Is it time to have a Sale?

A question you may find yourself asking is "when should I have a sale?" "is now the right time for a sale?"

Well first of all, what are your most popular days? If you're not sure and don't have the time to do the statistics yourself, as I mentioned in the last post: Sundays & Mondays. But if you do have the time to figure that out (refer to the last post for the how-to). So try to have your sale on your popular days, days you know people are already buying and may buy 2 things instead of 1 if you're having a sale. So maybe you're having a really slow month and could use a few extra sales; try to make sure you plan your sale for your most popular days, or a full 3 day weekend. Try to have a sale for at least 3 days to give people time to find out about the sale and pick out the things they want. 

Secondly: Holidays. Holidays are a really great excuse to have a sale. Seasonal sales work as well for example "Fall Sale". Shopping Holidays are the most important of those of course including "boxing day" and "back to school". If you don't know when all of the holidays are, look it up and mark it on your calendar to set up the sale at the appropriate time. 

Having a shop sale or even a sale on select items is a great way of selling off some old stock, while also making some money. It's also a good way to bring in new buyers that may have been a little too nervous to buy when it was priced at x amount but now that they bought it on sale and trust your product they might spend the real money next time.

But remember: Don't have too many sales. If you find yourself having 1-2 sales a month, people will notice and start only shopping during your sales. So remember to space out your sales appropriately so that people will continue buying on regular days and just be excited when they luck out it's on sale. 

It may also be interesting to pay attention and see if something only sells when it's on sale. In the scenario, maybe re-price that item a little lower than before and it may start selling when not on sale. 

How much should you discount on your sale? Well that's really up to you. Only you know how much it cost you for those items and how much profit you are making. Just make sure you are still making enough profit that you are satisfied and happy when they sale is over. 

Have you thought about having a "Sale" or "Clearance" section in your shop as well? So instead of having continuous shop sales, you can also have a few marked down items in a sale / clearance section for the items you are trying to clear out. For example: Last season's collection, a product that didn't do very well but have lots left over, items your just sick of looking at, and so on. 

Keep your stock moving. People love seeing new things, and they also love getting a good deal. Keep that all in mind when pricing. Next we will chat about pricing items. 

(notice how there are out of season cards in their sale section)