The holiday season is a perfect time to take inventory of life and business. Designing a holiday gift guide is an excellent opportunity to examine your company’s values and what your brand stands for. However, deciding what products to include in your company’s gift guide can be tricky. To help with this task, here are the three most important factors to consider when composing a holiday gift guide.

Stay On-brand

When narrowing down items to include on your gift list, ask two questions: “What is my brand,” and “Does this product reflect my brand?” In purpose, the gift guide presents products that your customers need and that you offer exceptionally well in price, quality, accessibility, or all three. Choose merchandise that does this well.

If your brand is clever, choose clever products for your guide. If your brand is family-friendly, all items in your holiday guide should also be. Additionally, the products selected should fall into pre-designated categories that reflect your brand. For example, Cabela’s gift guide is divided into gifts for marksmen, hunters, home cooks, anglers, and more categories that represent and indicate their brand. This guide is also great if you are looking for particular gifts for women.

Choose Your Assortment Carefully

Though you want to offer the merchandise your customers want in your gift guide, you also need to realize that you can’t always please everyone. Start the gift guide with an array of products since, at the start of the season, customers are assessing all their options. But, as the season continues, customers’ considerations shift from a wide range of merchandise to a few select products offered at a “can’t miss” price. This merchandise should begin to appear mid-guide.

In the final sales days of the holidays, shoppers have only a couple of products intended for specific family members or friends that they are still on the move for. A strategic placement of such gifts throughout the gift guide could catch the attention of those last-minute shoppers flipping through (or scrolling through) it a few days before the sales doors (or sales sites) close. A good holiday gift guide will promote general appeal merchandise, a few items at a “can’t miss” price, and a couple of niche items specific to grandma, uncle, or a friend.

Focus on Best Sellers to Drive Profit

Use past performance as a guide for what to highlight in your gift guide. The merchandise that customers purchase from September through November will probably be the same items that shoppers continue to buy through December, and these precise products will drive your sales at the end of the year. With shoppers demonstrating a demand for this select merchandise, stock them well and feature them boldly. In your inventory, these products should be your heavyweights; in your holiday guide, they should be your centerfolds. Naturally, this merchandise should appeal to your specific customer base and leave your brand echoing in their ears.

A good holiday gift guide will offer both pre-planning and last-minute customers several options but drive them into the guide toward your most profitable and best-selling merchandise. A great holiday gift guide will do the same, except carefully chosen products will leave your customer with a better understanding and appreciation of your brand.