How to prepare your ecommerce for Christmas in summer

Think it over, there is no better time. The perspective given to you by "not being over time" allows you to be much more strategic. Based on your own experience, you do know that once, gotten into the maelstrom of the season, what is urgent makes to lose the focus on the overview. 

We know that the season begins earlier and earlier and even more, since Black Friday has become a standard to add within the commercial landmarks of the year. If we take a look at six-month view calendar that lies ahead it will be very busy. 

Surely you have heard of Amazon Prime Day. Just to recap, it is a specific date (this year on 16 July) when Amazon publishes a series of flash limited-time offers for those users of its Prime program (the most loyal). 

You may be wondering what does this have to do with my eCommerce? Well, nothing and everything. During that week users go crazy for bargains, social networks burn with affiliate links, and as they are limited offers, many customers will be left with the desire. Plan your own strategy flash offers which last a week or start right after... the strategic possibilities  are almost unlimited to take advantage of the big ones´slipstream. 

Since late August, parents are ready for what is coming. We must equip children and this always supposes an investment. 

In reality, no matter if your eCommerce is not geared to this kind of products, families who are assuming summer expense and with the shadow of September budget crunch are reluctant to make purchases, so a good promotional strategy in this time can help you scratch sales in a difficult period. 

In Spain, when summer is over, there are still three long weekends: on the12th of October, all Saints in November and 6 and 8 December.

On the first two, people leave their homes and seeks to break with routine. Also, it coincides with autumn and winter seasons so keep that in mind. The third, the long weekend in December, is the pre-Christmas period. It tends to be very strong in retail for people who start their shopping (with permission of BlackFriday, of course). 

Increasingly it gains importance and works very well at promotional level. Until a short time ago, it was seen as something foreign without much interest, but now people move much more on those days. 

Along with Christmas, Halloween is the date when content marketing effects shines more. 

The singles day in China is a mixture of Valentine's day and Black Friday to indulge ourselves. If Black Friday has jelled I do not know why this date, why not this date?

The same happens with Prime Day if Alibaba sold 23,500 million in just one day last year, don't you think that you can try to take advantage of that inertia? 

This year it takes place on November 23 meaning the start of Christmas season. 

In this blog, we have talked a lot about this subject. You can find many tips to prepare and promote your eCommerce for Black Friday, advertising it on Adwords and, of course, get it ready for SEO that is what requires a major strategy in advance. 

Cyber Monday awaits us this year on 26 November (it is always the following Monday after Black Friday). 

It is a great excuse to make those who have not decided to buy on Black Friday still do it. The truth is that, although it was born as an eCommerce version of that, it has finally become an extension. You have some good ideas to hurry up with it here. 

At this time all has to be ready, your campaigns must be top and live. 

Take advantage of summer to do something completely different this holiday season, do not fall into adding a Santa´s hat to the logo and that is all, very interesting things can be done taking by making use of time. 

We all know that from December 26 many changes occur because Santa Claus made some mistakes. 

Low activity periods are the most suitable for, if you are not convinced with your logistics company, studying alternatives or renegotiate with them. Once on it, starting after the summer period everything gest more complicated. 

In fact, 31 December and New Year's Eve are before 1 January. New Year´s Eve is a great time for those who wish to buy party outfits, accessories and cosmetics. Start preparing interesting content, prepare complete outfits with your eCommerce products... think of media as Instagram. 

Afterwards, comes New Year´s resolutions that will be made or not, but if you sell exercise bikes you can push a little bit to get them made do have products that fit this coming demand? 

Although we already get into January, the planning of the second strong par excellence should be done in 2018. 

As it is not a matter of working on a 12 month planning let´s stop here. However, we must not forget that sales will come later on just in case you want to go further in your tasks. 

Throughout this post you will find quite a few resources that can help you, but there something I would also recommend you to do this summer in order to prepare your eCommerce for Christmas. 

The first thing is to take a thorough look at the analytics from last year (and previous). What were the strongest days? Where did you fail? What channels drove more traffic? … and more conversion? 

Also you should focus much on products, not only on those in or out of stock, or which sold better. It is interesting to make a research to try to identify which products are going to make the coming season coming and those which an increased demand is expected. 

You have to start working on those strategies that require to spend more time as soon as possible. If you want to try to position in SEO for something so competed you had better start right now (and make sure carry out a key word research so that you do not only work ont the most competitive terms). Same happens with remarketing and email marketing, especially with the latter, which must be nurtured with databases and lists of subscribers.