Sales peak. Prepare your eCommerce for the best season of the year

September's back-to-school season, November's Black Week, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, December's Santa Claus and Christmas - the end-of-year period is undoubtedly positively associated with both stationary and electronic shops. It is at this time that consumers are geared to make more purchases than they do on a daily basis, which is why this period is often described by the phrase "sales peak." You can't fail to take advantage of such a moment - and in order to do so, it is necessary to prepare properly. What is summed up in the word "preparation" and in what areas is it necessary?

Seasonality of sales - what does this phenomenon consist of?

Regular sales of seasonal collections in the fashion industry, less willingness to spend time in front of the laptop screen on warm and sunny days, preparing for the summer season by buying dresses and swimwear, and the winter season with skis, jackets or sleds - all these are examples that confirm the existence of the phenomenon of seasonality in sales (both stationary and online). What does this phenomenon consist of?

Seasonality can depend on numerous factors - this can include the time of year (including holidays and occasions), the weather or the specifics of the industry (in terms of product offerings), and sometimes even the day of the week (according to BlueMedia data, we are most likely to buy on Monday and least likely to buy on Saturday). Every store should therefore adequately prepare for both the prosperous period and the so-called dead time (with the help of, for example, advertising campaigns, expanding the offer, working on other store activities).

Sales peak - why do eCommerce owners wait for it?

What is important is that for many industries the "prosperous period" and the "dead period" may fall on a different month of the year. The fact is, however, that for most companies, the last quarter is the best in terms of sales performance. For this reason, it is often referred to as a sales peak.

You certainly want the last quarter to bring the best possible results for your online store. In order to achieve such a goal, you need to prepare properly for the upcoming peak. So what should you do, and (perhaps more importantly) what should you definitely not do regarding the best sales period of the year?

Preparation with a capital "P" - we start with observation and analysis

Have you been running your store for a long time and every year you prepare interesting promotions and bargains? If so, you already have some experience that you can use to be better prepared year after year for the busiest time of the year. Is this year's fall and winter season your first peak sales season ever? Fortunately, you can learn from others' mistakes. However, regardless of your situation, proper analysis is a must - learning lessons is fundamental in ensuring stable business development.

What not to do?

First of all, don't ignore the mistakes you've made in the past. The worst thing you can do is to give up on a thorough analysis, demonstrating a "somehow it will be" approach - and you certainly wouldn't want the code to fail to work again, the page to fail to reload due to server overload, and the customer to fail to receive the order on time again.

So what to do?

Recall last year's sales peak, in particular:

• what products you offered to customers at the time,
• what products were most popular with your customers,
• what promotions you have prepared,
• what was the final number of orders placed (after subtracting returns and complaints),
• what financial results were translated into last year's activities.

Analyze this data and then draw conclusions from it.

You may also be tempted to analyze current data from the eCommerce market. You will come across a number of reports and studies on the Internet, which clearly show what the expectations of eCommerce users are in terms of, among other things, the choice of payment and delivery methods, the appearance of the shopping cart and checkout, the speed of page loading and other UX/UI elements. It's worth analyzing them and comparing them with the capabilities provided by your eCommerce site.

Preparation requires a strategy - we take the trouble to design it

Do you deal with creating sales strategies on a daily basis? If so, you know very well that as part of getting ready for the peak you can't skip it either. Acting according to a plan, which will be developed on the basis of the company's previously collected data and conducted market observations, increases the likelihood of achieving the expected results.

What not to do?

Simply put - don't act in the dark. And don't start too late.

So what to do?

Start by thinking carefully about what kind of promotion or unique offer might appeal to your audience. The possibilities for creating peak sales solutions are endless: from freebies for orders, to limited-time discounts or vouchers, to gift sets. In this regard, it is best to follow your competitors' activities, use price comparison sites and visit popular marketplaces, comparing the attractiveness of solutions offered by others.

Pre-peak promotion preparation - we develop a plan for marketing activities

A marketing campaign created at the last minute? That never ends well - especially in a situation where you've analyzed all your sales results and prepared a great offer for the year-end period. After all, you care first and foremost about getting as many people as possible to learn about promotions and then convert in your store.

What not to do?

Don't ignore the importance of marketing, hoping that your offerings will "somehow be found out" by customers. Continuous work on building recognition (whether on social media, through paid campaigns on Google or activities focused on strengthening your site's position) is necessary to succeed in reaching a target audience that will be interested in your offer and convert. In the peak, its importance only grows.

So what to do?

Act in all places where your customer is - according to the omnichannel approach. Ensure that information about the offer appears not only on the website, but also in search, social media or email. You can also use, for example, push notifications or pop-ups on the website to increase awareness.

It is also extremely important to take care of remarketing. The peak period is an ideal time to target new audiences, but it requires thoughtful selection of targeted pages and proper audience segmentation.

