E-commerce Seller: How to Succeed in Your 2025 Summer Sales

The 2025 summer sales kick off on Wednesday June 25 and run until Tuesday July 22. For all e-tailers, this period, governed by summer sales regulations, is a highlight in the sales calendar. It’s an opportunity to boost sales, build customer loyalty and attract new buyers. It’s a key moment when consumers are equipping themselves for vacations, outfitting their exteriors or renewing their wardrobes. Certain categories benefit particularly from this seasonal dynamic: fashion, garden, home, leisure, high-tech and travel equipment. Good news: you still have a few weeks to prepare for the 2025 summer sales. Take the opportunity to get a head start, as competition is even fiercer at this time of year

Summer sales, a decisive moment for your e-commerce sales

Online summer sales are always eagerly awaited, and for you they represent a tremendous opportunity for growth. In France, 54% of consumers plan to buy during the sales¹. Unlike other online promotional events such as Black Friday or flash promotions, which last 24 hours or just a few days, summer sales are spread over several weeks. They also involve many more items. And several other factors reinforce the commercial potential of summer sales:

• An active clientele, in search of bargains and more inclined to buy during this period.
• Higher average shopping baskets: consumers take advantage of discounts to treat themselves to products they might not normally have considered, especially higher-end items.
• Increased prominence on marketplaces: during sales, platforms like Rakuten adapt their interface, deploy dedicated banners, send out targeted CRM campaigns and offer special operations (boosted cashback, exclusive coupons, product prominence). These key marketing actions enable you to gain visibility without any extra effort on your part.

Good to know: summer sales are also an opportunity to sell off your end-of-collection or surplus stock. These products are more likely to be snapped up when consumers are eagerly awaiting promotions.

Five tips for a successful summer sale

A successful summer sale can’t be improvised. What you need is a powerful, properly deployed strategy to optimize your sales and reinforce your brand image.

Anticipate your catalog and prices

Thorough preparation is the key to a successful operation. First step: analyze your market by identifying trendy products in your category. Use tools like Google Trends to spot seasonal expectations. Next, compare your offers with those of your competitors. For example, if you sell garden furniture, target the models most in demand during previous summer periods.

Next step: set strategic prices. Don’t sell at a loss, but offer attractive discounts while preserving your margins. Adapt discounts according to stock levels. Your best prices should be on the most popular items, or on unsold items that need to be disposed of.

Finally, be proactive in your communications. Plan key moments by creating a promotional calendar: launch, relaunch, last markdown. This organization enables you to align your e-mailings, visuals and publications with your customers’ expectations.

Good to know: if you sell on Rakuten, your dedicated E-Commerce Consultant can provide you with a list of products to highlight, advise you on pricing and support you in your communications. Don’t hesitate to ask!

Choose the best promotions

Your promotional mechanics must be clear, attractive and well thought-out. Your goal: to capture consumers’ attention. The important thing is to choose the right lever at the right time, and with this in mind, two formats stand out:

• Discount coupons, with limited duration or in restricted quantities, to play on scarcity and create a sense of urgency that generates sales.
• A temporary increase in cashback to encourage purchases while building loyalty.

Adapt your customer service to sales

During the summer sales, customer inquiries multiply: product information, order tracking or returns… More than ever, your e-commerce customer service must be ready. The right strategy: train your teams on products, delivery conditions and refund procedures. Once they’re up to speed, they’ll respond faster and more accurately. Another option: rely on tools to automate responses to recurring questions: chatbots, help centers or contact forms. Properly designed, they can absorb a large proportion of the flow of requests.

Let’s take the example of a shoe retailer: during sales periods, returns due to size errors are more frequent. By anticipating this problem with a clear size guide, a reassuring confirmation e-mail and a simplified returns procedure, you can significantly improve the customer experience.

Optimize inventories and deliveries

During the sales season, order volumes increase. That’s why your e-commerce logistics and inventory management need to run smoothly. To avoid delays or stock-outs, make sure you secure every step of the way:

• Order preparation: packaging, labeling and handling to handle large volumes quickly, everything must be ready.
• Maintain delivery times, even in busy periods.
• Reliability of carriers, thanks to trusted partners who ensure regular, trouble-free service.
• Management of product returns. Please note: returns are often more numerous during sales periods.

