What catches your eye when searching for home decor or landscaping products?

There’s something about the shape, color, and overall attractiveness that makes you select specific items. That’s the same principle that convinces customers to say yes to your gift baskets.

When asking for feedback on the reasons why a customer chose a particular gift, the person won’t always pinpoint your design elements, but their buying patterns will give you lots of insight on what makes them buy. Here are three factors that may be high on their preference list.

1. Think Tall. Height is a motivating criteria. I noticed this not only with my clients but also when judging gift baskets at conferences years ago where other designer judges gave high marks to tall designs.

Your baskets or container gifts qualify to be wide when the required size is large. Outside of that, build up, not out. That’s a strategy that seems to be consistent in our industry.

Read more about this in the article, Tall Baskets Add Height and Sales Value.

2. Color KaChing. Let food and fashion alert you to each season’s popular color choices. This is one tip I remember hearing from the president of The Color Association of the United States. For me, she was right.

The more I stayed aware of seasonal colors and applied them to my gift baskets through shred, tissue, and bows, the more my sales increased. Look at your inventory, check the holiday color palette, and match them together.

3. Name Fame. Themes are a big attraction with individuals and corporations, and both want a name associated with each design.

Your baskets may start with names such as Welcome to the World or A Star is Born for newborns. As you expand your designs, news articles and personal conversations will help to broaden your design name options. Remember that people resonate with theme names, so make sure each of your gift baskets has one.

The answer in this article to the question, Why Name a Gift Basket? sheds more light on this topic.

What other elements of gift basket design convince your customers to buy?

© 2008-2010 Shirley George Frazier. All rights reserved. Shirley George Frazier is the world's expert on the gift basket industry, professional speaker, and author of How to Start a Home-Based Gift Basket Business, The Gift Basket Design Book, and Marketing Strategies for the Home-Based Business: Solutions You Can Use Today. Visit GiftBasketBusiness.com for DVDs, CDs, reports, tips, and more to learn, grow, and profit with gift baskets.

Read these related articles:

1. Welcome to the Gift Baskets Newsletter
2. Ideas to Increase Sales, How to Do the Math
3. How to Increase Sales, Buy Baskets, Drop Shipping

How to Anchor Bottles in Gift Baskets

Sparkling ciders and other bottled beverages need to be stabilized, or they may break during transit.

That may have happened to my gift baskets if I hadn’t anchored the bottles.

Is this your problem, too? Watch this video to stabilize bottles the right way.

Basket Pricing 101

Nested basket sets can be a great bargain, but how do you price each basket size?

One popular pricing formula is found on this baskets page at GiftBasketBusiness.com, and if you don’t know the meaning of “nested baskets,” you’ll find an explanation, too.

© 2008-2010 Shirley George Frazier. All rights reserved. Shirley George Frazier is the world's expert on the gift basket industry, professional speaker, and author of How to Start a Home-Based Gift Basket Business, The Gift Basket Design Book, and Marketing Strategies for the Home-Based Business: Solutions You Can Use Today. Visit GiftBasketBusiness.com for DVDs, CDs, reports, tips, and more to learn, grow, and profit with gift baskets.

Read these related articles:

1. Welcome to the Gift Baskets Newsletter
2. How Do You Price Your Gift Baskets?
3. Before You Buy Baskets…