Peak is coming .. are you ready?

Get your global dates in the calendar

Often referred to as the “Golden quarter”, peak season is the time of year in the e-commerce calendar where online retailers can take advantage of increased spending due to the events such as, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Singles day and Christmas.

Spanning from late October through to January now is the time to make sure you are prepared, not only to beef up your marketing strategy and make sure you’re in the right place at the right time but also to think about the optimisation of your website, your delivery options, carriers and what contingency plan you have in place for the increase in orders you should expect to receive.

Check in over the next week to read our tips on being ‘Peak Period Ready’!

Singles day – “Double 11” – November 11th

Singles day started in China and has quickly spread across the globe and has been named as the biggest shopping spree the world has ever seen! Last year customers purchased $45 billion worth of goods. That’s three times last years Black Friday and Cyber Monday online sales combined.

Just because this shopping frenzy originated from China don’t be mistaken. Imrg surveyed 1,200 retailers from 8 different countries and 12 global markets, they found 78% bought from US sites, 72% from the UK, Australia, Germany and France and 70% from Japan!

Alibaba the Chinese online shopping platform giant expects to smash its record sales from 2017 of $25.3 billion. Think about where you are selling your products during this years peak to make the most of the success of online marketplaces .

Black Friday and Cyber Monday – November 29th – December 1st

The Black Friday name become famous after it was printed in US papers in 1966, although its origin dates back to around the nineteen forties. From then to now online brands around the world are benefiting from this continued US tradition.

Online browsing remains strong with 1.2 billion website visits from 19th to the 25th of November in 2018. 194 million of these visits were on Black Friday alone. These figures show how consumers are browsing deals online before committing which bring us back to the fact you need to be in the right place at the right time! Online marketplaces are key in this age on e-commerce.

2018’s Black Friday saw $6.22 billion in online sales

Fun fact!

The term “Black Friday” (in the retail sense) was coined in the US in the 1960s to mark the kick off to the Christmas shopping season. “Black” refers to stores moving from the “red” to the “black,” back when accounting records were kept by hand and red ink indicated a loss, and black a profit.

Cyber Monday, the Monday immediately after Black Friday, the United States experienced $7.9 billion in online sales.

Black Friday Sales this year are predicted to reach $12.3 billion, that’s a 25% increase year on year!

Christmas 25th December

To round it all off and one you won’t need to be reminded of - Christmas. Historically bricks and mortar retailers would start their Christmas sales on boxing day, which has naturally morphed to online.

The traditional boxing day sales are starting earlier and earlier and according to a recent study, Christmas shoppers hit online stores around the middle of the month 16th – 18th so try and build these dates into your marketing and sales strategy for the peak period and increase your online basket values by online deals, heavy promotional activity and the use of marketplaces and social media platforms.