Consumer trends change over the course of a year as the products shoppers need depend on the season.
Following this repetitive cycle can benefit sellers on online marketplaces by enabling them to anticipate seasonal changes and plan their sales strategies accordingly.
Although seasonality dictates which products shoppers search for at different times of year, attracting them to your store requires more than simply stocking up on in-demand products.
Besides the weather, a broad range of cultural, religious, and lifestyle factors affects the purchasing decisions of online shoppers during each season.
Hence, understanding the online marketplace’s cultural nuances can help businesses prepare their strategies for regional sales events and maximize their profits in each quarter.
Let’s explore how seasonality affects ecommerce sales throughout the year and see how you can use it to scale your business on local and international online marketplaces.
Key takeaways
- eCommerce businesses generate 30% to 40% of their annual revenue in Q4
- The average cost of customer acquisition is 20% lower during the summer than during the peak holiday sales season.
- Shopper activity on online marketplaces can increase by up to 22% on bad weather days.
- Average return rates worldwide increase to 18% in January, while certain product categories, such as luxury apparel, see return rates spike to 40% to 50% during this month.
- According to Salesforce’s Shopping Index, the average order value historically drops by 10% to 15% below the baseline in Q1.
What is seasonality in ecommerce?
Seasonality refers to recurring fluctuations in product demand during different parts of the year. These fluctuations are caused by different factors, such as the weather conditions, religious and state holidays, changes in consumer behavior, or the start of the school year.
Consequently, the ecommerce market goes through periods of high and low activity, often referred to as high and low seasons. The most common example of high season is the Q4 shopping surge, highlighted by Black Week and winter holiday sales.
On the other hand, January and July are low season months during which the shopping activity on online marketplaces stagnates or decreases.
Seasonal fluctuations in product demand also affect search volume for specific keywords, which, in turn, affects the visibility of the items you feature in your online store.
According to the recently published eBay Marketing Trends Calendar, the purchase rates for swimwear on the platform increase by 83% in May and June, making ‘swimwear’ a valuable keyword for merchants offering this product during these months.
Still, it’s important to note that the extent to which seasonality affects product sales varies by category, because its impact on items from the Health & Beauty category isn’t as significant as it is on the items from the Fashion and Apparel category.
Opportunities and challenges of seasonal sales trends
Creating your own ecommerce calendar provides you with an overview of the most significant global and regional seasonal events relevant to your business.
Calendars simplify planning your sales and marketing strategies for domestic or international markets by centering them around specific dates.
For instance, if your online store sells coffee cups, launching ad campaigns and offering seasonal promotions for World Coffee Day weeks before October 1 can help capitalize on this seasonal opportunity.
Aside from giving sellers on online marketplaces a chance to increase their sales, seasonality can also help them understand customer behavior better, build brand loyalty, and collect data they can use to tweak their strategies.
Still, seasonal traffic and shopping spikes pose a range of challenges for sellers, requiring them to anticipate them to avoid losing sales.
Stock shortages, higher return rates, and increased customer inquiries are among the most common issues sellers encounter during seasonal shopping spikes.
Anticipating these challenges and planning effective ways of managing them improves your chances of maximizing customer satisfaction and making the most of seasonal opportunities.
Understanding ecommerce seasonality within your niche
Even though it can have a significant impact on product sales, seasonality doesn’t affect all product categories equally.
For instance, the demand for books, art supplies, and school supplies increases during the back-to-school season and decreases during the holiday season.
On the other hand, demand for items in the Electronics and Fashion categories typically surges during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Morever consumer electronics are the most common choice for last-minute Christmas purchases.
Here’s a quick overview of the steps sellers can take to prepare for seasonal changes in product demand in their niche:
- Create a checklist of the most important sales events in their niche for each quarter.
- Set specific goals for each sales event (acquire new customers, sell off old inventory, etc.)
- Develop a detailed action plan on how to achieve those goals.
It’s paramount to monitor the key performance indicators during the sales events you target and use that data to tweak your approach and improve your efficiency going forward.
