumers where they're focused as the new year gets underway. For example, many people make New Year's resolutions, so focusing on themes like self-improvement, organization, or starting fresh could help inspire buyers to take advantage of your offerings.

3. The Post-Holiday Return Surge

In 2023, 15.4% of all holiday purchases were returned, according to FitSmallBusiness. While that's a staggering number, return rates last year were actually 2.5% lower than in 2022. Unfortunately, eCommerce businesses actually face higher rates of return, with 17.6% of items sent back compared with 10% for brick-and-mortar stores.

You'll need to be ready to handle these returns effectively to both minimize financial losses and maintain the trust of your customers.  To get ready to manage returns effectively:

• Review and optimize your return policy: Last year, 42% of retailers shortened the return window and 49% implemented fees in the form of shipping or restocking fees. While these practices offset losses from reverse logistic expenses, they also anger customers. Think carefully about what policies you want to set in place with a focus on the long term.
• Ensure your return policy is clear, fair, and prominently displayed. You don't want customers to be surprised or confused.
• Make the return process easier for customers: Hassle-free solutions such as local drop-off points and pre-paid return labels improve the customer experience and make it more likely they'll buy from you again since they know the risk is minimal.
• Implement technology for return management. Shopify apps such as Loop Returns can automate the process of returns. You can also offer customers self-service portals to effortlessly initiate and track returns -- both to improve their experience and to reduce the number of queries to your customer service team.

While no company likes receiving a lot of returns, you can turn these transactions into opportunities. One way to do that is to showcase alternative products during the return process. You may be able to convince customers to turn a return into an exchange instead, or even upsell them into a better product than the one initially purchased.

You can also collect data from the returns to identify patterns, such as common problems with products or misleading descriptions that may have left customers disappointed. By identifying and correcting these issues, you can reduce the return rate going forward and improve the customer experience.

4. Address Post-Holiday Chargebacks

Chargebacks are always a fact of life when operating a business, but a high volume of holiday sales can increase the risk of disputes or even fraud as scammers know how busy sellers are during the festive season.

You'll want to understand why chargebacks happen to avoid as many as possible. The most common reasons for chargebacks vary by industry, but Chargeflow data shows issues that are likely to arise.

• For apparel businesses, "product not received" accounts for 37.01% of chargebacks while "not as described" is the second most common cause, accounting for 21.82% of chargebacks.
• For home and garden businesses, "product not received" is also a leading cause of chargebacks, accounting for 36.45%.
• In both the beauty and cosmetics industry and the food and beverage industry, fraud is the most common reason for chargebacks.

By avoiding issues such as late deliveries, unsatisfactory products, and products that are not as described, you can reduce the likelihood of successful chargebacks. Reviewing and optimizing your return and exchange policies also gives customers another solution so they don't need to pursue this approach.

To prevent chargebacks due to fraud, you can use fraud detection tools, monitor chargeback rates, and partner with services like Chargeflow which automates the process of preventing and recovering chargebacks.

Pro Tip: Communicating proactively with customers enables you to resolve issues before they escalate to chargebacks.

5. Reevaluate Sales Tax Nexus

eCommerce companies are required to file sales tax returns and collect and pay taxes once they have a certain level of involvement with a specific state (or foreign location). Your sales during the holiday season may have triggered nexus in new areas and you must know this right away as non-compliance can put you at risk of penalties or of owing back taxes.

To make sure you are in full compliance with your sales tax obligations:

• Conduct a nexus study based on sales and activity in states where you generated business during the holiday season
• Update your tax settings in Shopify and integrate a tax solution like Numeral for automated compliance. Numeral makes sales tax management effortless, allowing you to fulfill your obligations in as little as 5 minutes monthly. It integrates seamlessly with Shopify, can track nexus for you, and automates the process of registering to pay sales tax, collecting tax from customers, and remitting payments.

If you're selling to tax-exempt customers, you'll also want to make certain that your exemption management system is updated to reduce the risk of an audit. Numeral handles this process for you, allowing exemption certificates to be uploaded and stored in one centralized location.

6. Update Inventory and Fulfillment Strategies

When the last holiday order has finally been placed, it's time to take a careful look at both inventory and fulfillment. Specifically, you should:

• Identify overstocked or understocked items to adjust reordering strategies.  When you're left with an excess of certain products after the busiest shopping season of the year, you may need to adjust your orders -- unless there's reason to believe interest will pick up in the new year. For understocked items, look closely at whether demand will persist into the new year.
• Fulfillment improvements: Evaluate how quickly and effectively you were able to deliver products to customers. Do you need to make changes to your inventory management; your warehousing, your picking and shipping processes; your packaging and shipping; or your customer communication methods?
• Shipping and delivery. Did your shipping partners operate efficiently? Did items get delivered on time and without damage? Were customers satisfied with your shipping options? If not, you may need to look for new partnerships or offer new delivery options.

As the New Year gets underway, it may also be worth considering whether you should use apps to automate inventory tracking and help you better predict future demand. You can also offer customers incentives to pre-order popular products for the upcoming year so you can streamline future sales cycles.

7. Plan for Tax Season

Now that the festive season is over, tax season is fast approaching. While it may be a less jolly time of the year, it's crucial to be as prepared as possible for it. Starting to prepare now will help you to make sure you fulfill your obligations so you avoid penalties -- and avoid the stress that can come from completing tax forms at the last minute.

To get on track for a successful tax season:

• Organize sales tax data and ensure accurate reporting for year-end tax filings.
• Reconcile holiday sales with tax remittance schedules. Each state establishes whether you must pay monthly, quarterly, semiannually, or annually. Make sure you're covering the taxes due for the relevant revenue collection period.

Working with a tax professional can help you ensure you're prepared and ready to fulfill all of your filing obligations. You can also use tax-filing software that's compatible with Shopify to avoid errors that could lead to audits or penalties.

Final Thoughts

Taking each of these steps can help you set your business up for success in the New Year.

• Reviewing the holiday sales season and incorporating the data you collect allows you to optimize your marketing and adjust your inventory management strategies to better serve customers in the upcoming year.  
• Preparing for returns and chargebacks helps you limit financial loss while enhancing customer satisfaction.
• Ensuring you're in full compliance with sales tax rules, and are prepared for tax season, helps you avoid costly penalties.

Get started working on them today so you can refine your operations, reduce risks, and capitalize on future growth opportunities. By staying proactive -- and incorporating the right tools in the Shopify ecosystem -- you can grow your revenue and achieve your 2025 goals.