Quick Insights: Seasonality

At SumAll, we not only care about creating a tool that allows users to see and interact with their business data, we also strive to provide informative and useful information that our customers can derive knowledge from and immediately apply to their own businesses. These bits of information can be in the form of an infographic about discounts or blog posts on how to market on Facebook effectively, with the expressed purpose of utilizing our vast reservoirs of data and compiling it into a digestible insight.

To go along with this line of thinking, we’ll be publishing a series of blog posts twice a week that will cover a wide range of topics in a succinct manner. These quick tips are bite-sized posts that will provide readers with an overview of specific e-commerce and marketing related subjects. Our first installment is on seasonality.

The short definition of seasonality is change based on time of year – for example, increased revenue during a holiday season. The longer definition is the variation of a time series that follows an annual cycle meaning it increases at certain times of the year and decreases at others according to a recurring pattern. There’s all kinds of reasons for why seasonality occurs from holidays (people buying Christmas gifts), to labor market changes (teachers are unpaid during the summer), to actual seasons (ski sales increase during the Winter).

Retail seasonality can be so strong that it is the most important factor in determining your actual business performance. For example, a very successful day in February could still bring in less revenue than a poor sales day in November. Our Summer sales infographic, made with data collected from 3,000 of our own merchants, uncovered that July is the slowest month for e-commerce sellers, down 30% from the high of December.

To learn how seasonality affects your business, sign up for a SumAll account and instantly see your revenue patterns.