The most fairytale time of the year is almost here… Jingle bells, snowing, lights, celebrating mood, and people with a lot of presents on the street! Traditionally, this Christmas season opens a Black Friday. So, it is a great time not only for customers to make a good deal but also for retailers who want to increase their annual revenue. Black Friday is a tremendous opportunity for your ecommerce store to make money. WooBeWoo team prepared some useful tips for you to get in on this year’s biggest shopping weekend.
Plan ahead
The savviest customers start to browse sale deals in advance. RetailMeNot, in partnership with Kelton Global, noticed that “68% of consumers will spend money holiday shopping during that time”. They scroll the site, read your social nets, and subscribe to email. Be ready for them!
The well prepared integrated marketing strategy is the key to the success during the Black Friday. You should engage all available channels and combine them to provide clarity, consistency, and maximum communication impact. Custora reports that more than 25% of sales during the Black Friday season start from email marketing.
- Make posts in social media in advance
- Prepare a landing page where you can gather new email subscriptions
- Write about your intentions in the blog posts
- Connect with journalists which prepare a Black Friday overview and take care your company was mentioned
Attention
Custora reports that more than 25% of sales during the Black Friday season start from email marketing.
Check your site performance
Imagine the situation: you made a brilliant promotion campaign, which had attracted a lot of potential customers. Following this initial success, you need only monitor how your profit rises. But suddenly, the website is crashed and you have a lot of disgruntled buyers.
One such example was the Best Buy’s website deal when it took down because of a record level of traffic throughout the Thanksgiving weekend. So, how you can prevent this?
- Make a simulation of jumping in incoming traffic on the eve
- Use a CDN. It scales itself automatically
- Save backups. In case of crashing the site, you can quickly restore all the information
- Make sure you use only the latest versions of your software
Attention
Make a simulation of jumping in incoming traffic on the eve
Optimize product search and recommendations algorithms
Black Friday is characterized in that a lot of attractive deals have appeared. It is hard to distinguish your company among them. According to a new report by Google, this year holiday shoppers become even fussier. They can be described as:
- Curious: 53% of buyers do the research before purchase
- Demanding: 40% wish retailers should better describe their inventory
- Inpatient: 48% want their shopping will be as quickly as possible
Moreover, 51% of last-minute shoppers are uncertain where they’re going to buy. Holding in the mind, all these statistics retailers should make sure that their products are optimized for search engine and they are easily discovered on the site. Remember, 48% want their shopping will be as quickly as possible?
- Optimize your SEO (read about this in our post: “How to SEO your WordPress website”)
- Write a good product description
- Prepare intuitively understandable filtering (read about this in our post: “Complete guide to product filtering and how to use it with WooBeWoo plugin”)
Attention
53% of buyers do the research before purchase
Set the right discounts
Black Friday is a time for the huge sales. Deal seekers looking for at least a 20% discount from the normal price. But we advise you to be creative and a little bit playing with the sales you offer. For example, set the 60% off for the first buyers or add a 10% off if the customer buys 3 or more items. Such activities can stimulate the sale.
- Prepare good visualization for the discounts
- Display the sale conditions clearly on the main page
- Add a countdown banner
Read about the science behind discount marketing in e-commerce in our previous blog post.
Attention
Be creative and a little bit playing with the sales you offer
Mobile, mobile, and again mobile
These words look like a mantra for all marketers. We do not tell you here why mobile website version or mobile app (it will be even better!) is so important, we just place the latest statistics about deal seekers for the Black Friday 2018:
- 72% of them uses mobile phones for browsing
- 52% of buyers use mobile phones while they are in store
- 55% of customers buy via mobile devices
Make sure that your mobile experience is frictionless. And it is not only about website responsiveness but also about payment, filtering and order process.
- Check all your WordPress plugins on the responsiveness feature (all WooBeWoo plugins are responsive)
- Test the mobile version trying to find and buy the item
Attention
55% of customers buy via mobile devices
So, we hope that our advice will help you to prepare a high-quality marketing campaign which can boost your sales to the moon! Good luck 🙂