Dig your holes before the trees arrive

Over the next two weeks we're going to start having a bunch of trees, shrubs, and other plants delivered.

Many will be bareroots so they'll need to be planted immediately or as soon as possible when they arrive. But we have no control over when they'll be shipped or delivered.

To speed things along we prepped all of the planting areas.

Locations are measured and marked with bamboo poles.

Support stakes are nearby.

All existing underground plants are marked clearly (don't want to dig up our garlic on accident).

The only things we'd have to do is unpack, dig, plant, and water.

(We're even considering pre-digging some of the bigger holes once we get the shipment notifications)

This prep work will make the entire process go smoothly and prevent errors. No one wants their apples where their blueberries were supposed to go.

You're able to anticipate many future events in your Shopify store. Holiday sales are big ones but depending on your products you might have other regular or seasonal events.

Making a calendar of recurring events that you can reuse year-after-year is useful.

But you can also reuse and schedule your prep work too.

If you need graphics and it takes 1-2 weeks to get those, you can put those dates in your calendar. Then when the event gets closer, you'll all set and there's no last-minute panic.

Holes dug. Spacing marked. Tools cleaned.

Sometimes you might not be sure if you have a seasonal event or not.

For those you can look at your customer's buying behavior. If a lot of customers bought at a specific time then year-after-year or month-after-month then you might have something to look at.

A cohort report like in Repeat Customer Insights can help you spot those signs. Look for the diagonal trends, they show how new and repeat customers are all buying at the same time.

Eric Davis