To meet this challenge, outsourcing your delivery management can be an excellent option. Rakuten Fulfillment Network, for example, takes care of all your e-commerce logistics. With RFN, you benefit from :

• Secure storage of your goods in partner warehouses.
• A high-performance logistics partner to ensure rapid preparation and dispatch of your orders.
• Reduced costs and mental workload during sales.

When you entrust your shipments to RFN, you save time so you can concentrate on what really matters: selling

How to optimize your traffic acquisition during the summer sales?

During the summer sales, it’s important to make good offers, but above all to ensure their visibility. Traffic doesn’t just happen: you have to generate it, amplify it and then convert it. Our advice: prepare a well-structured acquisition strategy as early as possible to capture attention at the right time, on the right channels.

Optimize your search engine optimization (SEO)

SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s essential in e-commerce, especially during peak periods such as sales. An effective SEO strategy is built upstream, well in advance of commercial events such as sales. It’s not enough to add a few keywords at the last minute. It’s about structuring your entire site to enhance its visibility over the long term: not just the product pages, but also the “About”, “Contact”, legal and main category pages. Here are a few tips for improving your site:

• Update all your content, especially your product sheets, with targeted queries such as “2025 summer sales”, “garden promotions” or “women’s fashion bargains”.
• Create a dedicated sales page, well structured and easily accessible from your home page or menu.
• Optimize your title tags and meta descriptions to capture attention and generate more clicks from search results.

Many e-tailers would like to increase their visibility without mobilizing major technical resources. Integrating a marketplace can be an effective solution. At Rakuten, for example, a dedicated SEO team continuously improves content, page structure and product data. As a result, the platform attracts over 15 million unique visitors every month – a superb opportunity to improve your visibility.

Expand your communication channels

Your traditional communication tools are powerful assets for generating traffic and strengthening customer engagement:

• E-mailing remains one of the most effective channels. Plan a series of campaigns before, during and at the end of the sales. Segment your audiences to personalize your messages according to their buying behavior.
• Social networks are essential for relaying your offers: static publications, stories, reels or sponsored videos… anything goes to generate interest. Be careful: keep your graphic charter consistent, but specific to sales.
• Your e-commerce site or marketplace store should reflect the spirit of the sales right from the home page: banners, countdowns, filters by promotion… Highlight discounts where buying decisions are made.

Good to know: on a marketplace like Rakuten, these efforts are partly mutualized. You can use banners, dedicated e-mails and web push campaigns sent to millions of potential buyers. As a result, you benefit from enhanced visibility without having to deploy a complex strategy yourself. It saves you time

Generate traffic with advertising campaigns

Paid campaigns provide immediate visibility. Here are three tips for successful advertising during the sales season:

• Choose the right channels for your target. Google Ads helps capture purchase intent. Influencer partnerships or video formats on Instagram or TikTok, meanwhile, allow you to showcase your products in a more inspiring way.
• Anticipate your budget and schedule. The best campaigns are those that have been thought through in advance: analyzing competitors, setting objectives, testing messages before the official launch of the sales.
• Optimize your performance as you go along. Follow your campaigns in real time: adjust audiences, adapt visuals, carry out A/B tests. Every detail can make a difference.

Join a marketplace for a successful summer sale

If you’re not yet present on a marketplace like Rakuten, now’s the time to take the plunge. Our strength: a committed buyer base that’s particularly active during peak shopping periods. Rakuten attracts over 15 million unique visitors every month. In addition to being highly anticipated, summer sales are prepared and promoted. Unlike an isolated e-commerce site, a store on Rakuten benefits from shared advertising campaigns, powerful visibility tools (cashback, coupons, banners, etc.) and a volume effect that only a major player can offer. This channel is a powerful lever for attracting new customers, generating sales and promoting your products in a secure environment. Creating your online store on Rakuten is fast, intuitive and you benefit from the support of our teams. With integrated logistics solutions, dedicated technical support and a simplified interface for managing your products and campaigns, everything is within your reach! So don’t let this opportunity pass you by: get started today and be ready for June 25

Sources :

¹YouGov