How to deal with a sales drop during the summer

Tips to avoid a summer e-commerce slump and optimise performance during the summer period.

There are many factors that can influence the growth of an e-commerce business. In addition to the daily management of orders, shipments and marketing activities, it’s now essential to implement strategies aimed at avoiding the e-commerce summer slump – the inevitable decline in sales during the summer season.
This period can be tricky for an online business. User engagement drops and there is a higher rate of cart abandonment, with a subsequent decline in conversions.

This is primarily because consumers are spending their money on travel, vacations and outdoor activities, so that less time is spent on online shopping. Meanwhile reduced use of electronic devices means less engagement with e-commerce platforms. Globally, e-commerce traffic drops by 30% between July and September, before picking up with Black Friday promotions, according to research conducted by Parcel Monitor.

The challenge is how to influence users’ decisions and minimise the reduction in sales activity. Tapping into the buoyancy of the e-commerce marketplace is a worthwhile investment: data provided by Insider Intelligence estimates that online sales will reach 7 trillion dollars worldwide within the next two years.

• e-commerce sales register an average drop of 30% during the summer months.
• according to the latest Qubit survey, the most purchased categories online are fashion, electronics and groceries.

Strategies to optimise sales during the summer

Companies experiencing an e-commerce summer slump should aim to stimulate customer engagement and enhance the performance of their online business. By adopting better digital solutions, they can ensure they maintain a strong online presence and identify the needs of their target audiences even during the summer months.

There are many strategies that can be implemented to optimise summer sales:

Generate a sense of urgency and exclusivity.

Timed promotions on specific categories of products help encourage summer sales. Limited-time offers, both on a daily and weekly basis, along with customised promotions, can be useful for clearing out inventories. A psychological principle that can be exploited in this context is scarcity: communicating a sense of urgency and scarcity around certain products can increase their perceived value, leading to an increased likelihood of conversions. This strategy can create an atmosphere of exclusivity and prompt customers to make faster purchasing decisions.

Increase visibility on social media. It is important to expand your marketing efforts to reach an increasingly large audience segment. One effective strategy is to leverage the opportunities provided by social networks, which enable continuous engagement with the target audience throughout the entire purchasing journey. After updating your social media pages with personalised cover images for the summer period, create a well-structured editorial plan that taps into the summertime vibe, so your customers will be more likely to treat themselves.

Use live shopping. To capture your customers’ attention, explore the latest digital marketing trend of live shopping, also known as live commerce. This innovative format involves leveraging live streaming to sell products, providing an interactive and engaging shopping experience for the audience. According to the latest data from Statista, last year, in the United States alone, the purchase of products via live shopping reached 17 billion dollars and is expected to triple within the next three years.

Improve user experience. Use this time to improve the customer’s experience on your website. Identify bottlenecks in the purchasing process and optimise every aspect of your online platform to help you increase retention of existing customers and acquire new ones. According to data reported by Exploding Topics, 92.3% of users worldwide access the internet using a mobile device and approximately 55.4% use it to purchase a product or service online. That’s why it’s increasingly important to improve website loading speed, ensure your platform is fully responsive and mobile friendly, and streamline the checkout process.

Build customer loyalty. A comprehensive marketing plan must also take into account the post-purchase stage, when users start to get familiar with the goods or services they have chosen. It’s important to maintain an active post-purchase dialogue with customers, which may include requests for feedback, promotional offers, or personalised content to encourage further purchases. Direct mail is one of the most impactful solutions for establishing a lasting relationship with customers. It ensures a positive and consistent brand image and can be seamlessly integrated with digital mailing services.

To overcome the e-commerce summer slump challenges and foster the development of your online business, Mail Boxes Etc. offers professional digital solutions to help companies ensure their e-commerce fulfilment and logistics is fully streamlined.

Click here to discover how MBE can help support your e-commerce business.