Black Friday and Cyber Monday are over, but a big group of shoppers hasn’t started yet. Every December, a lot of people buy gifts in the final two weeks before Christmas, and they all have the same question: “Will it get here in time?” If your store answers that question clearly, and offers something for the people who are already too late for shipping, the second half of December can still be a strong sales period.

This guide covers three things you can set up this week: honest shipping cutoffs, gift cards, and digital or instant-delivery products.

Why last-minute shoppers behave differently

Someone buying on December 18 is not browsing. They have a name on a list and a deadline. That changes what matters on your site:

• Delivery date beats price. A small discount won’t win them over if they can’t tell whether the parcel arrives before the 24th.
• They skim. They want the answer on the product page or in a banner, not in a shipping policy page three clicks away.
• They’re willing to switch formats. If the physical product won’t arrive, a gift card or a printable voucher is often an acceptable substitute, as long as it looks like a proper gift.

Your job is to remove doubt at each stage: before they add to cart, at checkout, and after the physical shipping window closes.

Step 1: Work out your real shipping cutoffs

Don’t guess and don’t copy another store’s dates. Your cutoff depends on three things:

1. Your carriers’ holiday deadlines. Most national postal services and couriers publish recommended last posting dates for Christmas each year. Look up the current dates for every service you offer, domestic and international.
2. Your own processing time. If orders take one or two business days to pick and pack in normal weeks, assume it will be slower now, not faster.
3. Weekends and your team’s days off. Christmas 2024 falls on a Wednesday, so the last full working week before it ends on Friday, December 20. Plan around that.

A worked example

Say your courier’s recommended last date for standard domestic delivery is Thursday, December 19, and you normally ship within one business day. To be safe, you’d tell customers:

These dates are hypothetical. Replace them with your carriers’ published deadlines and your actual processing time. It’s better to set the cutoff a day early and delight people than to promise too much and deal with angry emails on December 27.

Put the cutoffs in WooCommerce

Shipping zones and methods live under WooCommerce → Settings → Shipping. You can’t set a “delivery by” date there out of the box, but you can make method names do the work. Renaming a method from “Express” to “Express (order by Dec 19 for Christmas delivery)” means the date shows up right at checkout, where the decision happens. Just remember to change it back in January.

If you haven’t reviewed your shipping setup in a while, our guide to WooCommerce shipping walks through zones, rates and methods.

Offer local pickup if you can

For stores with a physical location or a warehouse customers can reach, local pickup extends your selling window almost to Christmas Eve. It’s a built-in option in WooCommerce shipping settings. We cover the setup in how to set up WooCommerce local pickup.

Step 2: Tell people about the cutoffs everywhere they look

A cutoff date that lives only on your shipping page does very little. Shoppers need to see it at the moment they’re deciding. Good places to show it:

• A site-wide notice bar at the top of every page: “Order by Tue, Dec 17 for standard delivery before Christmas.”
• Product pages, near the Add to cart button. A short line of text is enough.
• The cart and checkout pages, where the shipping method names now include the dates.
• Order confirmation emails, restating which delivery option they chose and what that means.
• Your email list, with one reminder a day or two before each cutoff.

Update the message as dates pass

The message should change as December moves along. A simple schedule:

1. Until the standard cutoff: “Order by [date] for delivery before Christmas.”
2. Between standard and express cutoffs: “Standard shipping won’t make it. Choose Express by [date].”
3. After the last shipping cutoff: “Too late for delivery? Send a gift card instantly.”

This is where a popup or notice-bar tool is useful. With a tool like iConvert Promoter, you can schedule each version with start and end dates so the right message appears automatically, and target it by page, for example showing the gift card message only on product pages after the cutoff. Any notice-bar plugin with scheduling works; the point is not to forget to swap the message at 11 p.m. on a Tuesday.

Step 3: Sell gift cards properly

Gift cards are the natural answer for anyone who has missed the shipping window. They also help your January: the recipient comes back to spend the card, often in the quieter weeks after the holidays.

Options for WooCommerce

WooCommerce doesn’t include gift cards in the core plugin. You have a few routes:

• The official Gift Cards extension sold on WooCommerce.com.
• Free or freemium gift card plugins from the WordPress.org directory. Check that they’re actively updated and compatible with your WooCommerce version before installing.
• Coupons as a stopgap. You could sell a simple virtual product and email a unique coupon code manually. It works for a handful of orders but doesn’t track balances, so it’s not a long-term solution.

If you want to understand the difference between gift cards and store credit, our post on WooCommerce store credit explains how credit works and when each fits.

Make the gift card feel like a gift

A plain “Gift Card – $50” product doesn’t feel special. A few details make a real difference:

• Let buyers choose a delivery date. Many gift card plugins let the buyer schedule the email for Christmas morning. That’s a strong selling point.
• Add a personal message field. Most people want to write something.
• Offer a printable version so the buyer can put it in an envelope or under the tree.
• Use a festive design for the card image and the email the recipient gets.
• Offer sensible amounts that match your price points, plus a custom amount if your plugin supports it.

Where to promote gift cards

Put a link to the gift card in your main menu for December. Add it to the “too late for shipping” notice bar. And consider a small exit-intent popup on product pages after the cutoff: “Won’t arrive in time? Send a gift card instead, delivered by email in minutes.” That catches people who were about to leave because of the delivery problem.

Step 4: Add digital and instant-delivery products

If your store already sells something that can be delivered digitally, December is the time to put it front and center. If it doesn’t, think about whether you have something that could be.

Setting up a digital product

In the product editor, the Product data panel has two checkboxes next to the product type: Virtual (no shipping needed) and Downloadable (the customer gets a file). Tick both for a downloadable product, upload the file, and set a download limit or expiry if you want one. Store-wide download settings are under WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Downloadable products.

For the full walkthrough, read how to sell digital products on WooCommerce.

Digital gift ideas by store type

The “voucher for something shipped later” idea works well. The buyer gets a nice printable certificate to give on the day, and you ship the actual product in January when couriers are calmer.

Step 5: Make the post-cutoff experience clear

After your last shipping date, the worst thing that can happen is a customer ordering a physical product, assuming it will arrive, and then being disappointed. Protect them and yourself:

• Keep the “too late for Christmas delivery” notice visible on every page.
• Add a short line to the checkout page or shipping method names stating that orders now ship after the holidays.
• Consider a gentle popup on add-to-cart for physical items, reminding people of the new timing and linking to gift cards.
• Update your order confirmation email text so it’s consistent with what the site says.

Honesty here builds trust. A customer who knowingly orders for January delivery is fine. A customer who feels misled is not.

Last-minute checklist

Run through this list before the week of December 16:

• Carrier holiday deadlines checked for every service you offer
• Your cutoff dates set with a processing buffer
• Shipping method names updated with dates
• Notice bar live, with scheduled changes for each cutoff
• Gift cards available, with scheduled delivery and a personal message option
• Digital or voucher products visible in the menu and on the homepage
• Cutoff reminder emails scheduled for your list
• Order confirmation and shipping emails reviewed for accuracy
• A plan for resetting method names and messages in January

Making the last two weeks count

Last-minute shoppers are easy to serve if you give them one clear answer: what they can buy now and when it will arrive. Publish realistic cutoffs, repeat them wherever people make decisions, and have gift cards and digital products ready for everyone who’s run out of time. Then note what worked in a document for next year, because the dates change but the pattern doesn’t.

If you want the cutoff messages to switch on schedule without manual edits, iConvert Promoter can handle the notice bars and popups for you.

Flavius Noja

Flavius is an online marketing specialist with experience in the digital field. He is passionate about everything that means the online world, sports, but also crypto.