Gift Guides That Sell Something

Twenty products and no reasons

Most small shop gift guides look alike. A festive heading, a grid of twenty products, a price under each, and not a word about why any of them is there.

Many go up in the middle of December, after the shipping dates have passed and most of the buying is done. Some are a single designed image, so nothing in them can be clicked.

The intention is good. The result is a catalogue page with a seasonal title, and the person it was meant for already knew how to browse a catalogue.

Who the guide is really for

People who read gift guides are mostly buying outside their own knowledge. Their sister paints, their son has taken up fly fishing, their friend cooks seriously.

They do not know which of two hundred paintbrushes matters, and they are worried about choosing something the recipient will politely put away.

What they want is what a good assistant does at the counter: ask two questions, then pick three things and say why.

A guide that does that on the page is useful. A guide that hands back the whole choice is not.

What a useful guide contains

• Recipients described by interest, such as the beginner or the serious hobbyist.
• Budget bands the buyer can find at a glance.
• Real products, each linked to its own page.
• A reason for each choice, in a sentence or two.
• What else is needed, such as refills, batteries or a frame.
• The date to order by for delivery or pickup.

The fourth is what separates a guide from a list. Anyone can put products in a grid; the reason is the part only someone who knows the stock can write.

Writing the reason

A good reason says who the item suits and what it does for them, in words a non-expert can follow.

It also says why this item rather than the obvious alternative. If it costs more than the version in a department store, the reason says plainly what the extra buys.

It can even say who should not get it. A beginner's set that a serious painter would find limiting is better described that way than sold to the wrong person and returned in January.

Keep it to one or two sentences. A paragraph per product turns the guide back into a catalogue.

Budgets as headings

Gift buyers usually start with a number: something small for a colleague, more for a friend, more again for family.

Bands such as under $25, under $50 and under $100 make good headings, or a second level under each recipient. Each band should hold real choices, not one token item to fill the row.

Show the actual price beside every product, and check it before publishing. A section headed under $50 that links to something at $54 has spent its credibility in one click.

A worked example

An art supply shop in an older commercial street published its gift guide last year as a single designed image: thirty products arranged on a background of snowflakes, posted on December 12.

Nothing in it could be clicked. Staff spent the following week identifying items from the image for customers who brought it in on their phones.

This year the guide is a page on the shop's website, with four short sections: someone who has never painted, a teenager who draws all day, a watercolour painter who already has the basics, and anyone under $25.

Each section has six to eight products, with the price, a link to the product page and a sentence on why it was chosen. The page went up in mid-November, and printed copies sit by the till.

The sentences came from the questions customers ask at the counter every December, which the staff could answer from memory.

Published while there is time to use it

A gift guide is a planning tool, and planning happens early. Late November and the first days of December are when most people write their lists.

Published after the shipping dates, a guide can only help local shoppers with time to come in, and says nothing useful to anyone else.

Put the order-by dates at the top, and update the page as items sell out. A guide recommending something that has been gone for a week is worse than no guide.

Honest choices only

It is tempting to fill a guide with the stock that most needs to move. Readers notice, usually after the gift has been opened.

Choose what you would recommend to someone standing at the counter. Where the right choice is the cheaper item, say so; the buyer will remember who told them.

Local is a fair reason when it is true: made nearby, exchangeable in person, wrapped at the till. Those are things a national retailer's guide cannot say.

One page, kept every year

Put the guide on your own website rather than only in a social post or a PDF, so it can be linked from the home page, the newsletter and the product pages it mentions.

Keep it at the same address and rewrite it each November, rather than starting a new page every year. The links it has earned, and its place in search, carry over instead of being thrown away.

The counter-case

A business with a handful of products does not need a separate guide. The product pages, each with a clear reason to buy, already serve as one.

A service business is usually better served by a findable gift card page than by a list of services nobody can wrap.

And a shop that cannot keep stock current through December should keep the guide short: six items it knows it will have, rather than thirty it might.

For any shop where people buy presents for others, a guide by person and budget, with a reason for each choice and published early, does on the page what the counter does in person.

This week

1. Pick three or four recipients your customers buy for.
2. Set budget bands under each one.
3. Choose six to eight products per section.
4. Write one honest reason for each choice.
5. Link every item to its product page.
6. Add the order-by dates at the top.
7. Publish before the end of November.

Step four is the one that makes the guide worth reading. The products are already in the catalogue, and the reasons are the only part a customer cannot find for themselves.

Explaining what the more expensive choice buys follows the same logic as writing about a service you are not the cheapest at.

Frequently asked questions

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