Using spring flowers to time your business cycle

With a mild winter so far the spring flowers are in full bloom here.

They save up their energy during the winter and have a burst of growth that brings a smile to everyone.

Spring is the time when I focus on new features in my Shopify apps.

Photosynthesis sadly doesn't work on software yet so it takes me longer than the flowers but the first few months after the holidays are great times for solid improvements.

2020 has brought mostly infrastructure improvements to make things fast, stable, and keep them secure. But in Repeat Customer Insights case those improvements have made it faster to develop some new reports I've been wanting to add.

All this is possible because I've found my annual cycle:

Major work can start at the end of winter and through spring, then a break for summer (lots of app sales in summer), followed by more work in autumn before a final stabilization for the winter holidays.

That's the same cycle for many Shopify stores. But there are always exceptions.

There are a few swimwear customers who start their busy season in late winter, through spring, and tapper off near mid-summer. Right now, in March, they are be thinking about stability and optimization to make sure they carve out the best season possible before sales slow down.

It might take a few years of business before you can notice your own cycles but if you want to shortcut it, look at your customer buying behavior. See when they are buying a lot, not just raw sales but in sales volume, AOV, and later purchase behavior.

Repeat Customer Insights' Cohort Report and Customer Purchase Latency Report can help you find those patterns, sometimes they'll be in stark black-and-white (well, purple-and-white because of the app's color scheme).

Eric Davis