What is Seasonality (Past Engagement)?
Seasonality is how engagement for a keyword moved up and down throughout the year. When did shopper interest go up, when did it come down, and when did it just sit there. Now we show you over a year's worth of activity for every keyword.

One of the keys to success on Etsy is understanding what's happening on Etsy (where you sell), not the internet as a whole (where Etsy is just a little blip). Seasonality allows you to check the engagement history for Etsy keywords at any time for any keyword. 

You might use it to help answer questions like: 

Remember, timing is everything and you need your listings to be in the right places at the right times. Seasonality in Marmalead works perfectly to solve this challenge!

How Do I use Seasonality?
The first challenge is to prepare your listings for the keywords buyers will be searching soon. Seasons drive a lot of shopper motivation. Even if your product is desirable all year, buyers usually need it for different reasons in different seasons. For example, we drink water all year, but selling water in the cold winter months with a sales pitch about how hot it is outside will likely fall flat. 

Let’s say we’re in the fall season, things are great, and sales are strong. The reality is the season will eventually end and we need to move onto the next one. Ideally BEFORE we wonder where all the buyers have gone. 

Solving that means dropping the keywords buyers are no longer searching and moving onto the next season AT THE RIGHT TIME. 

In the above examples we can clearly see where both the Fall (first image) and New Year (second image) seasons ramp up and down. If these were our target keywords, we’d use this information to decide in October to move from our Fall keywords to our New Year keywords. We’d do this because Fall is dropping off in October and New Year is ramping up making for a nice handoff without a full slump in the shop. 

Remember, seasonality isn’t just for the big seasons. Demand fluctuations occur in all markets. Let’s take yoga jewelry (image below) as an example. Let’s say its demand isn’t directly driven by a major season (like winter or fall). Demand still goes up and down through the year and we can use this information to predict sales so we have enough inventory to sell and not so much that we’re overly invested in it. 

Pro Tip:
Knowing what your customer is shopping for helps you sell them coordinating products. We know March is a peak time for yoga jewelry so that’s a hint that other yoga related products are likely in demand at that time too. Look into related keywords and get great insights into other product lines to develop! 

What is Forecasting (Future Engagement)?
Forecasting is the sibling to Seasonality. While Seasonality is looking at the history of engagement for the keyword, Forecasting is looking forward through the next three months. 

We use an advanced algorithm that looks at all of our historical data for a keyword, applies some pretty cool math, and builds out a three month forecast for that keyword.

How do I use Forecasting (Future Engagement)?
Forecasting fits right in with Seasonality and we show it on the same graph (where the bars turn white). Forecasting helps us see whether or not a particular trend is on its way out, or if it will continue trending upward.

It also helps us with the timing of when to apply seasonal keywords and in forecasting demand THIS year because it’s not always the same as last year. 

The Forecasting algorithm gives you a look at the next three months with 99% accuracy. So go ahead and take a peek into your keyword's future!

​Do you have more questions about Seasonality and Forecasting? Reach out to us at Success@Marmalead.com