Innovators: 3 Sites that Benefit from Seasonal Events

In the ecommerce business, there are innovators and trendsetters, those companies and individuals who think ahead and anticipate changes. We’ve asked an expert ecommerce observer to help us identify some of these companies and individuals.

The observer is Harley Finkelstein, chief platform officer with Shopify, the hosted shopping cart. His installment of “Innovators and Trendsetters” this month revolves around seasonality and how merchants can capitalize on seasonal trends.

Practical Ecommerce: Our first installment of “Innovators and Trendsetters” focuses on seasonality. You have some thoughts on seasonality and how merchants can take advantage of seasonal topics.

Harley Finkelstein

Harley Finkelstein: A lot of online retailers are searching for new tactics to not only get eyeballs to their site but also attract general attention. Something I’ve noticed over the last couple of years is that two categories of ecommerce sites leverage seasonality almost as a competitive advantage.

First, some sites are built entirely around seasonality. That is their entire business model. They’re up for Mother’s Day; perhaps they’re down until Christmas; maybe Halloween they come back up; and then they’re back up for Valentine’s Day.

Second, other sites are there throughout the year and time many of their marketing pieces and campaigns around certain events — whether it’s the Super Bowl, Mother’s Day, or Father’s Day. We’re seeing a lot of great success from stores that are leveraging timing and seasonality.

PEC: Have you seen sites that launched around a specific seasonal or special event and then went down?

Finkelstein: No. In my experience, if a site is built around, for example, Valentine’s Day and sells only goods or services related to Valentine’s Day, a week after Valentine’s Day, the owners might not take the site down. They may leave it there dormant, and people can buy on it. But they do very little business [after Valentine’s Day].

PEC: You have three examples of sites that use seasonality well.

Finkelstein: The first is a really interesting site, Ice.com. They’re one of the largest online jewelers. It’s very compelling, one I’ve been looking at for quite a while.

Ice.com

What Ice.com did very early in its existence, when something like Valentine’s Day was coming around, Pinny Gniwisch [chief marketing officer] himself would grab a camera and hit the streets in New York City, for example, and would ask people questions about Valentine’s Day, such as “Who’s your Valentine?,” “What are you doing for your Valentine?,” “Can you tell us a funny Valentine’s Day story?”

He was able to generate some amazing content. They had this really amazing marketing push, not just from other sites talking about Pinny’s interviews — which helped from an SEO perspective — but also from creating a lot of energy around Valentine’s Day. Even if you go to Ice.com today, one of the first things you see is “Get more face time with Dad” — the current campaign with Father’s Day. When Father’s Day passes, they’ll be looking for something else. Maybe it’s the 4th of July, maybe it’s Labor Day, Halloween, or Christmas. But this is a really amazing store; they view seasonality in a very compelling marketing sense. It’s a great example of a strong retailer that uses seasonality more so in their marketing.”

PEC: Another example involves the British Royal Wedding.

Finkelstein: If you go to Royalbreakfast.com, you can see a very funny site. A lot of humor. What these guys did was, it says, ‘The Royal Breakfast Company proudly presents special Kate’s and Will’s Royal O’s.” They took Cheerios-like cereal and corn flakes or similar cereal and branded the cereal box around the Royal Wedding.

RoyalBreakfast.com

This is different than Ice.com in that seasonality isn’t just a marketing piece for them. It is the core. It is their business model. They look for specific events, like the Royal Wedding, and create a product around them. The benefits are, one, a lot of people are talking about this. A lot of news outlets, blogs, and a lot of industry experts are looking for clever and cool things happening around the Royal Wedding. This is unique, so immediately, these guys got a lot of attention because they were doing something different.

Second, in the days leading up to the Royal Wedding, they saw tremendous sales as people googled “Royal Wedding” to find clips and news articles. This site came up time and again, to the point that they were able to gather hundreds of Facebook likes around it.

Now, after the wedding, I guess the question you would ask yourself is, “What happens now?’ The Royal Wedding is over. It isn’t headline news anymore. But this site is still up, and I assume they’ll keep it set up for quite some time. Sites like the Royal Breakfast Company have made seasonality their entire business model, and they do so in a very compelling way.

PEC: The owners of Royalbreakfast.com were able to spread the word fairly quickly.

Finkelstein: I agree. Right on the site’s front page, you see how many Facebook likes and how many tweets. Social media certainly plays a large role, but not just social media. Websites that cover interesting stores and products will talk about Royalbreakfast.com. You almost create an affiliate model for yourself. If I’m tweeting about Royalbreakfast.com and my followers and people who check me out online see it, they may then go ahead and check out the site as well.

PEC: Let’s move on to the third example.

Finkelstein: The third example [is a game site], Angry Birds. I think it’s the number one grossing iPhone iOS app or game. There’s a huge cult following around Angry Birds. It’s difficult to win but very easy to play. I’m a big fan of the guys over at Rovio and Angry Birds.

AngryBirds.com

One thing I thought was really neat was that they created “Angry Birds Seasons.” What it does is when you download your updates, you’re notified that there’s a new Angry Birds update, and you download it. Let’s say it’s a couple of weeks before Easter, you’ll actually get Angry Birds Easter Edition, and if it’s a couple of weeks before another holiday, you’ll get the holiday edition. A couple of weeks before Halloween, you’ll get the Halloween edition.

So now, on my iPhone, I have the Angry Birds Halloween version. I have the Angry Birds Easter version. Pushing out new and compelling levels and tying them to seasonality has been very effective for Angry Birds. What Angry Birds has done by providing different seasons, levels, and elements of their game based on seasons, seasonality, and holidays means that every time I see an Angry Birds update, I’m going to download it. I’m really excited to see what the 4th of July version of Angry Birds, for example, looks like.

PEC: Some of the changes that you’re referring to involve development time to make those changes or to alter a site to capture a seasonal trend or a seasonal event. How is a smaller merchant supposed to do that?

Finkelstein: You don’t need to be Ice.com and have a huge payroll and have a huge staff and a lot of money to have great-looking sites. The barriers to entry in ecommerce have decreased to the point that you can buy one theme, for example, on a hosted platform that lets you change products, headers, and images. You’d be very surprised how easy it is to modify and move from one season to the next.

PEC: Do you have any tips for our readers on capitalizing on seasonal trends?

Finkelstein: One of the things that is interesting is novelty. Just changing your banner and the color is cheap and easy. Making very small modifications, such as changing the color, can add a lot of novelty and increase customer engagement.

The second thing is getting ready [for holidays and special events] far in advance. If Valentine’s Day is February 14, by January 1, you should have a site up and running. You should have your Valentine’s Day site up there.

The third thing that I think is really important is adjusting your website or creating something custom. So, again, the Royal Wedding. The world’s attention was on the Royal Wedding, and The Royal Breakfast Company created something so different, so custom. They took a totally different angle on the Royal Wedding and created a cereal with a Royal Wedding theme. That’s very powerful.