5 Min Read
This year Black Friday falls on November 25th, close to the end of the month, a month before Christmas and as always, promising to be a day of pure shopping madness. Last year it was estimated that in the UK alone, there was just under £1 billion spent over the Black Friday weekend.
With November 25th fast approaching, you might be running around like a headless chicken, trying to get your E-Commerce business ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Instead of losing sleep over the busiest day in the shopper’s calendar, take a look at our checklist and make sure your business is ready!
Take a look at last year’s results (unless you are a new company, then skip this section, listen to the Oasis song and move on to the next step).
Not only will a review of how last year’s Black Friday went help your business, it will let you start keeping regular reviews of the busiest shopping period to show you what progress you are making. Instead of guessing which products sold, which didn’t, which parts of your website worked, or where the consumer journey was failed on your part, keep track with regular reviews.
Take a look at your analytics, talk to your team and really build a clear picture of the progress you made the year before.
If you really want your company to succeed during Black Friday, you don’t want people to be asking what you sell, what you do or where you are, you want them to be saying, “oh yes, I’ve heard about you!”
One of the best ways to get ahead of your competitors on Black Friday is to start building awareness with a campaign. Whether that means a brilliantly designed online campaign or simply sending Bob from sales to stand out in the street shouting about Black Friday, make it work for you.
From humorous email campaigns, “Amy was right, Go back to black, with a Black Friday Sale this year” to bold, bright and sales driven campaigns, you need to make sure that you are standing out from everyone else.
One of the best ways to get your customers involved is to launch social media adverts, campaigns and improve your presence. The last thing you want is no one being excited about your product. Even if you sell portable toilets, or cat litter, there are people out there that are bound to be excited about it.
You might be wondering what exactly social media can do for you, the answer is quite alot! You want brand exposure, at a cheaper cost than pay-per-click, and the ability to broadcast your content over as many channels as possible, you need social media!
Investing in a great social media campaign can not only advertise your brand, it can place it in front of the right target audience as well as allow you to build a greater relationship with your customers.
Thrive on Black Friday by thriving across all social media sites.
Abandoned shopping carts are a regular occurrence. Customers end up finding a better deal elsewhere, realising their bank card is not their friend, or losing interest in their product.
44% of customers abandoned their carts because of the shipping costs being too high. Obviously, if you are selling priceless arty statues that might take a bit of packing up before shipping, then these costs are hard to avoid. However, if you want to make a good impact on your customers, think about offering a reduced or non-existent shipping cost on top of your Black Friday sale.
On top of this, if your customer’s cart is still abandoned after 24hours you can even send them an email saying simply, “come back” like a lot of other companies have. These email reminders are great at reigning in those buyers on the fence about purchasing, a gentle push in the right direction never did anyone any harm.
No, we are not talking about an exam, GCSE’s are long gone and we are not asking you to redo them (Don’t worry!!). But, once everything with your site is up and running, your office elves are ready for the big day and the campaign has been launched, it is time to test, test and then test your site some more.
Try some trial purchases, check your analytics, talk to your website developers, and make everything as perfect as possible before the madness of November 25th begins.
On top of this checklist of last minute must-do’s before Black Friday, there are a couple of things to consider that can improve your E-Commerce site. It might be too late to implement them for this years Black Friday, but that doesn’t mean you should overlook them.
One of the many reasons that E-Commerce sites fail over the Black Friday period is that their sites are not mobile friendly. When you are on the bus, searching for your new bikini, bike or bath tub, you want to be able to purchase it there and then. You really will lose out if your customers have to get home, turn the computer on and then order from there instead of being to purchase on the go.
According to research, it has been said that 99% of shoppers do not purchase at first glance. That moment of indecisiveness can cost you and your company a lot of money. If you have Mary shopping online for all her Christmas gifts, she isn’t necessarily going to want to spend all her money all at once. She is going to want to shop around a little, have a couple of glasses of wine and THEN make her decision about what to buy the kids for Christmas.
If your website has a wish list feature you can not only save your customers the time and effort of scrolling back through all your products again when they revisit, you can also keep them interested for as long as possible and remind them of the products they were browsing weeks before. Father Christmas was on to something asking all the kids to make lists!
If you are struggling to make your website or campaign work and Black Friday is looming, contact Digital Next and we will get our experts on the case, but be quick – There’s only a few weeks left before the BIG cyber sale weekend!
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