This year’s peak sales season is going to be a unique one for e-commerce businesses.

Although Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas may all seem months away, retailers should start preparing now for the busiest and most profitable peak yet.  

With the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and the shift in consumer behaviour, shoppers have growing expectations from the digital shopping experience. Consumers will be approaching this year’s peak sales season searching for information and inspiration early.

Here's how to prepare your ecommerce business for 2021’s peak sales season and maximise your sales. 

Plan early

Retailers that aren’t prepared could end up overwhelmed with the demand over this year’s peak sales season.

We recommend that you start planning even earlier this year. Normally, some consumers start researching for Christmas shopping in August, and with this year being a unique peak, gift buying could start happening earlier than ever before.

The retail sector has seen a strong rebound since Q1 2021, resulting in retail sales by volume up 24.2% in Q2. These results are encouraging and point to a predicted high demand for consumer goods and services.

Start planning early to allow enough time to curate details, update stock reports and finalise your product inventory. 

Discount products strategically

Decide Black Friday and Cyber Monday and other key peak date discounts tactically. Online retail sales accounted for 26.7% of all retail sales in June 2021 so there is great potential within Q4 to prepare for this year's peak sales season.

Don’t blanket discount all your products because there is always a period after peak sales season is over when consumers expect prices to bounce back to full price, so adding all your products and best sellers into the peak sales season discounts could negatively impact your revenue.

Exclude some of your best-performing products from the discount list.

Logistics and delivery

Due to unique shipping and logistics issues this year, it’s important to encourage customers to buy early.

Be as honest as you can be with shoppers regarding delivery times. Ensure that shipping dates, delivery times and return policies are all clear on your website so that people can plan ahead of the festive season.

Make your marketing personal

Q4 is a crucial period to work on your marketing strategies ahead of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and other peak sales dates.

Personalisation is crucial here. 74% of consumers feel frustrated when website content is not personalised, while 56% of online shoppers say they would return to the eCommerce store that gives them personalised recommendations.

Use email marketing to drive more customers to your website during Q4, keep your existing customers inspired through social media content, and use your Google Analytics account to create audiences using the data gathered from last year’s peak sales season to target that audience with your 2021 campaigns.

Ecommerce sites and feed optimisation

If an ecommerce site is not optimised to match the details on your google shopping ads, it will impact the customer experience, usability and overall conversion rates.

Ensure that all pages are well-optimised for all types of devices, especially on mobile, since over one-third of online shopping is done on mobile devices in the UK.

Make sure you optimise your product feeds to include seasonality using keywords and expressions such as ‘Christmas presents’, Christmas gifts’ ‘Gifts for Dad’, ‘Gifts for Mum’.

Split all your sales products out with custom labels to easily control the margins and effectively manage the ROAS of all the products until the peak sales season is officially over.

The Shoptimised product feed optimisation software is the go-to solution for over 500 merchants to optimise their product feeds before the peak sales season. Book a free demo today or instantly audit your product feed here to see how we can help. 



Header image credit: Unsplash - Markus Spiske