3 Tips for Using Summer Downtime to Get Organized

This guest post is brought to you by Outright.com, the simplest way to manage your small business finances online!

Summertime is a notorious for it’s sales slump. With people everywhere traveling abroad and no huge gift-buying holidays coming up, business owners have to think of other ways to utilize their time wisely.

Since after summer the busy fall and winter seasons will rear their heads, why not spend the downtime getting organized? You certainly can’t release a product every single summer and if you’re already got an established fan base there may not be an immediate need to grow it right away.

Here are some ideas that you can work on getting in order before the cold seasons start.

1. Paperwork

Be honest...how messy is your filing cabinet? If you didn’t touch it during spring cleaning, it’s undoubtedly a total wreck. It’s not your fault – you’re a busy person, and organizing paperwork isn’t what you could call a fun part of the job.

But, if you don’t take care of this now it’s just going to get worse come fall and winter. And when taxes roll around again? Forget about it, you’re toast. Go ahead and bite the bullet right now during this downtime to get your paperwork in order. Your future self will thank you when they don’t have to spend hours looking for one piece of paper for taxes.

Pro Tip: Instead of merely organizing the physical pieces of paper, spend the extra time to convert everything over to a digital form. Not only is giving up paper more environmentally friendly, it’s much easier to control and search through.

2. Plan For Winter

What’s your plan for the holidays? Do you have a campaign ready for Halloween or Thanksgiving? What could you do to your website to increase sales during the end of the year?

The holiday season starts earlier and earlier each year. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to walk into my local store and see Christmas decorations on the shelves any day now! As a result, you have to start planning your winter strategy earlier and earlier.

What did you do last year? Consider how it turned out and amend it. Even if the campaign didn’t do all that well you may not have to completely change it 100%. Figure out what worked and tweak it for better results.

3. Review Your Product Listings

It’s difficult to get a real idea what brand new customers see when they first enter your site. When you’re that “close” to everything there’s really no way to see it with fresh ideas ever again. However, you can take the time to find out from others what they think.

There’s always something you can improve on your website. It might be your pictures, or your copy, or even the way you’ve laid out the site. Whatever it is, a focus group could let you know what you need to change to rocket your sales during the upcoming holiday season.

If anything you should establish a questionnaire for customers to fill out so they can alert you to issues. Keep it short and let them be as honest as possible. To get a lot of answers you may even consider giving out some incentive like a free item or coupon to people who answer.

Do you have any big plans for getting organized during the summer?

This post was brought to you by Outright.com, the simplest way to manage your business finances online!