Black Friday: Tips to prepare your E-commerce
In this guide, we are looking at what you need to do, to get your E-Commerce store ready for Black Friday.
On 26th November, it is time for Black Friday, one of the biggest shopping days of the year and the start of holiday shopping. Black Friday is part of Black Week, or Cyber Week, as it’s also called. Black week generally starts on the Monday before Black Friday, 22nd November, and extends to Cyber Monday, 29th November this year. Some stores also have sales that start even earlier, and/or end later than Cyber Monday.
Black Friday will soon be upon us, and ecommerce retailers will be doing their best to get the most from their Black Friday marketing and fulfillment strategies. Failure to do so at such a competitive time can lead to lost revenue and smaller profits.
We can’t be certain about much these days, but one thing is for sure: the buying behaviour in the future will rely heavily on E-Commerce.
E-Commerce Black Friday statistics
- In 2019, total retail spending during Black Friday equaled 8.6 billion British pounds, the highest among many other countries in Europe.
- 100 million consumers shopped online, an increase of 8% year-on-year.
- 49% of consumers shop online more now than they did pre-COVID-19.
- 52% of shoppers took advantage of early deals, often starting in October.
How to prepare your eCommerce for Black Friday – Tips:
1. Determine your business’s goals
Every guide on how to create a marketing budget will say that you must establish your business’s goals — and it’s true! You need to know what you want to achieve, so you can set a budget that allows you to achieve those goals.
You can set goals that focus on:
- Earning more sales
- Increasing leads
- Earning more subscribers
- Increasing brand awareness
- And more
When you set your business’s goals, make sure they’re specific and smart. You don’t want to set a goal like “increase sales.” It won’t give you a precise target to work towards and achieve.
Instead, set a goal like “Increase sales by 20% by the end of the year” This goal is easily measurable and gives your team something precise to achieve. It’ll also give you a concrete reference point when budgeting for marketing because you know how much you want to increase sales by and the timeline for achieving that increase versus just knowing that you want to increase sales.
If you want to know how to prepare a marketing budget properly, start by adding your overall business goals so you can invest in the right marketing methods to help you reach your goals.
2. Plan ahead to ensure Black Friday and Cyber Monday success
Many people and companies wait too long to start thinking about one of the most important online sales of the year. By consistently engaging with your target audience throughout the year, you can keep your brand top of mind when your customers are deciding which Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales to take advantage of.
Customers start looking for deals in October
Start early: shoppers start looking and planning for deals in October. Get the word about your Black Friday deals out to your customers as early in the season as you can by planning ahead. The sooner they know about your offers, the better positioned they will be to take advantage of them. And the more revenue you will bring in.
Test and ensure your website is ready
Make sure your site is ready for Black Friday by checking for potential faults. Check if the site can handle the traffic expected during the whole event prior to publishing the deals.
At Vindicta Digital we research the best e-commerce system for you that provides speed of access and peak usability for your consumer so that you can offer a wide range of services efficiently.
3. Get Your Store Mobile Ready Ahead of Black Friday
The mobile experience has shown steady growth over the years, with past Black Friday statistics showing an increasing affinity for “on the go” browsing and purchases.
It is particularly important to get on Google’s good side (especially during Black Friday weekend) as they penalise those sites who they don’t deem mobile-friendly. And while being top of their search results should always be your aim, being pushed down during the busy sales season could cost you greatly.
Google’s mobile friendly test makes it easy to do a quick once-over of your site and identify any pain points that need optimising. All you have to do to check is insert your URL and they analyse the rest.
4. Offer several payment methods
Did you know that 12% of online shoppers cancelled their last purchase because it wasn’t possible to pay in the way they wanted to?
The more payment options you offer, the more likely you are to appeal to a wider audience. The easier you make it for people to pay you, the more likely it is that you will have more money coming in.
Payment methods worth trying and implementing are:
- Klarna
Through Klarna, a Swedish payment and shopping service for E – Commerce sites, online businesses and stores increased their gross sales by 46% to $56 billion in 2020.
- PayPal
PayPal is a global online payment business allowing users to make payments and money transfers online; the service is often considered the leader of the online and mobile payment market. According to Statista, there are 403 million active PayPal users across the world right now in 2021.
5. Plan Everything in Your Content Calendar
It hardly makes sense to glide into Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend without a game plan.
As you start to post your content pieces now to build SEO, meticulously track and draw up a plan of how you can deploy that content across organic social platforms, email newsletters, or syndication efforts in the weeks and months ahead. At Vindicta Digital Marketing Agency , our team of content marketing experts can help out in not only content creation but also content optimisation.
Your Black Friday/Cyber Monday E-Commerce sales hinge on the way you refine your content strategy and devise a detailed execution plan. While it’s not too late to start building content for the end of November, it’s best to act sooner rather than later. For more content marketing strategy and tips, reach out to Vindicta Digital and book your consultation.