Best Practices for Managing Seasonality in eCommerce

Managing Seasonality in eCommerce: Stress-Free Best Practices for Small Businesses

Running an eCommerce business during peak season is both stressful and exhilarating. The influx of orders helps your business end the year on a positive note, although fulfilling these orders and organizing inventory is far from simple. 

Sales spikes, supply chain disruptions, and disorganized inventory can throw off even the best Q4 eCommerce plans. That’s where smart tools and a clear strategy make all the difference. By combining practical best practices with technologies like QR code inventory management, inventory management software, and AI-powered platforms like Scanlily, growing brands can handle the chaos with confidence.

9 Best Practices for Surviving Busy eCommerce Seasons

Whether you see sales spikes in the summertime or leading up to Christmas, seasonality requires a solid plan and the right tools. Inventory moves faster during this time, and high order volumes can interrupt your business without a strategy in place. Follow these best practices to stay organized and agile during your busy season. 

1. Audit and Declutter Before Peak Season

Before the rush season starts, take time to organize your inventory. This process is like spring cleaning for your stockroom, reducing clutter so you start with a clean slate when peak season arrives. 

Begin by identifying slow-moving or discontinued SKUs and clearing them out to make room for high-demand items. Label what’s staying with a QR code inventory system like Scanlily, so every product has a digital record and you can easily locate it. 

Attach supplier details, pricing notes, or reorder links to each QR page to make reordering easier later. With Scanlily’s AI image recognition, you can even batch-scan a shelf or storage area to identify what’s missing or mislabeled. 

Adding Items to Your Inventory Using AI Image Recognition

2. Analyze Last Year’s Data

Make smarter decisions this year based on last year’s data. While customer demand changes every year, your past performance is still a good predictor of what’s coming this season. 

Before you reorder products or plan new promotions, review last year’s numbers to understand what worked and what didn’t. Review these key metrics to make data-informed decisions:

• Sales volume by SKU and category
• Sell-through rate
• Stockouts and backorders
• Supplier lead times
• Return rates and reasons
• Gross margins by product
• Promotional lift
• Customer behavior data, including cart abandonment rates and repeat purchases

Before the busy season, create a system for logging this data as you go. With Scanlily, you can attach notes and performance history directly to each product record, turning this year’s data into next year’s playbook.

https://www.scanlily.com/en/videos/attachments_video 

3. Coordinate With Your Suppliers

Strong supplier coordination will help buffer against stockouts. Follow these tips to coordinate with suppliers: 

• Share rolling forecasts (by SKU): Send a 4–8 week view with weekly updates to your vendors. Flag priority items and agree on how much you need for buffer stock. In Scanlily, you can attach forecasts and spec sheets to each item record so vendors see the latest version.
• Label upstream: Ask suppliers to apply your labels at pack-out. Provide a simple guide for inventory QR codes so cartons arrive ready to scan. When goods arrive, your team just scans and updates the status without manual entry.
• Create a vendor scorecard: How are your suppliers doing? Track OTIF, defects, and lead-time variability for every supplier to spot dips in performance. If they consistently fail to produce, consider seeking out a different supplier before peak season to protect your business.

Seasonal success starts with strong partnerships. Communicate with your suppliers early about expected order spikes, lead times, and restocks. Using QR code inventory management tools like Scanlily keeps everyone on the same page by providing real-time visibility into what’s available, what’s on the way, and what needs to be replenished.

4. Train Your Team

Whether it’s your return policies or inventory management software, everyone on your team needs to understand your processes before peak season. Simply training employees or contractors during onboarding isn’t enough; they need targeted training tailored to the nuances of peak season. 

If you make any changes for this season, like more lenient return policies, educate your team about them, including the dates the policy is active. Walk them through how to scan, label, and locate items using your QR code inventory management solution, so that everyone creates accurate records in the system. 

Since peak season will be busy, give employees ready access to training materials after the fact. This can be as simple as a shared Google Drive or as in-depth as step-by-step training videos. 

5. Make Accurate Demand Forecasts 

Accurate forecasting is essential for any eCommerce business, but the margin for error is much tighter for small businesses. Incorrect forecasts will either drown your capacity in excess stock or harm customer relationships with backorders.

