How to leverage peak seasons in the international market

In the dynamic world of e-commerce, staying ahead of the game means understanding global and local trends. Capitalising on peak seasons is crucial for success. Peak seasons vary between countries and can be affected by cultural celebrations like China’s Singles’ Day or seasonal demand, as in the case of Australia's summer swimwear craze, and even shopping-specific events like Harbolnas day.

But simply identifying peak season months isn't enough; businesses must be prepared to handle problems ranging from surges in orders to supply chain disruptions and shipping delays. This makes thoroughly examining your end-to-end operations and taking precautionary steps in advance paramount. In this article, we dive deep into key considerations you need to make to confidently seize the opportunities offered by your next e-commerce peak season and increase sales.

1. Prepare ahead with a peak season calendar

Proactivity is essential in maintaining an edge in the market, and this is especially true when it comes to the competitive e-commerce field. By ensuring that your staff and processes are primed for performance before your competitors’ preparations are full throttle, your business will be empowered to react quickly and secure a greater share of the international market.

One way to achieve this is to create a comprehensive peak season calendar for each market you serve and diligently document peak seasons specific to each region. This enables you to plan your staffing needs and marketing calendar early so you can focus fully on sales and shipping during your busiest months. To get started, here are some key holiday dates and peak seasons for Indonesia’s top three trading partners:

2. Ascertain peak season demand and inventory levels

As an e-commerce business owner, understanding when your customers’ purchase behaviour change is critical to your success. However, transforming this knowledge into actionable insights requires digging deeper into how this change during peak seasons will affect demand for your products. This means asking key questions such as what seasonal product trends exist, how high demand will be, and which specific products are affected and analysing historical sales data to get your answer. 

In doing so, you can order your inventory accordingly and better tap into market opportunities to surpass the competition. Additionally, working closely with your suppliers in this process is essential for timely and accurate product stockpiling. By engaging your supplier in capacity planning, you can better identify and address threats that could affect your suppliers' ability to meet your demand, thus ensuring that your customers always have access to the products they need when they need them.

3. Have a strategic pricing strategy for peak season

As inflation looms, consumers have grown increasingly cautious with their spending and actively seek better deals to take advantage of during peak seasons. As a result, big bargains are set to dominate the market as e-commerce businesses strive to win over these shoppers. 

To stand out from the parade of promotions and maximise sales conversion, designing your promotion mechanism strategically is vital. This process should involve performing a cost analysis so you can offer deals that incentivise more purchases while safeguarding your profit margins and preventing brand dilution resulting from steep discounts.

4. Develop a solid peak season marketing strategy

Crafting a winning pricing strategy is just one part of the equation. To further refine your game plan for peak seasons, having a well-crafted marketing blueprint is equally vital. In the modern world saturated with advertisements, successful marketing requires a sophisticated approach that resonates with shoppers. To this end, investing time in market research to understand cultural nuances and your audience’s preferences makes a wise choice. Through this, your business can better connect with your consumers through targeted messaging on their preferred platform, thereby increasing the possibility of sales conversion.

Besides personalised marketing, a poll by Storyblok identified that as many as 60% of shoppers abandon their carts because of a poor user experience on e-commerce websites. This translates to an average of five lost sales per consumer per year. Therefore, it is also important to cover website optimisation for desktop and mobile to close the loop in your marketing efforts. 

5. Work with a reliable logistics partner for peak season shipping