According to the national retail federation, who keeps numbers on this stuff and helps people plan for the year. (This is for the U.S. - does the U.K. have something similar?) these were the top 10 spending events for 2017:
I’m glad I checked. I never even thought about ‘back to school’ and ‘back to college’ shopping, and never EVER did I think it was competitive with the winter holidays.
According to the article on back to school and college shopping, over half of the consumers plan to shop in a department store. Online shopping is 4th place after discount and clothing stores, and most people plan to start their shopping about a month in advance.
In fact back to college spending hit an all time high in 2017. So back to colllege and back to school spending combine seem to beat out holiday shopping by a lot. And it’s a loong season.
So we’re talking about a steady season from August through September, then maybe a drop in October, and then things start heating up again in November through the holidays.
I found a few relevant articles about analytics around the holidays:
Preparing for the Holidays – Part I: Connecting Your Load Testing with Revenue Metrics
3 Things eCommerce Sites Need to Do When Preparing for the Holidays
These articles focus on load testing, A/B testing, and optimization.
But look! When we get to back to school shopping, the needs might change a little:
Is your site ready for back-to-school shopping sprees?
Performance is still an issue of course. But to illustrate the difference, and make my point, I will cherry pick a few facts from the report card. 
“The top stressors are shipping costs (57%), out-of-stock inventory (51%) and not being able to see or test products before buying them (50%)”
On day 13 I talked about shipping costs and making sure there were no surprises.
Also, this type of shopping involves a lot of people buying the SAME THINGS, i.e. stationery, backpacks, etc. So the second complaint above makes sense. We need to make sure inventory count is working correctly. If X items are bought then X items should be deducted from inventory. If we go below a certain threshold, the merchant needs to know it’s time to get/order/make more of whatever it is they are selling.
The last item is a good one as well. There should be pictures of the item to purchase - and good ones. Preferably multiple from different angles or some sort of a rotatable view. We need to make sure all these work (if they exist).
“Nearly 1 in 5 (17%) plan to shop using their smartphones or tablets.”
“Millennials are the most likely to shop online for back to school.”
So definitely mobile testing!
- Dave K