Courier service Hermes has published information about its May Day bank holiday parcel shop opening hours and also full details about collection and delivery coming up over the long weekend at the start of May. You can find the full information here.
Needless to say, some parcel shops will be open and will take your consignments on the bank holiday Monday but collection will likely not happen until Tuesday. So factor that into your times and what you communicate to your buyers.
It is the season for bank holidays. Obviously, we’ve just had the two for Easter and now we will have two in May. Are they disruptive to your business?
Obviously, you still need to administer your business. In particular the marketplaces require you to keep on top of answering emails and responding to customers. Amazon doesn’t give you any flexibility there: you need to reply to those questions with 24 hours whether it’s a bank holiday or not. Anecdotally, we know that many marketplace merchants will also work on a bank holiday in any case to get their despatches ready for sending on the next business working day.
Probably the biggest concern on a bank holiday weekend is the weather. Historically, a sunny bank holiday Monday, when shoppers are concentrating on having a good time with friends and family, and not looking at the web, can see a slump in sales for merchants. But it’s not clear that that is still universally the case with the rise of smartphones and greater mobile flexibility.
What seems more certain this year is that the weather isn’t likely to be scorchingly good and so shopping may continue unabashed. That said, online sales in the colder weather in recent months have also seen a slight drop in online retail so even snow isn’t a driver of ecommerce these days.
