There isn’t much that you can’t buy online these days. If you wanted to you could likely get everything delivered to your door without leaving your house. Gone are the days when you need to leave your house to go shopping.
There was a noticeable increase in online purchases in 2020 when the world first experienced lockdowns. As people were unable to leave their homes to purchase non-essential items people began to purchase more things online. Many stores that previously did not have eCommerce stores were forced to set up online storefronts to remain profitable during the pandemic. This caused Australian post offices to be busier than ever. Still, there are months of the year that experience more online sales than others. Here are the busiest months of the year for eCommerce stores in Australia.
Busiest Months of The Year For Online Retailers
By far, November and December are the busiest times of the year for online retailers and logistics companies. There are 3 major sales events that happen in these months; Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Boxing Day.
There are also many sales and promotions happening in the lead-up to Christmas and many people choose to do their Christmas shopping online. Now that postage times are much faster than what they were several years ago online shopping is a reliable way to get gifts in time for Christmas.
Busiest Days of The Week For Online Sales
Busy days of the week vary greatly between brick-and-mortar retail stores and online stores. For in-store purchases, sales tend to peak during weekends and evenings when many people aren’t working. But this is the opposite for eCommerce stores. People have the flexibility to shop online whenever they like. Research shows that online retail purchases increase roughly 6% on Wednesdays and Thursdays. On the contrary, Saturdays are the worst-performing days of the week for online stores. This is because people are often busy socialising and engaging in hobbies on weekends and spend less time shopping online.
Other Busy Periods of The Year
Other busy periods of the year include the lead-up to Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day. During this time many online retailers have sales and marketing campaigns encouraging people to buy gifts for their loved ones. Apart from this, there aren’t many major sales events that happen before November and December apart from the end-of-financial-year sales in June.
What Can Online Stores Learn From Busy Periods?
E-commerce stores can study historical monthly sales figures to determine when online sales will be at their lowest for the year. During times of the year when sales are low, eCommerce stores can run marketing campaigns and advertise sales to potential customers to increase online sales during these low sales periods.
Tactics for Increasing Sales in The Following Slow Months
The busiest times of year for eCommerce stores are November, December and June. Here is what you can do in low-selling months to increase sales.
January
January is in the middle of the Australian Summer. January is also the month leading up to when students are heading back to school. Depending on what kind of eCommerce store you have, you may consider having a back-to-school sale, or a sale on summer items. The key is to gauge what people need and advertise that to them during this time to increase sales.
February
February is the last month of Summer. Valentine’s Day also occurs during this month. Depending on the retailer you may consider having an end-of-summer sale or a sale on Valentine’s Day gifts.
March
Not much happens in March in Australia. This can be a difficult month for online retailers. A surprise sale this month can be a good way to entice customers back in.
April
While Easter usually happens in April people tend to not spend as much money on Easter as they do on other holidays. However, It’s still an excuse to have an “Easter” sale even if you don’t sell Easter products in particular.
May
At the beginning of May people are usually scrambling to buy Mother’s Day gifts and this is a great excuse to have a sale and advertise Mother’s Day Gifts to potential customers.
July and August
July and August are generally pretty quiet but it is Winter in Australia so it’s a great excuse to have a winter sale to increase sales during this time.
September
Father’s Day happens in mid-September and people are likely looking to buy Father’s Day gifts during this time. Many stores will be able to take advantage of advertising Father’s Day products during this time.
October
While Halloween isn’t very big in Australia there might be some opportunities to make some money selling Halloween products during October. Otherwise, October is a pretty slow month. October is, however, the beginning of the wedding season and is also in the lead-up to Melbourne Cup so stores selling suits and dresses may do well during this time.
To Summarise
Generally speaking, November and December will be you are most likely to make sales, but it’s important to remember that there will be good and bad online sales months depending on what kind of eCommerce store you are running. Knowing this allows you to account for months when your revenue may be lower than average. This is why it’s important to understand the historical monthly sales figures to gauge how to make sales during the slower months of the year.