The holiday season is the most wonderful time of the year for any business—especially ecommerce businesses—and Big Cartel is here to ensure you have all the tools you need for a successful and profitable season. With heaps of new apps and updates since last holiday season, you can extend the functionality of your shop to make this year your best holiday season yet.

In 2024, Platinum plan sellers generated $42 million in total sales volume during the holiday season. That’s 140% more than sellers on the free Gold plan! Want to upgrade for more selling and shop management tools? Head here.

We've put together a list of must-use tools for this holiday season—featuring both fresh new options and reliable favorites—that will help you boost sales and streamline your workflow.

Spruce Up Your Shop

Holiday-themed effects: Choose from the standard array of emojis that will “sprinkle” on your pages (falling snow ❄️, anyone?!) to transform your shop with a seasonal makeover. This year, we added new animation styles, sizing options and party mode. Whether it's Halloween or Christmas, give your shop an extra festive touch to celebrate your holiday sales.

Sticky announcement banner (NEW!): Adding an announcement or welcome text to your shop is a simple yet effective way to communicate essential information to your customers. Keep special offers visible, promote countdowns and more. Add announcements on the cart page to suggest add-ons and see that order value rise.

Manage Your Inventory With Ease

Table view: In the spirit of efficiency, the new table view feature, offered in our Platinum and Diamond, plans provides a streamlined approach to quickly update stock levels, prices, and statuses, making inventory management more efficient.

Import products: Importing products from platforms like Etsy, Squarespace, or Shopify is now a breeze for those sellers who are just starting out. Bulk add products to your shop this holiday season and watch your sales soar!

Skyrocket Your Marketing Strategies

Send marketing emails: Big Cartel partners with Mailchimp, providing a robust marketing solution to engage your audience. You can effortlessly synchronize your customers and their purchase data with your Mailchimp account, facilitating the seamless delivery of focused campaigns, automated follow-ups with customers post-purchase, and tailored product recommendations. Best of all, this app is completely free for sellers on Platinum and Diamond plans!

Custom order receipt messages: Keep customers coming back with custom messaging on their emailed receipts. Include promo codes for future orders, information about holiday sales and more.

Collect & showcase reviews: Customer reviews are critical to any holiday sales plan. They provide you with valuable feedback, build trust with potential customers, and can even influence purchasing decisions. Sellers on Platinum and Diamond plans can easily integrate with Fera to collect and share customer reviews in their shop. In addition, Fera allows you to import your reviews from other platforms.

Pop-ups, hello bars, & contact forms: Convert visitors to sales and reduce cart abandonment with pop-ups, hello bars, and embedded contact forms from Poptin.

Run targeted ads:  With options to run ads on Google, Facebook/ Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok, expanding your reach has never been easier.

These integrations are available to sellers on Platinum and Diamond plans. If you are on a Gold plan and ready to level up your marketing strategies, you can do so here.

Expand Your Sales Channels

In-person checkout: For Platinum and Diamond sellers, accept card, cash, and mobile wallet payments on the Big Cartel app via Tap to Pay.

Sell on Instagram, Facebook and Google Shopping (NEW!): Shoppers are searching for items like yours this holiday! Connect your Big Cartel catalog to Google Shopping, Instagram and Facebook for free to reach these potential customers and display your products right where they're already scrolling.

Abandoned cart recovery: The average cart abandonment rate for online shoppers, based on data reported by several different online businesses, is 70.19%. The abandoned cart feature in the Diamond plan helps you recover potential lost sales, while discounts and promotions sweeten the deal for customers who may be on the fence.

Expand What You Sell

Digital products (Coming soon!): Offer digital downloads, printable materials, knitting patterns, you name it. Selling these digital items just got easier and more seamless for you and your customers. Want to be the first to know? Fill out the survey here.

DSers Integration (NEW!): Find products that complement your store or start a whole new array. DSers allows you to process orders directly to the fulfillment: no warehousing and no headaches.

Sweeten the Deal With Discounts & Promotions

Password protection & Scheduled Drops (NEW!): create exclusive access or VIP waitlists to drive demand and stoke excitement for your holiday drops. Send the password out on your newsletter or tease it on social and schedule when you want to release your latest products.

Automatic discounts : For Diamond sellers, you can now level up your discounting strategy! Simply toggle a switch to have discounts you create automatically apply at checkout when your customers purchase certain products or meet a minimum spending amount. Create a better checkout experience by eliminating customer frustration over forgotten or expired codes! Learn more here.

Discounts & promotions: Nothing says “Q4” like discounts! Available for Platinum and Diamond plan sellers, create promotional codes to offer discounts to drive sales and retain loyal shoppers during the busiest shopping season of the year. 

Handle the Holiday Rush

Shop policy page (NEW!): In the shop settings, you now have the option to add Privacy policy, Refunds/Returns policy, Terms & Conditions, and a Shipping policy, which will create custom pages in the footer of your shop. Keep customers informed and build trust with those clear expectations. Make sure to update the Shipping Page with your holiday shipping cutoff!

Automatic shipping rates: Customers get more accurate shipping rates at checkout, you can eliminate the guesswork. We call that a win.

Region selector: You're in charge of what shipping rates look like for different areas around the world. Fine-tune shipping cost and time-frame for each region to make things crystal clear.

Ship with Big Cartel & get discounted shipping: Shipping can be a major headache during the holiday rush, but Big Cartel has you covered. Platinum and Diamond sellers in the U.S. and Canada can access unlimited discounted shipping labels directly from the platform, combating rising shipping costs for all shipping levels like Express. And bonus, Platinum sellers now have access to unlimited labels!

Deliver Exceptional Customer Service

Live chat: Chatway, the new real-time chat service available in Platinum and Diamond plans, offers your customers immediate support in your preferred chat platform. Say goodbye to delayed email responses and hello to instant assistance for your shoppers, quickly turning browsing into buying.

Shop translations (NEW!): Your website isn't limited by geography, why should your customers be? Big Cartel shops now offer automatic translations in over 20 languages.

Measure Your Success

Dashboard: Track your progress and measure your holiday success with Big Cartel's comprehensive dashboard, available for all plans.

Google Analytics: Available for Platinum and Diamond plans, dive deeper into the data and track your holiday shop traffic and customer activity in real time with Google Analytics. Combine this powerful analytics tool with the dashboard for valuable insights into your shop's performance—helping you make informed decisions to drive your business forward!

This holiday season, we're here to equip you with the tools and strategies to elevate your online store and maximize your sales potential. Head over to our Holiday Selling Toolkit to get the full list of ideas, resources, and available features for your most successful holiday selling season yet.