Use practice to make your busy periods more effective

With the expansion of our garden we're anticipating a lot more veggies this year. Potentially more than we can harvest, eat, and give away.

Over the winter we got a food dehydrator and have been practicing dying food for storage.

It's a bit of work and unnecessary right now (who really needs to open a 6 pound can of tomato paste).

But it's practice during a low-stress time.

Once the garden is producing and we're hauling in potatoes, beans, tomatoes, etc we're not going to have the time to learn how the dehydrator works. We need to have the experience to "just know" exactly what to do. Our couple of months of practice in the off-season will pay off in an easier time this year.

Right now many Shopify stores are in their off-season. There are small spikes here and there but the majority of the work isn't until October. You might be one of them.

Now is the perfect time to practice.

Update poorly converting areas of your website.

Figure out a smoother fulfillment flow.

Setup customer service processes and policies to handle your most common requests.

Start figuring out a new marketing channel with some test campaigns.

Use your downtime wisely so that your busy season can be smoother or more effective.

If you want a head start on testing new campaigns, you can use the cohort and product analyses in Repeat Customer Insights to give you a leg up. It can tell you which products are best to promote, how to time your campaigns, and help track how a sales channel is performing.

Eric Davis