Historically, the summer months are not kind to online retailers. Shoppers are busy over the summer with vacations and travel and additional expenses like summer camps. How can you prepare for the summer e-commerce sales slump? Consider the tips below regarding things that you can do now to avoid the slower summer sales months.
While e-commerce companies have experienced dramatic growth during the pandemic, impacting the way people prefer to shop, online vendors are still experiencing the shift from one season to the next. During the summer, sales can traditionally drop by 30% compared to the traditional holiday season sales. It’s an ideal time to take stock of your website, your marketing campaigns, and the messages you’re sending out to your target audiences. This season of slower sales offers so many opportunities to check in with your analytics team and get a clear picture of what’s working for you and what elements need improvement.
Here are a few things you can do to plan for the next busy season, in the way of attracting shoppers to your website and converting them into customers.
Delve Into Your Google Analytics Data
Equipped with historical sales and marketing data from previous summers, you can take a deep dive into some of your key stats, such as your bounce rate to find out why shoppers are leaving your site without purchasing. Take a look at your landing pages, as well, to determine where more or better images, content, and even additional products may be warranted. Unpacking an Exit Page report can offer insights into problematic areas or keys into issues that frustrate visitors into abandoning your site altogether. Once you’ve made some adjustments to your website to increase traffic and improve conversion rates, you could attract more visitors to your site by changing it up to meet the season.
Optimize For Summer Sales
Create a summer feel on your website using graphics and videos, or real-life videos of beach scenes, outdoor fun, cookouts, or lying under an umbrella on the beach – whatever makes the most sense for your brand. Connect this seasonal look to a summer sales theme. Adding your sizzling summer-themed landing page to your site will attract visitors and new customers to your site. While your budget may not include an in-house website developer, there are some tools on the market to help you make these customizations and give your site a design and functionality upgrade without busting your budget.
What’s Up For Summer Sales
While sales are on the decline in many areas during the summer months, clothing sales are up, due to consumers wanting new outfits for their vacation and travel plans. Also, people heading to the shore or the pool to relax are likely to purchase entertainment such as books, movies, games, and other accessories. Other ways to increase summer sales include:
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- Bundling entertainment products with beach towels, sunglasses, sunhats, and other summery items to offer opportunities for promotional sales or summer fun bundles.
- Feature a contest on your site to attract new customers and to stay connected with your base customers. Everybody loves to win free stuff!
- Host clearance sales events for items that you need to move out!
- Discount winter items for summer sales, for those who like to get a head start on their holiday shopping bargains.
Mobile Rules
An important thing to remember about summer sales focuses on optimizing your site for mobile devices as people are on the move, using their tablets and phones to browse your e-commerce sites. Additionally, consumers relaxing on the beach or by the pool will be more apt to purchase products on sites that offer easy checkout and free shipping. According to a Statista study, nearly 63% of customers will leave their carts when they are asked to pay for shipping.
Increase Social Media Activity And Networking
Increasing your social media presence during the summer is a great time to attract new customers and reconnect with your customer base through targeted social media campaigns. Employing automated e-blasts can reach your email customers while they’re vacationing, striking the right note on a deal they’ve been looking for, or solving a current issue they were experiencing just before the summer vacation break. You can take advantage of your audience’s tendency to upload pictures to social media, while on vacation, by sharing Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat posts that keep your brand top of mind or sponsoring contests through your social platforms.
There’s No Time Like A Slow Time To Introduce New Sales And Marketing Tools
To keep your sales and marketing teams motivated during the summer, trying out new technology and integrations gives your staff time to discover how these tools can improve sales and offer many new insights into leads, conversion rates, ROI, and other KPIs. With your sales strategy for the summer lined up, and your website optimized for customer experience, especially on mobile devices, your next step could include making the most of email marketing by integrating those efforts with data from your CMS. Use the summer to network, reconnect, and engage with your customer base, even dormant customers on a beach, on a boat, or by the pool.
Create personalized email blasts based on browsing and purchase history. Target your email blasts based on the items you are promoting and customer interest to generate increased conversions. The summer is an ideal time to test these strategies out and perfect them.
Summer, traditionally, is a time for increased travel and outdoor activities, with less time devoted to online shopping. Planning for a summer of promotional sales, offering winter products for deep discounts, and hosting clearance sales have proven to help increase sales during the summer slump. However, summer can be a time to step back, reassess, make some adjustments, rearrange and reinvent parts of your website, create a summer landing page and introduce some new tools to invigorate strategies to stay connected to and reconnect to your customer base through highly targeted email and social media ads.
Phase V Fulfillment Company is ready to partner with your business to improve your fulfillment operations in the summer and all year long. Scaled for your sales cycles, we work with you to help you save money and time as you grow. Here’s to an insightful productive summer for your e-commerce business!
