Studies show that retail activity decreases by 30% compared to December as the summer season approaches. So, how do you build a summer pricing strategy that boosts your sales, keeps operations light, and clears out excess inventory?
In this blog post, I will explore practical ways to improve your E-commerce store during the slow-paced summer, hopefully ensuring a successful and profitable season.
Build a smart summer pricing strategy
The summer season is packed with exciting products and opportunities to make great campaigns, targeting customers looking for good summer deals when enjoying the sunny weather or preparing for their vacation.
Campaigns like mid-year sales, summer sales, or vacation deals are great ways to grab attention and move seasonal products. They not only drive traffic but also help you create a sense of urgency around items that fit the season.
Finding the right products for your summer campaigns requires both analysis and groundwork to collect all the relevant data. Your summer pricing strategy should start with analyzing last year’s data. Here are market insights, competitor price data, trends, influencers research, and historical pricing data crucial to helping you select the right products for the summer.
What can Amazon’s Bestseller list tell you?
If you're looking for a simple way to develop your summer pricing strategy, look at what works for others in the market. Amazon’s Bestseller list shows which products people are interested in and buying right now, giving you a real picture of trends.
In the Italian DIY and hardware industry, for example, Bosch clearly stands out. Their thousands of products appear on the Bestseller list, while brands like Siemens and Schneider Electric are much less visible. The products on the Bestseller list indicate what consumers are interested in.
By keeping an eye on these trends across marketplaces, you can better understand how your products are doing and where there might be room to grow. This is a great way to stay one step ahead and make confident pricing decisions based on what the market tells you.
Pricing insights in the DIY industry
Do you want more insights into brand performance, pricing behavior, and Amazon Bestseller data?
What are my competitors doing?
Doing a bit of market and competitor research is a great way to spot which products are gaining traction ahead of the summer season. When you know what your customers are looking for and what your competitors are stocking, it becomes much easier to shape the right product mix. At the same time, checking in on your competitors' pricing helps you stay in the game and make sure your prices are right where they need to be.
How do you collect data most efficiently?
With PriceShape, you can easily see how competitive your products are by using key data points. This makes it simple to adjust your prices in a way that helps you compete with, outperform, and win sales from your main competitors.
A good idea is to look at your products' price positions. This can be done by looking at the insights provided by Google Analytics and the data collected by PriceShape. Are the products positioned well while converting a healthy margin and a high number of views? If so, will no change be needed?
If that’s not the case, it might be a good idea to review your pricing to stay competitive. With dynamic tags in PriceShape, you can easily identify which products to focus on based on your own preferences and pricing rules. And if you need input along the way, your Customer Success Manager is ready to guide you and offer advice so you can make the right price adjustments.
PriceShape also makes it easy to keep an eye on your competitors’ summer campaigns so you can stay on track with your own goals. With dynamic groupings, you can track how your products are performing and focus your campaigns on the ones that are getting the most attention and sales. This gives you a solid foundation for making data-driven decisions about which products to prioritize and where to invest your time and budget.
Influencers spot trends
Influencer marketing is a form that many businesses use to promote themselves and their products. Influencers build trust with their followers, meaning they will often be more trustworthy when advertising a product or service thana general marketing campaign. Therefore, it is helpful to follow the trending influencers in your target audience to see what trends are in the market and what factors they focus on when promoting a product. Influencers are mostly found on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Using tools such as Google Trends will provide insights into what topics and buzzwords are trending and are most likely to be searched for. This data will allow you to find your target market and what is trending among them. Hereafter, you can make a data-driven decision based on your findings to select the right summer products for your business.
Is historical data important?
Think back to last summer. What worked well, and what didn’t go quite as planned? Maybe certain products sold faster than expected, or maybe some campaigns didn’t perform the way you hoped. Taking time to review your historical sales data and website analytics can give you a clearer picture of what actually happened.
By identifying patterns in customer behavior, sales peaks, and product performance, you can make more informed decisions for the upcoming season. These insights help you avoid repeating past mistakes, double down on what worked, and spot new opportunities to improve your pricing and assortment strategy. In short, looking back is one of the smartest ways to move forward.
How to use historical data to your benefit
You need to look for products that have experienced increased demand and higher conversion rates during the previous summer season. These data can be combined with the historical data gathered in your PriceShape account, which shows your primary competitors and their product placement. The collected data can help you in the decision-making process regarding inventory management and product selection, and can help you plan your summer campaign.
When all of the above steps have been conducted, you should have limited the overall picture to some interesting summer products for you to include in campaigns and have a successful summer season.
Get your inventory summer-ready
One of the most effective things you can look into is inventory management. It gives you valuable insight into seasonal products that are either leftovers from last year or slow-moving. Once you’ve identified your slow movers, it might be time to consider phasing them out. PriceShape can help you pinpoint these products, so you can create pricing rules and strategies that align with your goals and preferred price points.
Key inventory tactics to consider
What should you be aware of when reviewing your inventory? By using one or more of the strategies below, you can clean out excess stock during the summer season while minimizing waste and maximizing sales.
Utilize dynamic groupings to identify slow-movers
Look through your inventory data to find products that have been sitting for a long time or have low sales. Removing these items can free up valuable storage space and reduce capital tied up in non-performing stock.
Outlet specials
Run a summer clearance campaign to help move slow-selling or seasonal items. Offer discounts, bundle deals, or buy-one-get-one promotions to boost interest. PriceShape’s data points can help you identify suitable outlet products and even automate the pricing strategies needed to carry out these campaigns.
If you’ve already added product lifecycle data or seasonal tags like last summer’s products or end-of-season items, these can be especially helpful in building targeted outlet strategies. They make it easier to group the right products, apply the right discounts, and clear out stock before the next season kicks in.
Review and adjust inventory management
Analyze demand patterns, reorder points, and lead times to keep your inventory balanced throughout the summer. This helps you stay stocked with what sells while avoiding overstocking on slow movers that could turn into deadstock.
With the right summer pricing strategy in place, you can stay competitive even during the seasonal slowdown.
Summary
To summarize, using these guidelines will boost your sales while also cleaning out your inventory. The steps can be time-consuming if you do them all manually, but PriceShape is a tool that can quickly help you implement these steps to stay on top of your competitors.
PriceShape will help you spot trends, correctly display your products, and utilize the performance and inventory data. Using this data can help you enhance your summer campaigns, attract customers, and effectively manage your inventory, hopefully resulting in a successful and profitable season.
A summer pricing strategy is more than just discounts. It’s about data-driven decision-making. If you want to discuss the above points, contact your Customer Success Manager and book a “summer plan” meeting.
Have a wonderful summer.
