As the summer season approaches, the retail environment sees a 30% decrease in activity compared to December. So, how do you boost your sales while maintaining low maintenance and cleaning out your inventory?
In this blog post, I will explore practical ways to improve your e-commerce store during the low-paced summer, hopefully ensuring a successful and profitable season.
The summer trends
The summer season is packed with exciting products and opportunities to make great campaigns that target customers looking for good summer deals when enjoying the sunny weather or preparing for their vacation.
Finding the right products for your summer campaigns needs analysis and groundwork for you to collect all the relevant data. Here are Market & Competitor Research, Trends & Influencers Research, and Historical Data crucial to help you select the right products for the summer.
What are your competitors doing?
Conduction Market & Competitor Research will help you understand what items are trending based on your customers' research, which will help you narrow the gap in finding the right products for your summer assortment. The market research will, together with a competitor analysis, help you keep a competitive position throughout the summer. Looking at a competitor analysis will also provide you with pricing information so your products will follow your competitors.
But how do you do that most efficiently?
Our PriceShape tool can, by using data points, quickly see how compatible your product is and thereby change the price so you can compete, beat, and win sales from your primary competitor.
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 good while converting a healthy margin as well as a high number of views, will no change be needed.
But if this is not the case, looking into a new price could be beneficial if you want to keep a competitive position. Using dynamic tags in PriceShape provides you with several different ways for you to identify these products. The products will be selected based on your preference and pricing rules. Don't worry, your Customer Success Manager will be ready to guide you through these steps so you find the right price changes will be made.
PriceShape will likewise help you keep an eye on your competitors and their summer campaigns and always ensure you stay at the specific performance you want. Our dynamic groupings can further help you track how these products are performing and help you market these in campaigns where products generate the most interest and sales. This will help you make data-driven decisions regarding product selection and allocation of resources.
Influencers spot trends
Influencer marketing is a form 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 than in a 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 Gooogle Trends will provide you insights about 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-decided decision based on your findings to select the right summer products for your business.
Is historical data important?
What did you do last summer, what was good, and what did not go just as planned? It is always important to look back and analyze your historical sales data and website analytics to identify patterns and trends during previous summer seasons.
But what is then important?
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.
What does your inventory look like?
The last effective thing you can look into is inventory management. This gives you information on seasonal products that are either leftovers from last year or slow-moving. When you have found your slow movers, is it a good idea to try to eliminate them. PriceShape will help you identify these products so you can make a pricing rule and strategy based on what preferences you have on price points. What things should you be aware of when looking at your inventory management:
Utilize dynamic groupings to identify slow-movers: Review your inventory data and identify products that have been sitting for an extended period or have a low sale. It is good to eliminate these items since they might occupy valuable storage space and tie up your capital.
Outlet specials: Create a summer clearance sale to incentivize customers to purchase slow-moving or seasonal items. Offer discounts, bundle deals, or buy-one-get-one promotions to encourage sales. You can utilize the data points in PriceShape to identify outlet products.
Review and Adjust Inventory Management: Analyze demand patterns, reorder points, and lead times to optimize inventory levels for the summer season.
By employing one or all of these strategies, you can effectively clean out your inventory during the summer season while minimizing waste and maximizing sales.
Summary
To summarize all of the above. Using these guidelines will boost your sales while also cleaning out your inventory. The steps can be time-consuming if you do it all manually, 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.
If you want to discuss any of the above points, contact your Customer Success Manager and book a “summer plan” meeting.
Have a wonderful summer.
