Using the Seasons to Create e-Commerce Success

Martina Sanchez

Martina Sanchez

The seasons are some of the biggest factors that control consumer behavior. Over the summer people spend more time outdoors and traveling rather than browsing online. During which e-commerce sales can drop by as much as 30 percent. It doesn’t have to be that way though. You can use the change of seasons to your advantage if you know how to identify the niches they create.
Understanding Your Market and Your Business
You should always begin by researching and understanding your market. When do you get the most conversions? Which products are the most popular? What are other similar businesses doing during the slow seasons?
These and other questions can help you realize how to adapt your business for each season and thus enhance your chances at improving your conversion rates. It will depend on what kind of products you are selling as well. For instance, if you sell outdoor equipment, you can easily switch from season to season but if you are focused on products that fit just one season – say, surfing boards – you will have to get a lot more creative with your adaptation.
Adapt to the Season
Adapting to the season is vital to draw in customers and get them to spend. If you are always focused on Christmas gifts you can guarantee that November and December will boom but traffic will dramatically drop off as Christmas comes and goes. Adapting to the season means updating your website frequently to keep it fresh and relevant. Shoppers are more likely to buy from a website where the design matches the season/holiday. You can do this through imagery, promotions and product placement. You don’t need to do a complete overhaul of the whole website either, you can do it through pop-ups, banners and email marketing.
“Updating your product descriptions to make them up to date and relevant to the season is going to help customers decide on their purchases. The clearer the descriptions are, the more people are going to be interested. Again, look into SEO, the wording used to describe your products should help customers to find it even when they’re not on your site,” adds Jack Stevenson, content marketer at Draftbeyond and Writinity.
There are many ways you can use the seasons to your advantage. You can have a St Patrick’s day sale, adapt your campaigns to Easter or Mother’s day or offer special Halloween themed products. For instance, Windex created a prank ad for April Fool’s day, claiming that they have added actual sparkles to their window cleaning products. This strategy combined the holiday with a humorous attitude to provide the customer with a fresh marketing tactic.
Summer is not as holiday heavy as the rest of the year, but there are a few – Labor Day, Independence Day and so on. But there is the summer weather, barbecuing, vacations, fun in the sun etc. Adapt your marketing strategy by finding a way to make your products exciting for the summer fun.

shopping seasons

Autumn is one of the most beautiful seasons coupled with some of the biggest holidays – Halloween and Thanksgiving. While you can recognize these holidays easily, there are other events like starting school again or fall activities like pumpkin carving, apple picking, and haunted houses that can be tied into your business strategy.
Many brands have used all of these heavily – Hinge, a dating app, for example, asked their members what they were grateful for and capitalized on the sentimentality of the holidays as well as people’s desires to spend their holidays with someone special.
Finally, Winter is the easiest time to sell something – Christmas is the biggest holiday, especially for selling and spending.
Create Seasonal Collections
One way to avoid having to update your website too many times per year is to create seasonal collections. Use the data provided through your traffic metrics to decide what customers tend to be looking for at each time of year. You can sort the products into a collection to make it easier for customers to find what they’re looking for and other items they may be interested in. This doesn’t have to just be limited to Spring, Summer, Autumn, or Winter, but can be tailored depending on your business. Some other ideas would be collections for birthdays, for him, for her, congratulations, and so on. Use your imagination and create groups of products which your customers are going to enjoy browsing.
Timing is Everything
As with all marketing, timing is everything. As well as keeping an eye on the seasons and holidays which affect consumer behavior, we also need to look at the common topics and upcoming events. It’s worth keeping up to date on any upcoming events which may affect the customers you cater for. If it’s nearly time for back to school, that’s a great time to run a promotion for your kid’s shoes. If it’s Christmas party time start advertising your evening wear. If it’s time for the next season of a big show start pushing your popcorn.
“Common topics are also going to affect what’s trending. Recycling and environmentally sourced products have massively gone up in terms of consumers wants. If this is something you can provide, make use of it. Use the terms to your advantage, tie it into your marketing campaigns to make sure your customers know that you’re on the same page as them,” says Gerald Martin, a business writer at Last Minute Writing and Researchpapersuk.
SEO, Seasons and Sales
All three are linked together. Once you take the time to analyze your consumers’ behavior it will become easier to predict the changes in your website traffic in the future. Keeping in sync with the seasons will keep customers coming back all through the year. Understanding SEO is going to make a huge difference, make sure that your page is up there when people are searching for your products and you’ll thrive no matter what the weather. Adapt your keywords to the season as well – add a few key phrases that will help you rank better on holidays. Being at the top of the search engine rankings will help you improve your sales during holidays.
Martina Sanchez is an entrepreneur and content marketing specialist at Lucky Assignments and Gum Essays. She is absorbed with article writing and is a constant contributor to her blog where she touches such topics as digital marketing, SEO tips, and tricks etc.

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