Seasonality can be defined by all seasonal factors that affect sales and performance of not just online businesses only but the whole economy in general as well.
There are times in the year when sales increase and decrease for some, probably known, reasons. In this article, we don’t discuss the nature of seasonality nor its causes, but how to make use of seasonality to boost your online store strategically.
Seasonal campaigns amid the “new normal”
Seasonal factors like the weather and holidays are playing an important role in running online stores these days. But it would be remiss of us to not mention a serious thing, which is affecting the socio-economic situation of the world now – the COVID-19 pandemic.
It has proved itself to be a major threat to all societies and economies in many ways. It also redefined the purchasing habits of consumers and gave a strong drive to the digital transformation of businesses.
People now are adapting to a new normal lifestyle, in which we still raise a high awareness of prevention of the COVID-19 virus while trying to recover the economic activities. Consumers are not spending less, they are now spending smartly. It’s the key factor to learn how to encourage them on special occasions with reasonable discounts and promotions.
Believe it or not, we can achieve that at a very low cost, or even for free if you’re using our WPC plugins. Let’s find out how.
Turn on the holiday spirits early
Trends are showing that people are getting into Christmas shopping very early this year compared with last year. Preparing early for the year-end biggest sale events is essential to shoot up your revenues at the end of 2021. Online businesses can even expect a positive result in their performance during the last months of the fourth quarter.
Things you can do to prepare for the seasonal sales events:
Planning time-based schedules
You can sketch out the timeline of all upcoming campaigns in an easier way now with the recent major changes in our WPC Product Timer plugin. The new drop-down interface that supports drag&drop, the new buttons for timer duplication, saving, expansion/collapse, and especially the cross-timer bulk edits are highlighting the outstanding features of this plugin in managing products’ stock, visibility, and prices.
Not sure where to catch the basic rules for timers? Refer to this blog.
Using the WPC Product Timer plugin, you can set up all kinds of deals that are managed automatically by preset timers, whether they are available on a periodic basis or at a specific date and time, one-time or recurring by nature such as Flash Sale, Product Launch, Seasonal Sale, Clearance Sale, etc.
With the new changes in this plugin, timers are applicable to not only the whole item. Specifically, Global timers allow users to take control of products by categories, tags, attributes, storewide, or even at the variation level.
See more in part 2 of the video about typical cases of timers for seasonal sales.
Add a reminder of upcoming events
Use the WPC Countdown Timer plugin to remind your customers of how many days are left until the Black Friday event, Christmas & New Year’s Eve, or your company’s biggest Year-End Clearance Sale.
A new style – the flipper with the light & dark theme – has been added to version 2.3.0 of our plugin. You can add custom CSS to change the appearance of the countdown clock to make the cozy excitement prevail on your site.
Or you can combine WPC Product Timer & WPC Countdown Timer to manage both the backend & frontend of your products. Read our blog here for more information.
If your site is using the WPC Fly Cart plugin, you can customize the colors or background image of the cart popup to remind visitors of the coming event. More interestingly, you can also change the shipping bar appearance if it is displayed within the Fly Cart popup to create a matching outlook, ie for Christmas, with white, green, and red.
On-site notifications created by the WPC Smart Notification plugin can also be a joyful reminder of future events. It’s easy to put all seasonal products to the front in a custom notification with an eye-catching thumbnail and a short striking message.
See how to make visually pleasing reminders in part 3.
Promote products before, during, and after events
Apparently, it is redundant to say that. However, it’s not about advertising your products merely. It’s about giving actual deals that are especially designed for each phase of your campaign: pre, during, and post-event duration.
Encourage early-bird purchases
Store owners are able to witness a boost in sales revenue even before the special occasions occur by utilizing the early-bird purchases.
By emphasizing the possible delays in packaging & delivering goods on special occasions due to the shortage of workforce & resources amid the pandemic, customers are properly urged to purchase faster.
Encouraging early-bird purchases also reduce the workloads for employees during festive or giant sales occasions.
Crafting efficiently irresistible offers
Of course, the majority of purchases are made during the main course of the occasions – when people are most likely happy to spend their money on treats or gifts. Don’t forget our powerful plugins for product bundles, grouped collections, or bought-together deals.
WPC Product Bundles – create fixed or customizable product combo at ease
WPC Composite Products – choose 1 from the list of items for each component
WPC Grouped Product – collect related products together as a collection
WPC Frequently Bought Together – recommend optional items to the main product
WPC Force Sells – entailed low or zero-price items that are included with the main one
Preview some delicious deals in part 4 of the video.
Consider some late-adopter deals
Late-adopter deals are prepared for people who often seek offers when the occasion has passed or the event has ended. Sounds weird, but let’s consider why.
Some people are just too busy that they forget about preparing for the seasonal holidays. Some are simply forgetful that it was not until the holidays occur that they realize it’s too late to buy stuff. Besides, there are some of us who always get the salary and bonus money way too late when the holidays are almost happening and most are already starting to enjoy the good times.
But what can they do when all the great seasonal deals have ended and the prices are now higher than their expectation, which prevents their willingness to pay? People tend to grab the deals when they know that there is no more second chance. Though the discounts might not be as great as during the main occasion, a penny saved is a penny earned.
Late-adopter deals may never come to your mind or even be in your plan as a store manager, but maybe from now, they might be considered.
