Halloween is a busy retail period for sweet sellers, whether you sell sweets online or from a bricks-and-mortar sweet shop.
Trick-or-treating is a big driver of this, as many householders make sure they have something bought in, just in case of a knock at the door this October 31st.
In 2021, Halloween itself lands on a Sunday night, which makes it the culmination of a bumper weekend for sweet shops.
Here are some tips on how to be ready to sell sweets online this Halloween, to capitalise on the most spooktastic time of year.
Halloween themed sweets
The obvious option is to stock up on some Halloween themed sweets, which are more popular than ever during the autumn months.
Different shapes such as ghosts, skulls, brains and eyeballs are all perfectly on-theme, along with seasonal flavours like cinder toffee, pumpkin and ‘pumpkin spices’ such as cinnamon.
If you want to focus on sweets you can continue to sell in the run-up to Christmas go for gruesome and grotesque kids’ favourites like toxic sludge and ‘nuclear’ sour sweets.
Decorate your online sweet shop for Halloween
Just because you sell sweets online, it doesn’t mean you can’t decorate your shopfront for Halloween.
If you’re not confident with changing the look of your website, see whether you can just swap your main logo for a spooky-themed substitute until the end of October.
Alternatively, if your content management system supports it, add a Halloween promotion or special offer to your homepage as a way to get seasonal sweets into a prominent position.
Paid search and social media
Paid search ad placements (or ‘PPC’ for ‘pay-per-click’) are a great way to get your brand associated with a short-term seasonal promotion, without having to get to the top of the organic search results.
If you have a social media presence, you can also use this to promote your seasonal offerings, and just like your website, you can change your display name, profile picture and other images for Halloween-themed graphics. For more tips, check out our guide on promoting via Facebook.
Consider offering a small discount or a perk like free shipping (on orders over a certain size, if this keeps it economical for you) to bring in the customers to your website.
Next-day delivery
Finally, give your customers some confidence that they will receive their Halloween sweets in time for October 31st – or ideally, Friday October 29th in time for the whole weekend.
You can do this by offering guaranteed delivery dates or premium services like next-day delivery (just make sure your website is up to date with what you have in stock).
Be creative!
The ideas above are a good starting point to sell sweets online for Halloween, and many of them can be applied to other big celebrations like Christmas and Easter as we move into 2022.
If you have your own inspiration about how to sell sweets on your website this Halloween, try it! You could offer pre-made pick-n-mix bags or Halloween hampers, bumper-sized bags for trick-or-treat night, or party packs for people celebrating with friends.
Whatever you try, have some fun with it and keep one eye on your profit margin, and this Halloween should be a spooktacular time for your online sweet shop.
See our blog for more tips on selling sweets online and on Facebook, or visit our store to stock up on wholesale treats.