How to increase sales in the summer

All sellers will know that online sales tend to drop off in the summer - with school holidays, travels, and even a spot of sunshine every now and then, people just aren’t online purchasing as much. That doesn’t necessarily mean you should sit back and accept a quiet couple of months; we’ve put together a number of suggestions about how to pull in more summer sales and what else you can be doing to improve your business so that it’s busier than ever when September comes around.

Take a look at your stock

By now it’s a little too late to completely change what you’re stocking for the summer season, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make what you do have more relevant. During the summer months shoppers will be looking for anything related to gardening, travel and holidays, camping, festivals, keeping children entertained, and any outdoors activities. Take a look at your stock and put together anything that’s relevant for the summer months into a new category, and feature some of the products on the homepage of your website.

Plan a summer sale

Tempt people back to your online shop with a sale. Try a flash sale (a big discount for a very limited time) that will give customers a sense of urgency that they’re missing out on a great deal if they don’t check out your shop right now - take the opportunity to clear out some old stock, alongside a few newer items. Don’t forget to promote your sale by email and social media, it only works if people know about it!

Sell internationally

Maybe what your shop sells really isn’t as relevant in the summertime, but don’t forget it’s not summer everywhere. The quiet summer months could be the perfect time to start selling abroad, you can open up a whole new potential customer base. Find out more about selling abroad here.

Improve your business

If you’ve tried everything to tempt your customers online but you still have some spare time, then take the opportunity to improve your business in other areas. Take a look at your marketing, could you be doing more to promote your online shop? Get to grips with social media by setting up a Facebook page, or start writing a blog - even if less people are shopping in the summer, they’ll still be checking social media so it’s a great way to attract customers and increase sales.

Alternatively, you could think about branching out to sell on a different marketplace or your own website. Maybe take the chance to think about giving your website a fresh new look. Quieter summer months are perfect for testing something different out.

Planning

Kicking off with Black Friday in November, the crazy rush of Christmas time will be here in no time - so get ahead of the game and start planning now. Start researching products, and planning your marketing so that when business starts to pick up again at the end of the summer you know you’ve already got everything planned out for the run up to Christmas.