Somehow, it’s October, which means eCommerce businesses are gearing up for one of the biggest promotional periods of the year. Black Friday is an opportunity for businesses to boost their sales and for shoppers to find great deals. Due to Covid-19 shopping habits have changed so it’s important to prepare for the inevitable rush and ensure your eCommerce site is fully functional for it! Read our Black Friday tips, taken from years of learnings along the way.
Start planning in advance
Spend time on your Black Friday eCommerce strategy. Plan the marketing and promotions around the event. Create hype in the buildup to Black Friday and market the products that you will have on promotion. Deals typically run through the weekend until Cyber Monday, so pace your promotions and communicate this with your audience and your web development team.
Give your customers good reason to come back
Scale your customer service team as excellent customer service and support during this period is key. Offer prompt and personal support by integrating a live chat function on your site. This will create a memorable shopping experience that will bring your customers back to your site.
Get your products and inventory ready
Carefully choose the products you want to promote in advance and forecast demand. Stress test your website, and order and inventory management systems thoroughly to ensure they can cope with the volume on Black Friday. Organise your featured sales and discounts on your eCommerce site and ensure you have implemented a simple buyer journey that will convert those sales. Create targeted content to make sure your customers can find what you’re selling. Hero images, visuals and copy should be highlighted clearly on product pages or as banners on your home page.
Optimise! Optimise! Optimise!
Prepare a stable, scalable environment so your website can function optimally. Scale servers so they can handle a surge in traffic and create an environment where visitors can easily convert to customers. Nobody wants a slow loading site or a site crash on Black Friday!
Create a slick sales funnel for Black Friday promotions by improving navigation and help customers find what they are looking for. Review your checkout process and make sure there are no barriers between your customer and their purchase. Ensure everything on your website intentionally leads your visitors straight towards the end goal – purchasing your products and/or services.
Have a backup plan
Prepare for the worst and put contingency plans in place. Take time to think about worse-case scenarios, they are so much easier to handle during planning than trying to troubleshoot in the midst of things!
· Check third-party apps and API’s are all functioning optimally
· Implement a full backup strategy
· Have a Web Application Firewall (WAF) in place to block unwanted traffic and DDoS attacks
· Set up an uptime monitor so you can monitor site performance throughout the period
Lastly, don’t plan anything else during the week of Black Friday, be on standby! By taking these Black Friday tips into consideration you are bound to have a successful 2021 Black Friday.
Get in touch with your web development team and get eCommerce ready for Black Friday 2021!
