Anecdotally, a sunny bank holiday weekend is an e-tailer’s worst nightmare as shoppers flock outside to soak up the sun. A rainy weekend draws shoppers back indoors and onto online shopping sites. For one of our clients we decided to find the numbers behind the trend. Temperature, sun hours and rainfall are the main influencers on search activity when it comes to weather. While an increase in temperature and sun hours does mean a reduction in sales, the effect is more pronounced on click volumes: A 1°C rise in temperature equals a 2% reduction in clicks on average, and each extra hour of sun also decreases clicks by another 2%.
The “best” weather for e-tailers is indeed cold, wet weather. Rainfall has the biggest influence on both click and sales volumes as shoppers head indoors: Each extra millimetre of rainfall means an extra 4% of both clicks and sales volumes.
This trend is not true all the time; during the week when most people are in front of their work computer whatever the weather means the effects of weather are much less pronounced.
Despite some memorable mistakes by weather forecasters in the past, weather forecasting is reasonably accurate up to four days in the future. This information should be used when planning the weekend ahead’s marketing strategy and targets.