Are you ready for Black Friday?
One of the busiest periods of eCommerce is approaching, Q4 is one of the most important for any retailer and especially with the way that 2020 has been. As this begins my question is Are you ready for Black Friday?
Planning your Black Friday content is key to making the most of the opportunity. Making rash and quick decisions could end up costing you money. I'm going to assume that if you're reading this then you already have a website set up or at the very least are trading on one of the popular marketplaces.
When is Black Friday?
This year Black Friday is on the 27th November and that then follows onto Cyber Monday which is the 30th November. This is the biggest online buying event of the year. Traditionally it was just the one day but over the years this has expanded to the full weekend and for some retailers a whole week of deals. This gives you the opportunity to maximise sales potential. With so many people looking to grab themselves a deal you'd be silly to miss out. Lot's of customers like to try and shop from one place so it also has the potential to increase add-on sales.
Getting Ready for Black Friday
Getting set up before hand takes away some of the panic, it allows you to focus on the selling and packaging of orders. Setting up your discounts is the first thing to do, work out what items you plan on discounting. Will you simply to a blanket percentage across brands or categories, or will you alter each individual price to suit? There are other ways to give savings, if you have a lot of lower price items or high stock levels you could offer 3 for 2, buy 1 get 1 half price. No matter what platform you run your site on they should be able to cope with any of these options.
You can set these discounts in two ways, either reduce the prices to show straightaway or set up a discount code. From previous experience going the non-code route gets much better results.
Once you've worked out your products and the pricing it's time to design some artwork, this might include a front-page banner, something that makes a big impact when someone visits your site. Whilst making the website artwork I'd also advise creating graphics for social media, blogs and a newsletter. All of these things will help make the sale as effective as possible.
Black Friday Top Tips
Don't over promise delivery. It's such a busy time for retailers but also postage companies. Most customers won't be expecting the delivery to arrive the next day so don't promise it.
Choose products carefully. Only offer discounts off everything if you can afford it, and be careful of loss leaders, it works for larger companies but isn't a good idea for small retailers.
Discount old stock. If you've stock you've been sitting on for a long time now is the chance to turn that into much needed cash.
Keep an eye on inventory. It might be worth updating stock quantities before the day, there is nothing worse than letting a customer down.
Try to upsell. With customers on your site its the chance to upsell, can you show or link to items that go well with other items?
Making returns easy. Customers will want to know if items can be returned and how easy that process is. Keep it simple, and make a page explaining the return process.
Marketing for Black Friday
Promoting and marketing your Black Friday event is the best way to let people know what offers you have. Simply changing your prices isn't going to bring customers to the site you have to shout about it.
If your site has a blog then this is the ideal opportunity to use it, get writing about the special offers, give some examples of the great pricing you have. You could post one before the event starts and then one on the day before. This might also give you the drive to keep blogging over the coming months.
Using the newsletter feature is a great way to get your message out to the people who have signed up, these are likely to be people who have previously bought from you or have an interest in what you sell. Again give them links to categories and show them some of the prices they can get, you could also open the sale for them early, like a secret select club.
The best option is to use social media, get content ready for all channels and get shouting about the sale. One update won't do it, getting posting everyday during the sale, highlight big savings, popular items, everything. This is your time to use social media to its fullest.
If you put all of these things together you stand a much better chance of having a successful Black Friday.
