When people hear the word summer, they usually think of long, lazy days, road trips and other summer break activities that will help them enjoy the season. Unfortunately, retailers don’t get to enjoy the hot season like customers. The season means a dip in revenues for many e-commerce stores.
Customers are out hitting the beach or enjoying their vacations in a different city, state or country. This means that they will be spending less time surfing your e-commerce website and making fewer purchases overall. If they wanted to go shopping while on vacation, they can do so at brick-and-mortar shops in their destination.
If you want to keep your bottom line hot this summer, you’ll need to produce revenue during the seasonal lull. This usually involves getting creative in how you engage prospective and current customers.
Here are best practices to keep your sales sizzling and e-commerce store thriving throughout the summer:
1. Make Your Website Seasonal
E-commerce brands that update their website to match the different holidays and seasons more readily entice shoppers to engage than sites that stick to the same template all year round. You can use different product rotations, promotions, videos, images and design elements to display a new website look for summer. If you’re not sure how to go about this, turn to a reliable website development and SEO company for assistance.
You also have the option of just adding seasonally based pop-ups or banners if you’re reluctant about overhauling your website completely. Just concentrate on producing compelling calls to action and engagement with whatever you do.
2. Implement a Chatbot Strategy
Chatbots are useful to e-commerce websites year-round. During the summer months, however, they can prove to be incredibly valuable. Having a robust chatbot strategy will allow your business to answer a majority of your common customer service inquiries. So go ahead and optimize your chatbots this summer to help bump up your e-commerce sales.
3. Make Your Own Holiday
Create a holiday that’s relevant to services, products, target market and how your audience uses your products or services. Think about the sort of discounts that you can provide to figure out if you celebrate for a full week, a weekend or a day.
Come up with actual or digital signage that’s compelling and persuasive enough to encourage immediate action from e-commerce site visitors. On top of signage, produce other marketing materials that you can plaster on your website, highlight in your e-mail campaigns, feature in your blog posts and push out via social media platforms.
4. Develop Product Collections
Produce and release specific collections to help customers find what they’re looking for and encourage them to buy more from your e-store. Many of today’s busy consumers have a hard time making decisions, especially when they’re shopping for someone other than themselves.
So, put together a seasonal collection of products or related items. Alternatively, you could come up with buying guides that offer multiple collection options that website visitors might not have considered buying together.
Display these collections in a special section on your website, as well as in your newsletter. Use compelling calls to action to persuade people to check these collections out more closely. Use your social networking accounts, such as Facebook and Twitter, to push out bits of information about your product collections.
You could also consider providing channel-specific pricing or discounts. This will help you better understand the channels that are driving the most traffic to your e-commerce business.
Shoppers are more likely to complete a purchase if they can make decisions easily. Think about pairing up with other businesses if your services or products complement one another. Here’s an example to get you started: “Buy one bag of premium roasted coffee from Business XYZ and receive a generous 30 percent discount on a coffee maker from Business ABC.”
5. Hold a Summer Sale
Summer is an excellent season to move additional inventory. Use clearance and other sales to clear out surplus items that are in your stock. Consumers will surely get excited about finding wonderful deals and saving money. What’s more, you’ll benefit from freeing up inventory space for new products or more of your quick-selling and popular products.
Don’t forget to feature weekend or specific day promotions, as well as pop-up sales. Remember that customers check out online stores at the start of the week. So, consider hosting “Monday Deals” or something similar to this offer. When you’re doing this, make sure that you think about your discounting strategy.
Don’t let the summer slump affect your e-commerce store. Keep your sales up by following these great suggestions.
