WIth 3 bank holiday weekends in one month about to hit the UK, retailers could be forgiven if they are a little concerned about sales. Some sectors may see reductions in spend, but it’s likely that others including the home and garden sectors will benefit from a sales spike as consumers have more available time and get started on projects and gardening in their time off.
We would normally be expecting two bank holiday weekends in May, but the additional date to mark the Coronation of the new King means we’ll have two bank holidays in a row followed by another at the end of the month.
According to eBay, Home & Garden categories are likely to see surges in searches, backed up by eBay Ads insights from previous bank holidays, where searches for ‘sunlounger’ rose by a massive 221% over the course of the long weekend between the 29th-31st of May 2021. Searches for ‘deck chair’ and ‘garden sofa’ also surged by 197% and 115%, respectively, in the same timeframe.
eBay also highlight that the Bank Holiday weekends are a great opportunity to run sales and promotions, with a reminder of the eBay promotional tools you can use. They could help to increase traffic to your listings and improve conversion rates.
- Coded Coupon: Create and share your own discount codes for buyers.
- Multi-buy: Encourage customers to order more of the same listing with reduced prices for bigger orders. Sellers can see their sales increase up to 10% when using Multi-buy.*
- Offer to Buyers and Best Offer: Engage your interested buyers by offering a reduced price on your listing or giving them the opportunity to make their best offer.
- Order discount: Encourage customers to increase their order size with reduced prices for higher quantities or orders over a certain threshold.
- Promoted Listings: Boost visibility for your listings in prominent placements across the eBay network.
- Sale Event + Markdown: Create a Sale Event for in demand items or to offer reduced prices on part of your inventory. Show customers before and after prices with Markdown.
It’s also worth noting that the May bank holidays won’t be included as dispatch dates or shown as estimated delivery dates on eBay UK.
