This is part three of our five-part series on "Getting ready for the holiday season with Zoho Forms." This series aims to help you make the best of your forms and grow your business this season.

Holiday sales can be fun but also stressful. Why so? Whatever charm the holiday season brings, businesses work relentlessly to acquire new orders and customers, create excellent customer experiences, and retain their loyal buyers. This can easily get disorganized when not done with the right tool. But why fret when you can digitize your order process with online forms. Intrigued? Read on! 

What is an online order form? An online order form allows your customer to specify order details like the product style, number of items, color choice, and delivery address—all on a single form. As the seller, you will instantly receive the order request with this information so you can keep the order fulfillment process rolling. The end result? You make an online sale and a new customer from anywhere in the world without having to meet them in person. Here's a list of the top 5 reasons to create digital order forms for your retail businesses! 

1. Grow your business

A major part of any business is adapting on the fly to market changes. Statistics reveal that 50% of sales are happening online , so going digital is becoming increasingly lucrative. Selling online can increase your sales more than your brick-and-mortar storefront since your products are available for customers to purchase 24/7. Another major advantage is reaching out to the global market, as you get to sell your merchandise worldwide and earn new customers, too! 

2. Order accuracy

Orders during the holiday season come in large numbers—large enough that they easily get hard to keep track of. You need a system that captures accurate data from your customers and make sure the data remains unaltered throughout the process. This leaves no room for manual errors. On the flip side, an incorrect order will result in wasted resources, time, and effort. Furthermore, the incorrectly delivered order affects the reputation of the company, even though it was purely unintentional. 

3. Build trust 

An order confirmation email is undoubtedly the best way to signal to a customer that their order was processed correctly. Without it, customers will think there has been a problem with the transaction and that their order wasn't successfully placed. Crafting a simple confirmation email with the order details can greatly boost customer experience.

4. Accept online payments

Since we are automating the tiresome order process, why not payments, too? Online payments let customers quickly seal the deal by paying right away. We make collecting payments easier than you think. No complex coding or API is involved. All you need to do is add your preferred payment gateway(s), and create a workflow for the amount due. Check out how to streamline your payment experience  here .  

5. Work on the go

Not at office? No problem! You can still do all of the above and stay on top of your work with your mobile device. Your entire team can receive notifications immediately about new orders and additional updates.

Over to you!