Ah, summer. It usually means plenty of sun, vacation mode and… slower online sales? If you’re an online business owner, you might have noticed that sunnier skies can often lead to slower online traffic. Not to worry! We’ve crafted a guide filled with helpful tips and tactics to tackle the slow summer season, from fresh marketing campaigns to technical tune-ups.
Marketing
It’s all about the engagement! Here are some strategies for grabbing your shoppers’ attention.
- The most obvious suggestion: have a summer discount campaign. Discounts are the easiest way to get sales. Is it sustainable in the long run? That depends, but you definitely shouldn’t rely only on discounts.
- Reach out to existing customers. Maybe there’s a recurring purchase opportunity? Have you set up reminder emails for your current customers?
- Offer summer-only limited-time products. Buyers’ interest increases when there’s scarcity – why don’t you find some products you’ll sell only in summertime?
- Leverage the summer season theme. Go all summery on your social media, online store and ads – display your products in a summer setting (on a beach, for example), even if they aren’t really related to summer (can you imagine stacks of books or beauty products on a sandy beach?). It will catch buyers’ attention.
Efficiency
Since you probably have more time on your hands in the summer, invest it in streamlining your ecommerce operations.
- Implement a chatbot to give quick and automatic answers to the most common questions. This way you’ll save your team’s time on answering the questions, but also customers get the answers quicker – win-win!
- Cut running costs. Take a look at your current expenses and identify potential areas for savings. Perhaps it’s the right time to switch to an online payment service provider with high payment conversion and merchant satisfaction rates?
- Tackle cart abandonment. Many merchants don’t realise how many purchases are abandoned halfway through. First, get an overview of your shopping cart metrics, and then find ways to improve them. An easy starting point is to implement abandoned cart emails.
- Add new products to your store. Refreshing your range with new, trendy items can re-engage previous customers and draw in new ones. Not to mention, this gives you a perfect excuse to reach out to your customers and announce your updated product line-up.
Technical side
The smartest thing to do during slow summer season is to prepare your online store for the high season, especially on the technical side.
- Update your store. When was the last time you updated your WooCommerce and plugins (or whatever platform you use)? Can’t remember? Then you have to do it now. Ensure that you have also set up a cookie policy and implemented the tracking to adhere to it.
- Accessibility. In 2025 most EU online stores have to meet accessibility requirements. It’s not just about the law, it’s also a sales opportunity. There are a considerable amount of people who need some sort of accessibility solutions in online stores.
- SEO. Does your online store show up on Google when you search keywords related to your products? And is it one of the first three results on the first page of the search results? No? Buddy, you have some work to do. The Internet is full of useful guides and there are hordes of professionals just waiting to improve your online store.
- Speed up your website. Nobody likes a slow website (especially not Google or your customers). There’s always something to improve on the speed side of things, be it optimising image sizes to minimising the number of CSS files or plugins used on your website. Again, Google is your friend here.
Just take a break
Clearly, there are plenty of ways to resist the summer slowdown and actively prepare for busier times ahead. But whatever you do, you probably can’t reach the same level of sales that you get on a high season. So why don’t you just embrace the slower rhythm of the summer months? Take a moment to bask in the sun, soak up some fresh air, and recharge – most of your customers will be doing the same thing.