e-Commerce seasonality

Every year, it’s an endless repetitive cycle: the winter sales are closely followed by Valentine’s Day, followed by Grandparents Day, then Easter, Mother’s Day then Father’s Day, then sales again (this time summer sales), back to school, Halloween etc.

In addition to these seasonal events, there are major sporting events (such as Football World Cups, Rugby World Cups, or Wimbledon) as well as international days or celebrations.

In addition to these obvious highlights, there are then the cycles which are specific to each business sector (London and New York Fashion Week, winter season for ski equipment, “Festival” season etc.), and events relevant to each company (trade shows, their anniversary, for example).

First of all, you must devise the strategy that you are going to put in place for the event. Decide what your goals are:

• winning new customers,
• retaining your existing customers,
• manage your community,
• sell off your stock,
• increase awareness,

Once your goals are clearly defined, you will be able to prepare your action plan and determine your product selections linked to the event, along with your potential promotional offers to put in place.

Our advice: at the same time, consider analysing your business statistics for the previous periods, or even, for equivalent periods in terms of the sales cycle, to learn from them and adapt your operation.

Do you have any questions?

To increase your online store’s turnover, it is essential to understand which actions relate to you the most. That is, throughout the year, but even more so during specific commercial events.

How do you judge the effectiveness of a peak time of the year? How do you interpret the results of your seasonal marketing actions? How do you choose business introducer levers and what events to invest in? These are the questions that every e-merchant must answer.

For this, KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are your allies: these key performance indicators offer a concrete view of your site’s activity. Monitoring them regularly will allow you to make the right decisions to increase your qualified traffic, sales and margins, and simply manage your event strategy.

Remember to compare the KPIs of each one of your seasonal cycles with the overall KPIs of your online store.

In order to measure the return on investment of your site and your commercial events there are 5 key indicators to follow:

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The conversion rate, or in other words, the share of visitors who become buyers

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The average order value of your customers

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The return rate,that is, the number of orders returned and/or you have had to refund compared to the total number of orders that were made

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The customer acquisition cost, which corresponds to the total amount spent on an event divided by the number of sales made

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The repurchase rate, being the percentage of account customers who have made a new purchase

In practical terms, the sales are sales periods regulated by the Sale of Goods Act 1979:

• Four sales periods of three to six weeks are scheduled for the calendar year. The dates as well as the start and end times are decided by order of the Ministry of the Economy. If modified dates are scheduled for certain border or overseas departments, it is the national dates that apply to online and distance sales.
• Sales allow (e-)merchants to sell off their stocks (held for at least a month) by offering price reductions up to and including resale at a loss – the principle of banning resale at a loss not being not applicable to sale products.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday, major commercial phenomena which started in the United States and Canada, quickly became peak selling event in the UK.

Black Friday is celebrated the day after Thanksgiving, which is the last Friday in November. This commercial event often extends until the following Monday, Cyber Monday. And recently, some chains have gone even further in beginning their promotions on the Monday before Black Friday and transforming the event into “Black Week”!

The Black Friday/Cyber Monday event traditionally marks the start of Christmas sales and often results in very aggressive promotions.

Valentine’s Day, the second commercial event of the year, takes place on 14th February.

Each year, this celebration is debated – romantic for some, or commercial for others – it remains an essential popular celebration, and a key moment in the calendar of e-merchants.

The majority of Valentine’s Day sales are recorded before 14th February. Many merchants start their communications about the event at the end of January. At the same time it is also worth noting that 31% of sales are made on 11th February exactly: a date to keep in mind when defining your specific Valentine’s Day strategy.

Some major sporting events benefit e-Commerce. This is the case, for example, for World and European Football or Rugby Championships, the Olympics, the Tour de France and other tennis competitions.

Why participate in these types of events?

During these events, sites specialising in Sport, and even in Image and Sound, see their sales increase. But they are not the only ones to benefit from it. All business sectors can cash in on sporting events, by focusing on an emotional marketing strategy.

What are the goals?

The common and emotive passion for these events represents an excellent opportunity to arouse interest in your brand and your site, to increase awareness, and to even trigger sales. The idea will be to create an emotional connection between your community and your site.