How ecommerce retailers should plan for peak season in 2024
Vaishali Ravi
·November 1, 2024
If you’re like most ecommerce retailers, your business doesn’t run at a steady hum through the year. Instead, you’re likely to see slower sales through most of the year—and then, if you’re lucky, a dramatic rise in volume during the time period known as “peak season.”
Building a solid strategy for peak season can set you up to overcome the challenges of the quieter times you may face, and build an earnings buffer that will keep you in the black through next year. But to do it effectively, you need a comprehensive game plan that incorporates not only promotion leading up to peak season, but also focuses on the post-purchase experience—including logistics management and a streamlined plan for handling returns and exchanges.
With a comprehensive peak season plan in place, you’ll be able to convert your first-time shoppers and gift recipients into loyal customers, even after the setback of a product return. You’ll also be able to proactively manage and respond to fraudulent return attempts, helping you protect profit margins and build a sustainable brand.
Here’s what you should know about preparing for peak season this year.
What is peak season?
Peak season is the specific period of time when ecommerce brands experience increased customer demand, sales revenue, and product return inquiries. There are several peak seasons throughout the year, but the most universal one happens during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the holidays.
Last year, for instance, ecommerce retailers brought in nearly $10 billion on Black Friday alone, with the average American shopper spending $480 in purchases on that day. This year, analysts predict that total Cyber Week spending is likely to exceed a record $75 billion between online and offline spending.
During this lead-up to the holidays, shoppers are primed to make purchases, whether scouting for gifts for friends or family, or for a great deal for themselves. This means peak season is a crucial time for ecommerce brands like yours, because it offers a unique opportunity for you to acquire new customers (and retain them!) more easily than usual.
Why does peak season matter?
Most of the year, ecommerce brands like yours are refining their operations, designing and launching new products, and marketing themselves to their customers. It’s a bit of a grind.
However, during peak season, you get the chance to show that work off! Because shoppers will be more actively looking for new products to buy, a much higher number of them will pay attention to your marketing campaigns—and if your messaging and products resonate with them, they’ll be eager to hit the “buy” button.
Here are 3 reasons why peak season matters for your business:
- Increased demand: During peak season, shoppers are far more likely to make a purchase than other times of the year. They’ve been trained overtime to know that peak season is the time to bargain hunt and snatch up products from their favorite brands. (And with holidays just around the corner, shoppers are feeling the pressure to get the perfect gifts before they run out of stock, too).
- Acquisition opportunities: With increased demand comes great acquisition opportunities. The inevitable increase in website traffic, at-the-ready shoppers, and marketing promotions can help you convert more new customers, which can lead to higher customer retention rates if you play your cards right.
- Brand visibility: If you know how to leverage this increase in traffic and demand, you can more uniquely position your brand to become more visible, popular, and profitable during peak season.
How to prepare for peak season?
Before you know it, peak season will be here. And if you can effectively prepare for it, you will be uniquely positioned to win over (and retain) more customers.
There are many things to consider when preparing for peak season, including:
- Marketing and promotional strategies
- Technology performance and experience
- Inventory and logistics management
- Customer support and product returns management
- Returns fraud and abuse
Let’s dive in.
Marketing and promotional strategies
When planning a peak season promotion, it’s important to build a robust, omnichannel marketing strategy that meets your customers where they are. Some are likely to click on an email campaign, while others are more likely to respond to an SMS message. And some will pay more attention to an old-fashioned postcard mailer with a QR code to visit your website to redeem a special offer.
By carefully tracking your customer behavior, you can segment your audience to deliver personalized Cyber Week marketing strategies that are optimized for maximum engagement.
Don’t overload your audience with information too far in advance, but be sure to prep them with an alert to stay tuned for your Cyber Week deals. Give a sneak preview of some of your deep-discount specials, and make sure to link them to a dedicated landing page with all the details on your promotions when your Cyber Week sale is live. Keep in mind that shoppers will be comparing your prices to other brands’ offers—so make sure that you’re being competitive if you want to beat your competitors this peak season.
Technology performance and experience
Cyber Week promotions can result in huge traffic surges if you’re lucky—so make sure that you’re prepared to scale up seamlessly. You should ensure that your website is hosted with a company that can effortlessly handle high traffic volumes without experiencing interruptions. Likewise, make sure that you’re using a powerful email marketing infrastructure that can manage high-volume campaigns without delivery delays or high bounce rates.
And when it comes to ecommerce transactions, both scalability and security are crucial to ensure a smooth user experience: By choosing a reliable, enterprise-grade ecommerce platform like Shopify Plus, you’ll be equipped to ensure that your shoppers’ transactions go through without a hitch, even if you’re processing hundreds of sales at a time.
Maximize profits this peak season
Learn moreInventory and logistics management
Well in advance of Black Friday, make sure that you’re stocked up on all the items you’re planning to promote. While you may want to offer a few promotions for items you have limited inventory of, your customers will lose interest quickly if you run out of sales to offer them. Once you tell a shopper an item is on back-order, you’ve likely lost their business.
And what about after a customer places an order? They’ll be anxious to know when it’s on its way and when it’s due to arrive, especially if they’re purchasing holiday gifts. To that end, using our branded order tracking portal, Track by Loop, will give shoppers real-time insights into their order status, so they know when they’re subject to arrive. This tool can cut down on customer support inquiries by 63%, saving your CX team’s time for problem-solving bigger issues.
Customer support and product returns management
It stands to reason that if you see higher sales during peak season, you’ll see higher return rates too. In fact, return rates are likely to be higher than usual, as many shoppers are purchasing gifts for other people, and may not know their exact size or style preferences, leading the recipient to request a return.
Being prepared with a streamlined returns strategy is an ideal way to cut down on manual labor from your CX team, delight customers with a seamless process, and retain more revenue, all in one. By using Loop, you can send shoppers directly to a branded returns portal, where they can initiate their own return request. The portal encourages shoppers to consider an exchange or store credit before requesting a refund, which around 40% of customers do. This helps your brand retain more revenue from the transaction and leads to higher customer loyalty rates.
And, if you’d like to protect your profit margins against return-related expenses, our new Offset product can encourage shoppers to purchase return protection upfront, paying a small amount now in exchange for a free return later. By implementing Offset, you can cover the costs of all of your reverse logistics with an upfront revenue stream.
Returns fraud and abuse
Finally, we’re seeing rising incidence of returns fraud and abuse. Last year, fraudulent returns accounted for 14-16.5% of all returns, costing retailers nearly $102 billion. This trend is accelerated during the holiday season, when both sales and returns volumes are much higher than usual.
To protect your brand against returns abuse, it’s important to draft clear-cut returns policies that detail the conditions in which your products can be returned for a refund or exchange. By using Loop’s returns portal, you can ask shoppers to verify the item’s condition in advance before authorizing a refund, helping you protect against customers who take advantage of your policies.
Our new machine-learning fraud detection model also helps you detect and prevent “high risk” refund requests that share specific criteria. By flagging these requests for manual review, while automatically charging refunds for low-risk returns, you’ll be able to stop returns fraud in its tracks without negatively impacting your law-abiding shoppers.
Peak season is nearly here—but by putting the technologies in place today to streamline your shoppers’ experience and protect your brand, you’ll be well-equipped to handle the surge, and come out on the other side with satisfied customers that will stand the test of time.
Ready to see how Loop can set you up for peak season success? Book a demo.
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