Demand forecasting is a precise science that requires a lot of adjustment. Start by analyzing your past sales data to identify clear seasonal trends, not just overall volume, but which SKUs are likely to surge. Layer in external factors like holidays, promotions, and regional weather patterns that affect buying behavior.

Once you’ve built your baseline, use Scanlily to track real-time stock movements. Our QR code inventory system simplifies data collection: every scan automatically updates item status so that you can base your forecasts on fresh, accurate information. 

6. Maintain a Buffer

While you don’t want too much inventory on hand, a buffer is essential during high-demand seasons. Safety stock protects your eCommerce business from shipping delays, sudden demand surges, or supplier issues. 

The trick is striking the right balance: holding onto enough stock to cover surprises, without locking up too much capital in slow movers.

Calculate safety stock by reviewing your most volatile SKUs. Look at their average daily sales rate from peak months in the past. Multiply that by your supplier’s lead time plus a few days of cushion.

With Scanlily’s QR code inventory system, when someone scans an item and changes its quantity, the available stock updates in real time, giving you a clear view of what’s selling fastest. You can even attach notes or receipts directly to items, making it easy to understand why certain products are running low. You can also attach a Quantity Alert, which will notify you by email or push notification when a stock falls to a level that requires reordering. 

7. Consider Bundles 

Bundles are a clever way to manage seasonality as a growing eCommerce business. Grouping complementary products helps you move slower items alongside your top sellers, freeing up shelf space and improving cash flow during busy seasons. 

This includes bundles like:

• “Gifts for her/him”
• “Starter set”
• “Buy more, save more”
• “Gift-ready”
• “2025’s most-loved”

Shoppers love bundles, and they can help move more inventory out of storage. However, bundles require additional logistics. A QR code production tracking system makes it possible to give each bundle (known as a Container in Scanlily) its own QR tag. From there, Scanlily links to a detailed online page showing which individual SKUs the bundle includes, current stock levels, and sales history. When one component runs low, you’ll know instantly. 

8. Plan for Returns 

Returns are an inevitable part of eCommerce, especially after the holidays. Unfortunately, returns are both expensive and a logistical headache. The National Retail Federation (NRF) estimates return rates of 15.8% in 2025, which translates into $850 billion in goods returned this year alone. 

Returns peak during the holiday shopping season, so you need a plan to protect your margins and restock faster. Plan for returns by:

• Defining clear return windows and conditions. Make your policy easy to find and follow so customers are clear about the guidelines. 
• Designing a dedicated return workflow in your inventory management software. With Scanlily, you can assign each individual item a unique QR label, so when it comes back, a quick scan automatically updates its condition, restock status, and location.
• Adding notes to returns. QR code asset management makes it a cinch to attach notes or photos documenting damage or missing parts. Over time, this builds a clear data trail you can analyze to spot patterns (like which products have high return rates or quality issues).

As a small business, returns are challenging, but offering a streamlined returns process for customers encourages repeat business and positive reviews. Instead of letting returns catch you by surprise, expect as much as 20% of products to be returned, and build these costs into your pricing if needed.

9. Leverage AI (The Right Way)

AI can do a lot of heavy lifting for small businesses, but don’t use this technology just for the sake of it. Instead of replacing your processes with AI (which might not work for your business or customers), let this technology enhance how you do business. 

Consider using AI to: 

• Generate data-driven demand forecasts
• Identify inefficiencies in fulfillment
• Personalize product recommendations
• Optimize dynamic pricing
• Handle customer inquiries via chatbot

You don’t need a large team to use AI, either. With Scanlily’s AI-powered platform, you can identify and categorize products instantly by snapping a single photo. Our AI image recognition even separates multiple items in one image, creating individual entries automatically. That’s huge for small teams managing hundreds of SKUs.

Creating multiple items from one image

Seasonal success starts with simplicity

Seasonality is part of running an eCommerce business. But the stakes are even higher for growing companies. Prevent stockouts and keep your customers happy by implementing the right systems. From collaborating with vendors to learning from last year’s performance, the best practices in this guide will help you stay in control, no matter how fast orders come in.

Rely on Scanlily to get enterprise-level visibility without the hefty price tag. Whether you’re managing stock or packaging bundles, using QR codes to track inventory will help you focus less on logistics and more on making sales. 

Turn inventory chaos into clarity: Explore Scanlily’s features to get ahead this season.