Preparation includes more than just people - we show concern for IT infrastructure

Server performance, how long your store takes to load, how your promo codes work are just some of the elements that can cause a sales peacetime to give you weaker results than you anticipated. In IT, everything should work as expected - but sometimes, despite our efforts, this is not the case at all. Errors can appear out of nowhere, and various types of testing, optimizations and proper analysis (such as page load speed performed with Google Page Speed) can protect you from them.

What not to do?

Don't act independently of your server infrastructure delivery. Proper communication in the run-up to and during the sales peak is the best way to minimize the number of errors that can occur.

What's more, don't start work on optimizing infrastructure performance shortly before the most important days or peacetime periods. By doing so, you may lead to the appearance of new bugs, which will have to be quickly eliminated. By making changes a few days before Black Friday or Santa Claus, you may complicate everything instead of improving the store's performance.

So what to do?

Show concern for your IT infrastructure, especially in terms of server performance. On certain days or periods of several days, your store can easily experience an overload due to traffic for which it was not prepared. To find out what your needs are in this regard, it's a good idea to conduct load and performance tests and make a decision based on them on whether to upgrade or replace your server with a new one. These two characteristics - load and performance - are essential for estimating the resources needed to handle the assumed traffic.

How else can you improve your store's performance before the peak? You can do it, for example, by optimizing the site's source code, removing unnecessary plug-ins and scripts, or compressing graphics, which should translate into faster loading and page performance.

Preparing the best shopping experience - we take care of the UX

We know very well that you realize exactly how important the shopping experience of a customer visiting your online store is. We're well aware that you're constantly working on the UX of your eCommerce (not just during the holidays). But did you know that as you get ready for peak sales, you should strengthen your efforts in this area - because especially during the holidays they become important?

What not to do?

Don't underestimate the importance of "small" elements in your online store. No promotion, even the biggest and most interesting one for the best product on offer, will work if the user has to wait 10 seconds for the page to load, won't find his way around the store because of an unintuitive menu or won't make a purchase because of too many fields in the purchase form.

So what to do?

A good solution is to outsource a UX/UI audit to a company that specializes in such activities. This is the best way to get, in a short time, a list of elements to improve in your online store, which can help minimize the number of abandoned shopping carts, so important at the time of the sales peak. In this regard, it is also worth remembering to analyze both the desktop and mobile versions, since every year an increasing percentage of eCommerce users are choosing to purchase from their cell phones.

What's more, you'll find plenty of easily accessible guides on the Internet that list UX mistakes it's a good idea to beware of (we covered this topic in this one of our blog articles). An expert or stand-alone usability analysis and the steps taken based on it will help you see the benefits in the short term, especially in the peak.

Preparation requires facilities - we plan logistics

A customer who buys goods on Black Friday, 3 days before Santa Claus, or 2 weeks before Christmas, counts on receiving the ordered products in the shortest possible time - and yet quite often encounters a situation of long waits for delivery. Where do the delays come from?

• for lack of sufficient staff to carry out the contract,
• from not checking inventory before the peak,
• from mistakes in the system (such as miscommunication between the warehouse and the sales platform).

These are just examples of three of the most common situations that can happen, including in your eCommerce business. Surely you would like to avoid them, right?

What not to do?

Don't forget that logistics is a very important area during Black Friday, Santa Claus or the Christmas season. It seems to many that once they have brought the customer to the site through marketing efforts and encouraged them to make a conversion, then all tasks are over. In fact, however, if a customer doesn't get an ordered product from you on time for various reasons, he or she will certainly not come back to you.

So what to do?

You know the saying "measure strength by intentions"? In this case, you should measure the needed intentions in response to the anticipated movement. How to predict the traffic? Once again - referring to the analytics of recent years. We can assume similar (minimally higher or lower) increases, and it's always better to prepare for higher increases than to fight the problem of stock shortages. But it's not just products you need to keep in mind - sufficient packing materials or hands to fulfill the order (prepare, pack, ship and deliver in a timely manner) are also important.

What's more, it's also a good idea to always have a contingency plan - a strategy for what you'll do if, despite everything, you can't avoid the aforementioned problems. Maybe you can pull goods from another warehouse? Maybe you have a contact for people who will "rescue" you in coming to work on a peak day? Or maybe you can create a message to soothe the mood of waiting customers? Remember, prudent - always insured, especially in a peak.

Get the maximum benefit from the sales peak

The fourth quarter of the year has only just begun, but given that the best sales opportunities on the calendar are getting closer and closer, there is no need to put off preparing for the increased traffic in the online store a moment longer. As you already know, preparation encompasses many areas of the company's operations and requires the involvement of employees from several departments so that the adopted sales strategy can be properly implemented.

Our advice before the sales peak is encapsulated in a few actions you need to take: analyze and observe, think strategically, plan your marketing activities prudently, check your infrastructure and anticipate your logistical needs. Then the busiest period of the year won't scare you - even quite the opposite!