Preparing your online business for seasonal shopping spikes
Entering a high season unprepared can create a myriad of problems, since running out of stock on your best-selling products or struggling to deliver product on time can undermine the buyer’s trust in your business and cause them to purchase the same product from your competitors.
To face these challenges head-on and successfully navigate seasonal shifts in product demand, sellers should develop and implement strategies that guide their promotional, SEO, and sales efforts.
Let’s go through the tips that will help you prepare your online store for seasonal shopping spikes and stay a step ahead of the competition.
Planning the quarterly sales strategy
Setting your goals for each quarter early in the year will help you account for seasonal changes in product demand and avoid potential hurdles that can limit your sales.
Pinpoint the key sales events in each month, like St. Valentine’s Day, Women’s Day, or Mother’s Day, and use them to create a timeline for your advertising campaigns and all other promotional activities.
Additionally, you can use different pricing strategies to attract new customers, maximize profits, or increase average order value during peak sales periods for specific products.
Identifying in-demand products in your niche
Researching which products are in demand during the specific online sales events you’d like to target ensures that you have enough stock to prevent potential shortages.
Use historical sales data for each event to determine whether your current stock levels are sufficient to meet the increased demand.
Additionally, you can use data to identify new products you can add to your inventory that would attract shoppers’ attention and drive sales during the seasonal sales events you’re targeting in each quarter.
It’s important to note that focusing on the depth of your inventory and on discovering products that are popular during different seasons within your niche often produces better results than creating a generalist inventory that includes popular seasonal products across a range of categories.
Refreshing product listings
The visibility of your products on online marketplaces depends on how well you optimize listings for search engines.
That’s why auditing your current listings with low conversion rates over the past few months can help you identify why they underperformed.
Incorrectly positioned keywords, insufficient information about a product, or low-quality visual content are some of the reasons listings don’t rank highly in search results.
Hence, adding seasonal keywords that match search intent, uploading product photos that accurately depict the item’s condition, and updating the product attributes section in each listing can improve their search engine performance and capitalize on seasonal shopping spikes.
Running promotional campaigns
Relying exclusively on organic traffic during different seasonal sales events can yield underwhelming results because securing the top spot in the search results for all listings can be difficult.
That’s why sellers on online marketplaces use CPC and CPS campaigns to get the top slot in the search results and drive traffic to their stores.
Still, you must launch campaigns weeks ahead of the specific seasonal sales event, like Women’s Day or Halloween, to maximize their efficiency.
Moreover, launching seasonal sales, store-wide discounts, and bundle offers can help you leverage seasonality to your advantage.
Monitoring the key performance indicators
Making data-driven decisions is paramount for your business’s success on online marketplaces.
So, keeping track of the key performance indicators during seasonal sales events offers you insight into your strategy’s effectiveness and shows you how to improve it.
Your listings’ conversion rates, your store’s overall traffic, or the average order value are among the metrics you should monitor to evaluate whether your strategy for the seasonal sales events is producing the desired results.
Furthermore, monitoring cart abandonment and return rates during peak sales periods will provide you with valuable insights you can use to make the most of seasonal opportunities.
Using seasonality to maximize your year-round sales
Understanding the predictable patterns that influence product sales enables online sellers to prepare for periods of increased shopping activity and navigate low-season months.
Still, to increase your store’s turnover and benefit from seasonality, you must identify the actions and plan the steps you need to take to meet the seasonal consumer demand for specific products, ensure these items are discoverable by shoppers, and provide a seamless shopping experience.
Consequently, planning and preparation are essential to capitalize on seasonal shopping spikes and overcome challenges you may face throughout the year.
Do you need assistance running seasonal advertising campaigns or optimizing your listings for eBay’s search engine? Webinterpret can help. Schedule a call to learn more about our solutions for domestic and international eBay marketplaces.
About Webinterpret
Webinterpret supports merchants selling on eBay.
Our AI-based solutions enable more effective selling through automated listing localisation, optimisation, advertising, and returns, and ensure all products placed on EU markets are GPSR-compliant.
