Holiday Markets and Pop-Up Shops on the Website

The search after the market

A Saturday at a holiday market can put a small business in front of more people than its website sees in a week.

Some buy. Many more pick up a card, remember half a name, or mean to come back to the table and never do.

On Sunday evening, some of them search: the name if they kept the card, or what you sell and the town if they did not.

What they find decides whether the market leads anywhere. Too often it is a site with nothing about the market, none of the items from the table, and no way to order before Christmas.

Who looks you up afterwards

• Browsers who meant to come back to the table and missed you.
• Buyers who want a second one, in another size or colour.
• Gift givers checking whether an order can arrive before Christmas.
• Bigger customers who saw the small work and want the large.
• Searchers without the card, who remember only what you sold.

The fourth is the one most market sellers forget. For many trades the table is a sample of the work, and the real business is the larger job it can lead to.

Dates where people look

Put the remaining market dates on the home page: the market's name, the dates and hours, the place, and the stall number if you know it. Take each date down the day after it passes.

Announce each market in a Google Post on your listing. Event posts stay up until the event's date, so the listing shows where to find you this weekend and then clears itself.

Do not change the listing's address for a temporary stall. The listing should keep pointing to where the business normally is.

A card with a reason to look

The card is the bridge between the table and the search. Print a short web address on it in large type, such as your domain followed by /market, along with a few words saying what you make.

People sort through a pocketful of cards a week later and cannot remember whose was whose. A line such as hand-carved house numbers tells them; a logo alone does not.

Since September, iPhones read QR codes straight from the camera, so a code on the card or the table sign now works for many visitors. Print the short address beside it for everyone else.

A page for people who met you

At that short address, build one page for market visitors. Open with a photograph of the stall, so people know at once they are in the right place.

Then show the items from the table with prices, which have sold out, what can be made to order and the last date to order for Christmas.

Say how to buy: online, by phone, by email or at the next market.

Finish with the remaining dates and, if the business does larger work, a short section about it with a way to ask for a quote.

A worked example

A stonemason who builds stone walls, steps and fireplaces spends the slow winter weeks carving house-number plaques, birdbaths and small garden pieces from offcuts, and sells them at two holiday markets in his town.

Last December his website showed walls and fireplaces and nothing else.

People who had taken his card found a mason who seemed not to make what they had seen, and a couple who wanted a plaque emailed in January, too late.

This year the card carries his domain followed by /market in large type. That page shows the stall, each carving with its price, how long a custom plaque takes and the last day to order one for Christmas.

Pickup is at his yard or at the next market. Below that, three photographs of walls and fireplaces sit under a line about booking spring quotes over the winter.

The market dates are on his home page and in a Google Post for each market. The page also gives him somewhere to send people at the table who ask about bigger work.

Pop-up shops

A pop-up shop for December, in a mall or a shared space, needs the same treatment with more detail: the full address, the opening hours for each day, and the date it closes.

Say how to find it inside the building, which entrance and which store it is beside, because a mall's street address rarely helps.

Keep the main listing as it is and announce the pop-up with Posts. When it closes, say so on the site the same day, with where to find you next.

Counting what the market brought

Visits to the market page show in Analytics as views of that page, and because its address appears only on the card, they mostly come from people who met you.

If the short address redirects to a tagged link, Analytics can also report those visits as a campaign of their own. Asking buyers at pickup where they first saw you fills in the rest.

After the last market

The day after the final market, change the page rather than removing it. Thank visitors, say how to order now that the markets are over, and give the next dates, even if they are in spring.

The cards are still in pockets, wallets and kitchen drawers. An address that keeps working all winter keeps the market useful long after the stall is packed away.

The counter-case

A maker whose market table is the whole business, with no online ordering and no larger work, may need little more than the dates and a contact line on the home page.

A one-off pop-up for a single weekend may need only a notice and a Post. A business with a busy online shop can point the card straight at the products shown at the market.

For most market sellers, though, the people who walk away are the bigger audience. Give them dates, a short address and a page that recognises them.

Before the next market

1. List the remaining dates on the home page.
2. Add a Google Post for each market.
3. Build a page at a short address.
4. Photograph the table and each item.
5. Print the address large on the card.
6. Give the last order date for Christmas.
7. Update the page after the final market.

Step five carries the most weight. The card is the only thing that leaves the market with the visitor, and a short address in large type survives a coat pocket and a busy week.

Making sure a campaign's link lands somewhere useful follows the same logic as shop-local campaigns and the website they link to.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.