eBay is a highly saturated digital marketplace with over 1,7 billion active listings.
The figure vividly illustrates how hard it is to reach your brand’s target audience on any eBay marketplace. This task becomes even more daunting during annual online sales events when millions of sellers compete for each customer.
So, to capitalize on seasonal sales opportunities on eBay, sellers must have a comprehensive strategy that allows them to plan their promotional activities, restock their inventory, and optimize product listings on time.
Still, ecommerce businesses must choose the opportunities that best align with their products and values to avoid spreading their resources too thin and maximize the effectiveness of their advertising activities.
Let’s take a closer look at what eBay sellers need to do to make the most out of seasonal sales opportunities on international marketplaces.
Download our free 2025 ecommerce calendar to stay ahead of the competition on eBay’s international marketplaces.
Seasonal shopping trends at a glance
Sales on online marketplaces oscillate throughout the year, with peaks and valleys in each season. Traditionally, they skyrocket towards the end of the year, in November and December, before returning to normal in January and February.
Ecommerce seasonality refers to patterns in online shopping behavior, such as spikes in demand for certain products and other valuable metrics associated with specific seasons and holidays during those seasons.
Online retailers should monitor these patterns to prepare for the spike in traffic during the Easter, summer vacation, or back-to-school season.
Besides major online sales events, each eBay marketplace provides its own sales opportunities, such as 4th of July celebrations in the US or ‘Les Soldes’ in France.
Planning and preparation for online sales events starts with understanding the eBay marketplace.
Assuming that shoppers on eBay’s US and German marketplaces have the same preferences can trick sellers into thinking they can utilize the same marketing strategies for these marketplaces to attract buyers during peak seasons.
However, this can be a costly mistake because cultural differences and various other factors affect the consumers’ purchasing decisions. In other words, top-selling products on eBay’s US market won’t necessarily sell well on German or French markets.
Holidays, shopping events, and cultural differences aren’t the only factors affecting seasonal shopping spikes. Weather can also drive sales of products from specific categories, such as apparel or gardening supplies.
Using data to drive sales in your eBay store
eBay’s data, released a few years ago, shows that school supply sales grew by 125% at the start of the school year.
The data shows how the seasonal demand for products children need for school sharply increases in July, August, and early September and decreases soon after.
This example shows how valuable data is for understanding seasonality and preparing for increased demand for certain products.
Monitoring the store’s key performance metrics and historical data provides sellers with a wealth of information they can use to determine the right time to launch a marketing campaign, simplify inventory management, or introduce new products.
Your store’s historical data can give you the insight you need to predict consumer behavior and understand which products they’re likely to search for during different parts of the year.
Consequently, data is the foundation upon which you should build your entire market strategy and plan for seasonal sales events.
Aside from analyzing your sales history or traffic during different times of the year, you should also research your competitors to find out which products they sell the most during seasonal sales events, how they price their products or identify in-demand product categories.
Using external analytics tools can give you access to more robust datasets that make predicting consumer behavior and anticipating stock shortages easier.
Maximizing sales potential with SEO strategy and ad campaigns
The performance of an eBay store largely depends on the eBay search engine’s ranking factors. Properly optimized product listings have a higher chance of appearing at the top of search result queries, which increases their visibility and the likelihood that shoppers will purchase the item.
Cassini considers various factors, from the amount of time a seller spends on eBay and how quickly they reply to customer inquiries to conversion rates when suggesting the listings consumers see while searching for a particular item.
Sellers who invest effort in search engine optimization throughout the year are more likely to capitalize on seasonal sales opportunities because Cassini is more likely to place their offers at the top of search results.
Search engine strategy involves defining your approach to keyword research, content creation, customer service, pricing, and other aspects of your operations on eBay’s marketplaces.
Finding the most searched keywords on eBay in the weeks before Valentine’s Day or Halloween can make your marketing strategy more effective and improve a product listing’s conversion rate.
Additionally, you can rely on eBay’s Priority and General campaign strategy to promote your listings and attract more shoppers to your store during seasonal shopping events.
The effectiveness of seasonal campaigns depends on the store’s overall search engine performance, and it can be hampered by relatively high ACoS spending.
Planning for seasonal opportunities
eBay sellers must be able to adjust to consumer demands to continue operating at a profit throughout the year.
