Japan Golden Week (Golden Week) plays a significant role in Japanese culture. This article will explore how dropshipping is prominent in Golden Week E-commerce transactions to help you expand your business during that time. And we'll teach you how to convert the high traffic from Japan’s biggest holiday into order transactions for your store.
This article contains four parts:
1. The Brief History of Golden Week
2. The Scale of E-commerce Transactions during Golden Week
3. Recommended Products for the Golden Week
4. Online Marketing Strategies.
The Brief History of Golden Week
The importance of Golden Week
· Golden Week is the most important holiday in Japan. It influences the Japanese lifestyle and consumer behavior because of consecutive days of official holidays. It also has a huge impact on the economy, tourism, retail, and other industries.
· The Japanese are known for their busy work schedule and overtime culture, so Golden Week is rare for them. By that time, many companies will encourage staff to relax during Golden Week, making some take almost 7~10 days of relaxation. So, the Japanese will get away from it all to accompany the family or travel.
· Japanese will consume a lot during Golden Week. The mall will offer special deals. Gift shopping is hot because of the Kodomo no Hi (Children's Day in Japan). Also traveling shopping will drive the local economy, like buying souvenirs and experiencing local cuisine. But the most important thing is about E-commerce shopping boosting. Many Japanese are very tired from work and they prefer to rest at home while making online purchases, leading to a significant increase in sales on e-commerce platforms.
Main Holidays during the Golden Week
1. Shōwa Day (昭和の日): This holiday is for the commemoration of the Birthday of Emperor Showa. (Emperor Hirohito) (April 29, 1901) This is intended to reflect on the history of the Showa era.
2. Constitution Memorial Day (憲法記念日): This is for the Commemorates May 3, 1947, when the post-war Constitution of the State of Japan came into force.
3. Greenery Day (みどりの日): It aims to advocate getting close to nature and being thankful for it.
4. Children's Day (こどもの日): It is a holiday for Japanese boys (Daughters' Day is March 3rd). Traditionally, carp flags and samurai dolls are hung in homes to symbolize the healthy growth of children.
If the vacation is combined with a weekend, it may form a “super consecutive vacation” of up to 10 days. The Government sometimes adjusts its vacation strategy to make vacations more consistent and to encourage national leisure spending.
The Scale of E-commerce Transactions during Golden Week
The Scale of Transactions on Golden Week
Japan's Golden Week is one of the peak shopping periods of the year when consumers tend to make large purchases. In recent years, the market in Japan has risen obviously, especially in online shopping.
According to Data, More than 53% of households of two or more people in Japan have shopped online since 2023, and this continues to rise. The main reason is driven by the preference for online shopping by elders, the popularity of no-cash paying methods, and the huge impact of social media on consumers' decision-making. Japanese consumers spend about 135 USD every month and shop twice or three times a month.
Reasons Why Dropshipping Stands out in Golden Week
1. Strong market demand:
Consumers are more willing to spend money on shopping during the Golden Weeks, especially for leisure, travel, and family entertainment.
2. Stress-Free for Inventory:
The dropshipping model gives more flexibility in confronting the peak of demands during the holiday rather than stocking up in advance.
3. Quick Test in the Market:
It's a prime time to test your new products, optimize advertising, and increase brand exposure.
4. Social Media Boost:
Social media traffic will naturally increase during this period due to the surge in Golden Week traffic. Japanese consumers will increase the frequency of using social media and shopping on platforms during the Gloden Week. So it's easier to attract traffic through ad campaigns.
Recommended Products for the Golden Week
It's important to choose a good product that is selling in the Golden Weeks. Or you'll waste the precious traffic driven by Golden Week. So below is a list of products that I can offer you that can be sold during the Golden Week, most of them are more suitable for Japanese people's life and consumption habits, as well as being able to fulfill the characteristics of this festival.
Travel Essentials:
As I mentioned, lots of Japanese will travel at that time.
The popular: Luggage & Backpacks, Travel Accessories, and Outdoor Gear.
