Managing Your BigCommerce Store During The Slow Season
Does business seem slower for your ecommerce store in summer? It’s not just your imagination. Sales really do go down in summer for both ecommerce and traditional brick-and-mortar retailers. On average, ecommerce retailers sell 30% less during the summer months than they do in autumn and winter.
But that doesn’t mean your summer has to be a total loss. By shifting your strategy, you can make up for some of those lost sales and gear up for busy season, meaning you’ll make more money when shoppers do eventually come back. Here are our top tips for managing an ecommerce store during the summer slump.
Get On Stencil Before Holiday Shopping Picks Up
Summer is the ideal time for a Stencil move or full site redesign, particularly if the holidays are your busy season. You’ll have ample time to get your site launched and to make last-minute tweaks and changes, giving you a more beautiful and higher-performing site for the holidays, plus all your time to focus on holiday marketing.
A Stencil move is unquestionably the best thing you can do for your BigCommerce store. Your speed, performance, and SEO will all drastically improve. Don’t put it off any longer!
Read our latest Stencil move case study.
Marketing and UX Ideas
Already on Stencil? Don’t need a redesign? There are plenty of other ways to grow your business during the summer months.
Offer Sales & Discounts
If you’re able to offer a sale or discount, summer is a great time to do it. Amazon famously hosts one of its only sales, Prime Day, in July, during the peak of the summer slump. Thanks to their targeted marketing push, their total sales on Prime Day compete with Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Remind Customers You’re There
Summer means that your customers are spending less time online, so you’ll have to work to drive traffic to your site. Consider writing new content or sending out email marketing to remind you’re still there. Writing keyword-targeted content allows you to drive new organic traffic to your site, while email marketing encourages previous visitors to return. It may be the extra push you need during a slow shopping season.
Take Advantage Of The Summer Holidays
Holidays like Fourth of July and Labor Day – or more general messages of summer fun – can be a great focal point for marketing campaigns of any kind. Why not experiment with some holiday-themed graphics on your social media or write some PPC ads that target summer searchers?
Make A UX Improvement
Summer is a great time to experiment with something new. If sales are slow, you might want to consider experimenting with some smaller (and cost-effective) changes like add-ons or targeted landing pages. You can use analytics to track the success of these changes, or hire our marketing team to do it for you.
Check out this blog post about measuring the impact of UX changes.
Fix Things You’ve Been Putting Off
If problems are piling up on your site, the slow season is the time to get them fixed. Make a list of the parts of your site that are broken, outdated, or not optimized to bring to a developer for improvement. You could also take a look at your marketing strategy. Are you targeting the right channels and showing continuous improvement? Summer can be a great time to take stock of what you need to improve your BigCommerce store across the board.
Not sure where to begin? Contact us for an SEO audit or a personalized UX review!
Call Us To Beat The Summer Slump Today!
Ready to turn this “slow season” into a busy and profitable one? Whether you want a Stencil move, marketing advice, or a UX add-on, IntuitSolutions are the BigCommerce experts. Call us today!
