Black Friday and Cyber Monday are huge opportunities for any ecommerce trader. Last year the total spend on online retail sites on Black Friday was £1.23 BILLION so it’s no surprise that this year more websites are set to get involved than ever before! If you’re one of these websites are you prepared?
We’ve asked our network of ecommerce retailers for their best tips to guarantee success, so that you can drive sales when Friday, 24th November rolls around.
1. Why wait?
There may be a date that everyone is expecting to grab deals but research from National Retail Federation suggests that shoppers start planning their Christmas purchases as early as October.
If you can use your website and social media to inform shoppers, this gives your customers advanced notice of the promotions set to come, they’re then able to research any upcoming purchases before returning to buy. This removes the feelings of knee jerk reactions or purchase guilt as they’ve made a conscious decision to take advantage of your fantastic deals.
2. Opportunities are everywhere
Changing a few prices on your website is all well and good, the main challenge however is to drive traffic to the relevant pages. If you’ve got an email list of previous customers that’s a fantastic tool to start teasing and posting sneak-peeks however if this isn’t available to you all is not lost.
Sit down and think of every possible communication routes available to you, Facebook adverts have incredible reach and depending upon what products you sell Facebook make it easy to reach specific demographics based upon interests. If you’re feeling particularly innovative Facebook will reward your adverts with a cheaper cost per click if you use video, so get recording.
3. Leaving so soon?
No website enjoys a 100% conversion rate and last year cart abandonment was as high as 65%. The challenge is to give yourselves the opportunity to re-target visitors even after they’ve left your site.
If you can grab an email address during their visit without it feeling like an inconvenience then you can use a tool like mail chimp to remind them of the products that they “forgot” to buy. If this isn’t possible though you should think about introducing the Facebook tracking pixel. Using this tech you can send adverts to visitors specific to the product / page you know they looked at.
4. Make it too good to be true!
A strategy that many website owners use to attract customers to their store is to offer a highly desirable product at a price that your competitors are unlikely to match. Even if you don’t make a profit on the purchase you’ve got a much better chance of repeat business from this customer and there’s also a chance they’ll pick up a few other items as they browse.
5. Price isn’t always enough
Although discounts are the name of the game, customers still expect a level of service and help when viewing your website. The easiest way to provide this to your customers and make yourself readily available is to integrate live chat onto your site. Plugins like ManyChat make live chat very easy to implement and as 44% of online customers say having their questions answered live is the most important feature of a website, can you afford not to have the option?
6. Know what you’re facing
As we’ve said, everyone should be looking to take advantage of Black Friday and your competitors are no exception! By keeping an eye on you competitors you can stay ahead of the game or gather ideas for your own deals. Make sure you’re subscribed to their email list and follow their social channels, there’s also a great tool called crayon which will inform you daily of their communications for free.