Home Essentials:
This is for customers who want to stay at home. They would spend a lot at this time to get more discounts.
The popular: Projectors, Coffee Makers, and Home Appliances.
Sun Protection:
The Japanese are big on sunscreen. They like white skin rather than the wheat-colored skin pursued by the Westerners.
The popular: Sunscreen & Skincare, Sunglasses, Sun Hats & Visors.
Online Marketing Strategy
Deals:
Before the holiday arrives, prepare your deals and coupons in advance. And you can share them on your website and social media, allowing customers to get them for shopping throughout the entire activity cycle. We usually place the open time a few days before the holiday starts and set the end time a few days after the holiday ends. This way your store event cycle will completely encompass the actual holiday time. This will allow you to maximize holiday traffic. Pay attention to sharing your deals and discounts on social media.
SEO & Keywords Improvement
SEO is also an important step for this. You shall lay out the keywords in advance because the whole time cycle of SEO optimization will be longer. By doing that, Google will give your page a higher rank. Customers' feedback will also be a key point for your page. In addition to its own website being reviewed by Google for compliance with quality content determinations, Google also reviews how long customers stay on your pages, bounce rates, and more. These tiny metrics will all affect the SEO metrics of your own webpage, and therefore the rankings!
After Google crawls the page, it also takes time to understand and judge the page. So that's one of the reasons why we deploy keywords in advance. We can add words like: "Golden Week Must-Haves", and "Must-Haves in traveling Japan" to cope with the high search volume during Golden Week.
What I want to emphasize again is page quality deciding everything. They determine whether or not you get indexed and whether or not your page is at the top. So please focus on the page quality. Do not make the behavior of stacking keywords!
SEM
Advertising strategy is an unavoidable piece of running a store, so how you use advertising during Golden Week will give your store a completely different experience.
First, picking a suitable platform is very important. The following are some platforms. And they have their unique feature. You can choose the social media platforms that have the greatest stickiness with your followers as your advertising platforms.
|
Facebook Ads |
Appeal to those who like to spend on impulse |
|
Google Ads |
· targets users with clear purchase intent to increase conversion rates |
|
Instagram Ads |
Suitable for promoting products with strong visual impact, such as travel goods, fashion items, etc. |
|
YouTube Ads |
· Japanese people like to watch short videos and can utilize video ads to attract more traffic. |
|
TikTok Ads |
A lot of young people on the platform, which lends itself to promoting holiday-specific products. |
|
Pinterest Ads |
Suitable for promoting visual products such as home furnishings, fashion, beauty, etc., especially for markets where the target audience is predominantly female users |
The Platforms to advertise
And how about the key points of strategy? First, using the holiday-themed material. Like the images, keywords, and copywriting related to the Golden Week. Things like “Golden Week Specials” and” Limited Time Offers” would be better. And puts in a limited-time offer: for example, “limited time 48 hours discount”, “buy one get one free”, etc., to create a sense of urgency and increase conversion. At the same time, make an A/B test to verify different materials, titles, and target audience to increase conversions. Retargeting is important, too. Target users who have visited the store but have not placed an order to increase the purchase rate. If you have enough budget, you can collaborate with local Japanese netizens or bloggers to promote your product. That will be beneficial to your brand trust.
So how do we target the audience accurately? First, you need to analyze popular shopping groups during Golden Week (e.g., families, travelers, young consumers). Then use Google Ads keyword bidding to target high-converting keywords such as “Golden Week Discounts”, “Children's Day Gifts” and “Travel Essentials”. Keywords. The social media interest could target users who like travel, fashion, and tech products. As for geo-targeting, you can optimize placement for popular consumer areas such as Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, and Hokkaido.
Finally, monitor your Ads. It will bring you more optimization. As for the basics of how advertising works, I won't go into much detail as these are all clichés. One thing I want to mention is to know about the shopping habits of Japanese customers, which will bring more motivation about how to adjust your advertising idea.