Chapter 3: Product Catalogues
HOW TO FLEX YOUR EXPERIENCE WITH CHANGING USER DEMANDS
Understanding seasonality and trends is crucial for optimising your product catalogue. By aligning your strategy with seasonal peaks and emerging trends, you can maximise sales opportunities and enhance the shopping experience. This lesson will help you identify key seasonal patterns, adapt your catalogue for trends, and apply data-driven approaches to remain agile in a fast-changing environment.
SEASONALITY: PREDICTABLE PEAKS
A seasonal pattern can be everything from when users start to shop for their autumnal coats and jackets to how your CVR spikes towards pay day at the end of the month. These recognisable changes repeat each year - though you may see some variance in how early they begin, how quickly they taper off, or the volume of demand in general. Due to their predictability, seasonal user behaviour should be accounted for in your content calendar as well as how you shape your priorities across the store to optimise categories or products both during the awareness building window of a peak, as well as the highest trading opportunity.
Some seasonal patterns can vary regionally, and if you are operating a global business then it is equally as important to cater to those differences where possible. For example, supporting coats & jackets in November is perfectly appropriate in the Northern hemisphere, but in the Southern hemisphere they are focused on warmer weather and more summery apparel.
In the above graph, you will see an example of seasonality. How the historic trend the previous year matches a similar arc, for let’s say a “picnic” product category or maybe “beachwear” or “vacation” related products in the Northern hemisphere building into the spring and peaking in the height of summer.
The ways in which you can use data to identify seasonal moments is to lean on your historic sales and traffic. Laying them out on a graph can be incredibly helpful to contextualise growth rates and the peaks and troughs of your year. As you are operating your business in real-time, use these benchmarks to measure if the timing and intensity of your seasonal category has evolved year over year.
How you can measure and flex your approach to seasonal behaviour can include:
Compare the mix of sales or the mix of traffic for that category in your wider business
Optimise visibility for all relevant products, measuring indicators like PLP click through, add to bag rates, conversion rates, as well as general product views, for any standout hero products ro nuances to user interest
Create a destination like a curated PLP or a landing page that will optimise search entry during peak periods and house all relevant products under one browse experience
Be flexible in your marketing calendar to dial up and dial down a message related to the season based on how it’s tracking. Ensure clear presence for users to intuitively find the products through your navigation and search
TRENDS: REACTING QUICKLY
A trend is a less cyclical pattern and can sometimes come out of nowhere. Whether a search term, product type or category, a trend can be identified by a rapid increase in customer interest that did not occur in previous time periods. Oftentimes, the customer interest is far ahead of your product offer itself, and so it’s critical to act quickly to ensure your site is optimised for the customer demand.
New trends can be identified most recently through platforms like Instagram where the emphasis is on relevancy in the moment. More steadily you can also use tools like industry reports from WGSN or Google Trends to see how the wider user is shopping these items.
In the above graph, you will see an example of a trend. The previous year saw flat interest in the area, but suddenly traffic built quickly and spiked. This could be representative of a high summer product such as “coloured lens sunglasses” or the newest air purifier that sells out immediately when the heat waves begin.
When you spot a trend, the most common indicator will be a surge of product views that far surpass the averages for even your bestsellers. It’s important to bear in mind however, that because a number of product relative metrics use product views as their base, the surge in traffic will plummet your other metrics like product ATB or product CVR. Unless you happen to have the right stock and the right price to enable these customers to purchase immediately! More often than not, sizes can sell out and the users will be hoping to buy but may be disappointed until it’s back in stock.
There are a number of solutions to minimise risk for trending products:
Rapid onboarding of trending products in different options and colourways
Cross-shopping lookalike products for the ones in highest demand through similar visual elements and purposes
Search synonyms for any related keywords to ensure that all variations are accounted for across regions and user types
Product detail optimisation to create consistency in naming in product names and descriptions to associate them with the trend and support product assessment for users
Trending products can really mess with your metrics, so it’s always best practice to support them alongside your bestsellers and higher stock depth items so that if a user cannot or does not want to purchase the item, they have the opportunity to browse something else with a great track record. Only adopt trends that feel organic to your business, otherwise you are also setting up users for disappointment and minimising your opportunities to create purchase intent.
LESSON SUMMARY
Seasonality and trends offer unique opportunities to drive performance, but require proactive planning and data-driven strategies
Align your product offer and delivery schedule with seasonal patterns to meet predictable customer needs
Using analytics to refine your approach ensures relevance, efficiency, and customer satisfaction in an ever-changing landscape.