The most searched products on eBay change with seasons, so Christmas decorations or scarves are among the most popular products during the holiday and winter season, while patio furniture or outdoor recreation items are in demand during the spring and summer.
Including items from in-demand product categories in Women’s Day or Easter promotional offers can help sellers generate more revenue.
Most importantly, the products you include in promotional offers designed for specific seasonal sales events should align with your brand guidelines and the products you usually feature in your eBay store.
Choose the seasonal opportunities best suited for your brand throughout the year and plan the marketing efforts and all other activities around those events.
For instance, if your store offers pet supplies, you can benefit from creating promotional campaigns for ‘Love Your Pet Day’ or ‘International Dog Day.’
Extending your reach with mobile-friendly listings
More than half of items sold on eBay are viewed from a mobile device before the purchase. In addition, millions of shoppers worldwide use eBay’s mobile app to search for products they want to buy.
So, it’s easy to see why creating mobile-friendly listings is paramount for sellers who want to capitalize on seasonal opportunities.
Let’s see what you need to do to make a product listing mobile-friendly.
Pay attention to font size and text formatting
eBay doesn’t recommend using more than two font sizes in the product description section. The recommended font size is between 12 and 16 pixels, so ideally, you should use the default 16-pixel size.
The combination of a white background and black font color produces the best results as it doesn’t distract the viewer from the description’s contents. Moreover, breaking the text into bullet points makes it easier for users to find important information.
Upload product images the right way
Use eBay photo uploader to add pictures to product listings. Including pictures in the Item Description section can affect the page’s formatting on a mobile device, making it more difficult for a potential buyer to view the listing on their Smartphone.
The resolution of the images should be 1600x500px or higher, but keep in mind that the platform’s photo uploader’s size limit is 7MB per picture.
Optimize the HTML code
Mobile-friendly descriptions are only available for select eBay marketplaces, like the US, Germany, or France. Product descriptions shouldn’t be longer than 800 characters.
Sellers who want to ensure their descriptions will be displayed fully on mobile devices can add DIV and SPAN tags to the Description field in the Trading API.
Make sure each product listing contains appropriate Item Specifics
Assigning the product category and adding relevant information, such as the product’s size, color, or manufacturer, to a listing ensures that shoppers can discover that listing when searching for an item using different filters.
Adding product identifiers to this section of the product listing is also advisable.
Fill out the Sell Your Item form correctly
The information regarding the available payment methods, shipping options, and returns should be included in the Sell Your Item form. To ensure your product listings are mobile-friendly, avoid adding this information to the product description section.
Seasonality as a tool for building brand loyalty
Events like Valentine’s Day, Cyber Monday, or Halloween are an opportunity for eBay sellers to attract new customers to their stores.
They’re also a chance to establish lasting relationships with shoppers and expand a brand’s customer base. Seasonal discounts and increased visibility of product listings due to paid advertising campaigns make it easier for buyers to discover your eBay store.
Getting a product at a reduced price, with timely delivery and excellent product quality, can prompt consumers to return to your store and purchase more items from the same store throughout the year.
Moreover, creating a loyalty program can help extend the sales momentum of the peak season into long-term growth and turn one-time shoppers into loyal customers.
Gamification and personalization are some of the most effective strategies eBay sellers can utilize to create a unique shopping experience for their customers and prompt them to shop in their stores after the seasonal shopping event ends.
Using seasonal shopping trends to build your brand on eBay
The success of an eBay store often hinges on the seller’s ability to predict market fluctuations and unexpected seasonal trends.
Planning for seasonal sales opportunities months in advance helps weather the market’s seasonal fluctuations.
Aside from temporarily boosting revenue, seasonal sales events offer a chance to establish lasting relationships with customers, create high-converting product listings, and improve seller ranking.
However, making the most out of seasonal ecommerce sales events requires considerable time and resources. Webinterpret’s solution for eBay sellers can make it easier to capitalize on peak seasons.
About Webinterpret
Webinterpret supports merchants selling on eBay.
Our AI-based solutions enable more effective selling through automated listing localization, advertising, and returns and ensure all products placed on EU markets are GPSR-compliant.
By giving your international customers a full, end-to-end local shopping experience, Webinterpret improves your conversion and helps establish your business globally.
