Don’t Wait For The Holiday Rush. Here’s What To Do Now.

Getting ready for the holiday season ahead of time.

The holiday season is too big to prepare for at the last minute. 

We all know the holidays are busy. Customers are shopping, businesses are trying to keep up, and there is usually a lot happening at the same time. During the 2025 holiday season, American consumers spent a record $257.8 billion online, according to Adobe Analytics. The National Retail Federation expects total U.S. retail sales to reach $5.6 trillion in 2026, a 4.4% increase from 2025.

For a business owner, that can mean a lot of opportunity and a lot more to manage.

Your payment system needs to work. Your website needs to work. Your employees need to know what is going on. And if you sell products, you need to have the things people actually want to buy.

The holiday rush is not the time to find out that something needs to be fixed. If a piece of equipment needs to be repaired, a website needs work, or you realize you ordered too much or not enough inventory, you may not have much time to deal with it.

So why wait?

There are a few things you can look at now, you still have time to make changes before the busy season arrives.

Here are five things your business should be working on now, not when the lines are already forming.

Audit the Technology Your Business Runs On

Checking equipment to make sure everything is in place before the holiday rush.

A holiday rush is the wrong time to find out that your POS system is failing. Before customer traffic picks up, take a hard look at the technology your business relies on every day: laptops, POS systems, barcode scanners, payment terminals, printers, tablets, and other essential equipment.

Check what is working, what is showing signs of trouble, and what is still under warranty. If something needs to be repaired or replaced, deal with it now. Some equipment may need to be shipped to a manufacturer or repair center, and that process can take days or even weeks. The last thing you want is to discover a problem when your busiest weeks are already here.

You don’t need for something to break completely before dealing with it. A quick check now can help you catch problems while you still have time to act. In 2025, nearly 203 million Americans shopped during the five-day Thanksgiving weekend, the biggest number ever recorded. When that many people are shopping, a technical problem that might be manageable on an ordinary Tuesday can quickly become a line of frustrated customers and missed sales.

Take a look now, you still have time to fix things that need fixing.

Use AI to power your planning

Estimate when you’ll need more staff with the help of AI.

More customers do not automatically mean more sales if your business does not have enough people in the right places at the right time. A long checkout line, unanswered questions, or a customer who can’t find help can turn a busy day into a frustrating one. Holiday staffing should be based on patterns not guesses.

Start with your own numbers. Look at last year’s sales, customer traffic, busiest days, and busiest hours. Then check your Google Business Profile. If you have claimed your listing, Google gives you reports showing how many people searched for your business and visited your website. Look at the monthly and historical data instead of letting those reports sit unopened in your inbox. Then compare what you are seeing with your sales reports from Square, Stripe, or whatever you use to take payments. If the patterns line up, you have a much better idea of when customers are actually showing up and when you’ll need more people.

You can also put those sales reports into ChatGPT and ask it to look for patterns in your busiest days and times. It can help you estimate when you may need more staff and help you think through inventory or promotions based on what has sold well before. The point isn’t to let a tool make the decisions for you. It’s to make better use of the information you already have from experience.

Don’t know where to start?

Make Your Website Ready For Holiday Shoppers

Most consumers place online orders using their phones.

Your website should make shopping easy. Before the holiday rush begins, go through your site as if you were a first-time customer. Can you find your products quickly?

Are your holiday offers easy to understand?

Are products photos, descriptions, prices, and purchasing information up to date?

And don’t forget to check the experience on your phone. A website that looks great on a desktop but is difficult to navigate on a small screen can still cost you sales. During the 2025 holiday season, mobile devices accounted for 56.4% of online holiday spending in America, according to Adobe Analytics. Your customers are already shopping from their phones, so make sure your product pages load properly, the information is easy to read, and checkout doesn’t get in the way.

Then start building the seasonal pieces now. Add holiday graphics, gift sets, packages, featured products, and promotions as they become ready, and make them easy to find. Discovery is changing, too: Adobe Analytics reported a 639.4% increase in traffic to retails sites from generative AI sources during the 2025 holiday season. Your digital storefront needs to be ready for customers who find you through search, social media, or an AI-powered shopping assistant.

Make sure your website is ready to handle the holiday rush!

Start Building Your Holiday Promotions Now

Start with promos you know will sell either because they worked last year or they’re hot right now.

Your holiday promotion should not begin the day you post it. By then, you are already competing with every other business trying to get people’s attention. Start putting your holiday materials together right now: social media graphics, product photos, email campaigns, website banners, gift sets, and special packages. Having those pieces ready gives you more room to actually think about what you’re offering instead of trying to put something together while everything else is already busy.

Think beyond your own social media, too. If you have products that make good holiday gifts, start working on a gift guide and think about where people go when they’re looking for gift ideas. This is also a good time to reach out to publicists, journalists, bloggers, and other people who influence buying decisions in your industry. A mention in a “best of” list, a city holiday guide, a newspaper article, a blog, or even a podcast can put your business in front of customers you might not reach on your own.

You don’t need Oprah's book list to create that kind of momentum. Every industry has its own tastemakers and decision makers. Find the people whose recommendations carry weight with your customers, send them a note or newsletter about your product and how it fits into the holidays, and give them a reason to take a look. A holiday promotion doesn’t have to mean putting everything on sale. A useful bundle, seasonal product, or a recommendation from someone your customers trust can give people a clear reason to choose your business.

Get your offers ready early!

Activate the AI superpower no one is using to increase revenue

Use AI to see patterns in your sale reports.

Profitability isn’t only about selling more stuff. It is also about not spending money you don’t need to spend. Every dollar sitting in inventory that doesn’t sell is money that isn’t available for something else your business can use. And if you bought that inventory with a credit card or a business loan, you may be paying interest or fees while the money is tied up. You want to have enough of what people want to buy without spending more money than you need to.

You already have something that can help you make better decisions this holiday season: your own sales history. Look back at what sold last year. Which products moved quickly? Which ones sat around? When did sales pick up? Were there products you ordered because you thought people would want them, but they didn’t sell?

All that information is worth looking at before you start placing this year's orders.

Your sales reports can help you think through when and how much inventory to order. You can put that information into ChatGPT and ask it to look for patterns, estimate what you may need at different points in the season, or help you think about promotions based on what has sold well before. It is not going to know your business better than you do, but help you make sense of a lot of information that would take hours to sort out without help.

Want to start but don’t know where?

The Holiday Rush Starts Before The Holidays

Be ready before the holiday rush arrive.

The holiday season is coming soon. There will be more customers, more orders, more questions, and probably a few things that won’t go exactly as planned.

You can’t control how busy those weeks will be. But you can give yourself some breathing room before they get here. If you need help with something, give yourself time to get it fixed. We’re here to get your business holiday ready!