The fall season is right around the corner, and that means it’s time to gear up for the busy semester ahead. With seasonal sports, back-to-school, and various holidays coming up, you’ll have the perfect opportunity to offer a variety of personalized merch and branded apparel tailored to suit all your customers wants and needs.
It’s easier than ever to seize new and existing business opportunities, and OMG is here to help you succeed with our A+ online store platform. The 2024-2025 school year is sure to be a busy one, so without any extra stressors, you can ensure the online ordering process is quick and easy for students, teachers, staff, coaches, and parents. With innovative built in features and capabilities, collecting bulk orders is a breeze. Let’s unpack 5 simple ways you can conquer the bustling fall season with OMG.
1) Know the Best Use Cases & Consider Other Use Cases
Let’s start at the beginning – what types of stores should you be pitching? Some tried and true seasonal and back to school ideas that may spark your interest include:
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- Faculty Stores: Teachers and staff want to rep their school too! Create a store packed with logoed tees and sweatshirts.
- School Clubs: Whether it’s the debate team or the drama club, an online store is the perfect way for members to order club specific items to show off their passions.
- School Supplies: From pencils to calculators, provide an online store for parents and students to easily access and checkout with all of the school year essentials in a matter of minutes.
- Spirit Wear Stores: With students returning to the classroom, school spirit has never been more important. Provide a store filled with gameday gear that will have them cheering all season long.
- Teacher Appreciation Week: Show teachers gratitude with an online teacher appreciation store filled with apparel, branded coffee mugs, restaurant gift cards, and monetary donations.
- Team Uniform Stores: A new school year means the start of fall sports like football, basketball, lacrosse, cross country, cheerleading, soccer, and more. Help student athletes order uniforms and other essentials for a winning season.
- School Fundraising: Turn passion into profit! OMG online stores have valuable tools for fundraising efforts across various school activities for everything from clubs, homecoming, or breast cancer awareness month, making it easy for schools to achieve their fundraising goals with efficiency.
2) Utilize Features Specifically Built for Back to School Season
Now that you know which online store to pitch for your customers use case, here are recommended OMG features to take sales to the next level – so when you show the final online store to your customer, it will pass with flying colors!
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- Copy Stores & Store Templates
- Building a store can take time – but not anymore! Copy an existing store you created last year with a single click to save time and money. All items and branding will carry over to the new store. Perfect for team sports and school suppliers.
- Landing pages
- This feature is beneficial if you’re running various online stores. For example, you might have multiple stores for a single school district or stores for each sport team for a single school. Landing Pages allow you to house multiple online stores and custom links in a single location. You can even add a landing page link to your email signature as a marketing tool.
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- Bulk Actions & Artwork
- Eliminate the monotonous task of updating products one at a time. With just a single click, you can update multiple products at once. Bulk Actions makes it easy to make changes to multiple products like price adjustments, adding custom options, and more.
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- Product Bundles
- Product bundles help you meet product minimums and increase average order value. Perfect for use cases including school uniforms, athletics gear, homecoming season, fundraisers, and more.
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- Fundraising
- Quickly launch fundraising stores for important causes or initiatives. Display a Fundraising Tracker on the storefront to encourage purchases and maximize sales. View the fundraising report for a breakdown of gross and net fundraising totals. OMG makes it simple to help schools raise money with branded merch and apparel.
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- Klarna
- Use this quick and easy payment option that gives shoppers the flexibility to pay over time while increasing the average order volume. On average, shoppers spend 41% more when using Klarna as a payment method. Klarna makes it easy for parents with multiple students to break up payment totals into smaller, affordable payments.
3) Understand Top Trending Fall Products
Raise your hand if you know the most popular products to include in a back to school online store! It’s okay if you’re unsure – OMG is here to help you ace your future online stores with popular, trending products you can include to ensure customer satisfaction.
According to OMG data, the most popular items that were included in online stores between the months of July through September were 100% cotton apparel and hoodies. For other ideas, check out this list of more popular products that can be logoed and customized to fit specific branding:
- Tumblers, insulated mugs, and water bottles
- School supplies such as backpacks, pens, notebooks, calendars, and calculators
- Lunch bags and tote bags
- Lanyards, ID holders, pins, and badges
- Game Day essentials such as stadium blankets, baseball caps, and chairs
- Tech accessories such as laptop sleeves, iPad covers, and stylus pens
4) Customize the Store Design
To put it simply – design matters. Over 94% of people say bad design is the main reason they don’t trust certain sites. With OMG Online Stores, you have complete control of the storefront design to create a store that will match the school’s colors and mascot which will make parents, students, and teachers excited to shop in it..
When you elevate the shoppers experience and gain their trust, you’ll be able to capitalize on good branding and win big business opportunities. Some store design tools you can use are:
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- Bulk Actions & Artwork
- Eliminate the monotonous task of updating products one at a time. With just a single click, you can update multiple products at once. With Bulk Artwork, add artwork to multiple products at once or replace artwork across products in a few clicks.
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- Premium Layouts
- Create a retail-like experience that will wow your customers complete with features such as CTA buttons, mid-page banners, a featured products section and more.
5) Marketing Techniques for Schools
Easily reach your customer base with OMG’s built-in marketing tools. To make the back to school season a breeze, we’ve compiled resources for you to take advantage of to get the word out about your online stores. These include:
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- QR Code & Banners
- Advertise a QR code on a banner and hang across the school in high traffic areas such as hallways and the gymnasium so students, parents, and teachers know where to shop.
- Email Templates
- No need to create your own content – OMG has you covered with pre-built email templates you can use to reach your back-to-school and team audience.
- Social Media Ideas & Captions
- Promote your stores and communicate with customers on social media using pre-written captions. Download >>
- Store Launch Checklist
- Before launching your back-to-school store, check out our tried and true steps to ensure your store is ready for a successful launch. Download >>
The back to school season presents a wealth of opportunities for online stores to thrive, and with the right strategies in place, you can effortlessly maximize success. By leveraging OMG’s innovative platform and features, from customizable storefronts to trending product bundles, you can create a seamless shopping experience for students, teachers, and parents alike.
As you gear up for a busy semester ahead, embrace the spirit of the season by offering a diverse range of personalized merch to meet the needs of your customers. Start planning now, and make this fall your most successful season yet! Contact us now to get started on your own seasonal store.
