4 Ways to Improve Christmas Sales with Your Activities Website

Christmas is once again just around the corner and approaching fast. And like every year, it will manage to catch some businesses off guard, forcing them to play catch up during the most lucrative sales season of the year. But if you’re reading this now, you still have time start thinking about how to get the most out of the holiday season before it’s too late. No matter what time of the year your tours, activities or events take place, vouchers and gift certificates make it easy to get a slice of the Christmas sales pie — but you need to start prepping now if you want to get in the game.

Selling Christmas vouchers through your website

In Germany and much of the rest of Europe, vouchers and cash are among the most popular gifts to give at Christmas. The same goes for tour and activity vouchers. According to erlebnisgeschenke.de, a German experience and activity gift platform, consumers purchase three times as many activity vouchers at Christmas as they do during the rest of the year. The illustration below shows a breakdown of activity voucher sales throughout the year:

Source: http://www.erlebnisgeschenke.de/download/marktstudie.pdf translated from German to English

The trend is pretty clear: vouchers are the ultimate Christmas sales booster. But that’s not all. Here are three other reasons you should definitely be selling your own vouchers:
1. 30-50% of all vouchers are never redeemed
Nearly half of your vouchers have the potential generate free cash for your business. Who wouldn’t want that for Christmas?
2. Sales tax isn’t due until the voucher is redeemed
Taxes are always a drag on your bottom line. But with vouchers, you don’t have to pay anything until — or if — your customers redeem them.
3. Vouchers generate instant revenue
Unlike pure activity sales, vouchers have the power to generate cash right now — no matter when your tours, activities and events take place. And it doesn’t matter when the voucher is redeemed either. bookingkit sends the money straight to your account.
Most vouchers are purchased online, so you’ll want to make sure you provide an online booking option on your website in time for the Christmas shopping season.
With bookingkit, you can start selling vouchers online in no time at all. Plus, it’s free to join, and you can cancel your subscription on a monthly basis.

1. Where to place your vouchers on your activities website

Where you put your “Book” button has a lot to do with how many people actually purchase your vouchers. Better visibility = more sales. Here are three tips to maximize voucher visibility on your site:

• Add a button leading to your vouchers at the very top of your homepage
• Add a link to your vouchers in your website’s navigation bar or menu
• Use attention-grabbing colors in your links and buttons

Ideally, you want visitors to see your voucher links and buttons as soon as your homepage comes up. If they have to scroll, your vouchers are automatically going to be harder to find.
Here’s a good example from Exit Games Stuttgart:

And here’s another one from Quexit:

2. Using a Christmas-themed hero image

The main banner image on your website (hero image) is easily one of the first things visitors see when your site pops up. As you know by now, online voucher sales are a big revenue booster during the Christmas shopping seasons, so it’s a good idea to go with a festive Christmas hero which makes explicit mention of your vouchers.
Here’s what your Christmas hero image could look like:

Don’t have any good Christmas imagery? No problem. There are plenty of online stock photo databases where you can get images for free. Here are just a few:

• Pixels
• Pixabay
• Freeimages
• Unsplash

A simple search for “Christmas” on any of these sites will produce hundreds of festive pictures which you can use completely free of charge.

3. Using Christmas pop-ups on your activities website

Website pop-ups are an interesting option for the more experienced tour and activity operators out there. These can be configured to appear when visitors try to leave your site in order to present them with good reasons to stick around. And during Christmas, this can be a great way to push your voucher sales and improve your bounce rate. Your pop-up could look something like this:

4. Using special promotions on your activities website

If you’re planning any special promotions this Christmas season, your website is the place to make it known to the world. Whether for complementary mulled wine or special holiday activities, writing an article about whatever you have in the works and posting it to your blog along with pictures from past Christmas events can go a long way to giving visitors a nice overview of your holiday offerings. And you can also reuse this content for your newsletter and social media channels.

Ready to get the most out of the holiday season? Have 15 minutes? Let one of our product specialists show you for free how bookingkit can help you make this your most profitable