It's important for ecommerce merchants to plan well in advance for key shopping dates. Consumers begin searching for the perfect gift for occasions like Valentine's Day, Mothers Day, and Halloween up to a month ahead of time.
The best way to see when consumers begin searching for specific products is by using Google Trends. This free tool will tell you how often a particular search-term is entered relative to the total search-volume. Here's an interactive example using the term "Valentines Day Gifts" looking at last year:
You'll notice that people begin searching Google for "Valentines Day Gifts" starting in January. Search volume ramps up significantly by the end of January and reaches its peak from Feb 5 - 11. This search data from last year shows us that if you're planning on selling products for Valentine's Day, you better start strategizing your marketing and product campaigns now, because people have already started gift hunting online.
Here's our annual Important Online Shopping Dates Calendar to help you keep track of all your marketing events:
Love this kind of thing, thanks. Very valuable.
Enjoyable reading. Very interesting.
Great post guys! Keep it up! Also the calendar is a must have!
Love being a prat of the shopify family!
Exactly what I needed! This is going on my wall. Thanks guys!!
Just goes to show that you can never plan to far ahead. Show google trends to those people who doubt you or make fun of you! = )
Thanks for all the positive feedback everyone. I’m so glad you’re going to find this useful! :-)
Great info. Thanks Shopify team :)
From my experience, understanding customers behavior and based on that engaging them (on the right time) can help with getting traffic and increasing conversion.
Perfect document to have.
nice one…..got a version for UK key shopping dates?
Hi Mark,
This may seem like an odd request, but your input would be much appreciated! My employer, Billy Murphy, is in the beginning stages of opening his own E-commerce E-learning site (especially in regards to niche markets). He’s a genius in this field and really wants to spread his teachings to others. I was hoping to put him in contact with someone from Shopify who knows all about pr and marketing sites, and after some research you seem like the perfect person. He’s just looking to chat with someone briefly who can offer him some insight. Would you be able/interested in speaking with him sometime next week? There’s no need for a presentation type talk or anything like that, he’ll just have some questions regarding this subject.
Feel free to take a look at his blog, www.foreverjobless.com, to know a little more about him and what he does. If you have any questions at all please don’t hesitate to ask. I really appreciate your time and consideration!
Thanks so much,
Stella Martin
I just spoke with Billy and found that you already know each other. Oops, sorry about that!
Thanks,
Stella
Hi,
I am a PhD Candidate, and I have a survey that’s intended for e-Commerce professionals. Please participate in this short survey on Survey Monkey for my research.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZSSF36X
Thank you for your participation!
Cool! thanks very useful, did anyone already made a iCal version of this which I can subscribe to? :-)
A rather nice calendar. I, for one, will be using it.
What this calendar actually shows is that any day of the year is a good day to shop! I think that retailers in Canada are more subject to the whims of government cheque days, such as welfare, child tax credit, pension and disability, and GST refunds and government paycheques that come out on 15th and the 30th paydays than actual holidays. The staggering of paycheques in most communities is what keeps the stores hoping for a piece of the pie.
Having sales ready for quarterly GST refunds (Jan 10th, Apr 10th, etc) another sale for the 15&16 (payday), another one for Family Allowance (20th-21st), another for the 30th payday is better business savvy than worrying about holidays. Having an appropriate changing gift selection is more interesting to me than all the Holiday Hoopla. Chocolate is chocolate. I am frustrated with stores that never change their stock, and charge premium prices for chocolate when it is a staple food. Did I just say that with a straight face?
Thanks. Great article. Planning for important online shopping dates should be done.
looks like you forgot one: Last Sleigh Day – the last day that retailers guarantee delivery before Christmas. Statistically this was the fourth busiest email marketing day of the year for retailers in 2011.
HI
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