Gift Guide Tips from Shopify Experts

1. Analyze your Data

Reviewing your past year's sales, identify your top-selling holiday products, collections, or bundles to decipher what could be perfect gifts for the upcoming holiday season. Creating holiday bundles is also a great time to combine some of your best-sellers and new products into one package, giving your customers the opportunity to not only experience a top product but also try something new.


2. Set Up Collections for Success

Create holiday collections that are strategically curated with sales data, target audience, and current shopping trends in mind. Once you identify those top-selling products, create collections that will resonate with your audience. Popular holiday collections include shopping by price, lifestyle, personality, and age range. Avoid creating holiday collections with a large number of products (we recommend under 20 products per collection) as this can cause shoppers to become overwhelmed.

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3. Layout is Key!

Depending on the number of collections you curate and the products listed within, you will want to ensure the shopping pathway is the smoothest for your customers. The best way to tackle this is to thoughtfully consider your gift guide layout. If you are featuring only a handful of collections, you may want to create a gift guide landing page where shoppers can view collections and add products to cart all on one page. If you have a lot of holiday collections (more than 5), consider creating a parent category page where shoppers can view each collection and then choose which one to shop within.

4. Filtering is your Friend.

If your holiday collections consist of more than 20 products each, filtering should be a functionality that you offer to your shoppers. While it is appealing when the gift guide has its own unique style from the rest of the website, your filtering functionality should be consistent with your other non-gift guide collection pages. Research shows that exit rates increase significantly when customers are unable to quickly tailor product lists to their specific interest. The top 5 filters are: Price, User Ratings and Color, Size and Brand (where applicable).

Keep your filters clear, concise and avoid giving customer too many options to choose from.

5. Consider your New Customer

There will be shoppers engaging with your brand for the first time. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to strengthen your brand recognition! Providing beneficial brand callouts on your gift guide like your rewards program, free shipping and easy returns policies, important payment information and of course, your brand's unique value proposition can enhance the confidence in purchasing products from your brand and give your new customer reasons to come back again. This is the perfect opportunity to share not only the products you offer, but the type of company that you are!

6. Don’t Forget About the Indecisive Shopper 

If you don’t offer gift cards, now is the time to change that. No matter how well crafted and informative your gift guide is, some shoppers may still feel stuck as to what to select, and providing a gift card option can help. If you do offer a gift card, make sure that you test this prior to the holiday season to ensure that the entire process is smooth. From the experience of the gift giver purchase to the ease of redemption for the gift receiver.

7. Intentional Brand Cohesion

With so many brands competing for the attention of your consumer, it is vital that you stand out. Ensuring that you have strong brand cohesion across all gift guide formats is key to establishing your brand presence and solidifying your place in the market during the holiday season. Whether you create print ads, social ads, or additional email marketing guides, all of your designs should be cohesive to your brand and lead the shopper to an almost identical website experience. Follow your brand guidelines closely and if you add in a new layer of design, make sure that it is showcased throughout your entire holiday marketing campaign.