Beginning in the United States to mark the start of the Christmas shopping season, Black Friday has quickly caught traction worldwide. On Black Friday 2020, global consumers spent an estimated 116.6 million hours shopping, with total revenue sitting at $188.2 billion. In the past, it was commonplace to see endless videos of customers flooding into stores and fighting over discounted products. However, consumer habits are changing.
With the advancement of technology and the effects of the pandemic, consumers are increasingly buying online, whilst in-store sales have plummeted. For Black Friday shoppers, businesses having an easy-to-use website is the third most important factor in influencing their decision to buy or not. With these stats in mind, optimising your business’ eCommerce potential for Black Friday 2021 is essential.
Here are 7 ways to do it:
1. Website traffic
If you’re offering a good discount, Black Friday traffic is likely to be higher than any other time of year, and your website needs to be able to cope with an influx of customers. There have been countless accounts over the years, of companies losing out on a vast amount of sales due to their sites crashing.
To deal with increased traffic to the site using tools such as Load Impact or Pingdom simulate peak traffic numbers, which allows developers to understand how the website works under pressure. Before traffic arrives, it may also be helpful to compress images, refine HTML elements and utilise plug-ins to balance requests.
2. Website speed
Customers are impatient beings, and your conversion rate drops by 12% for every second of loading time. Rectify slow loading times by using PageSpeed Insights or Google’s Test My Site, which highlight software elements that may affect on-site performance and provide suggestions on how to improve your website speed.
3. User-friendly interface
We have established that an easy-to-use website is essential for Black Friday success, especially as customers have the highest conversion rate on a desktop.
Run some tests yourself or ask people you know to search for a particular product and see how easy it is to find. If it is time-consuming, you have learnt your interface is too complex. For Black Friday and sale periods especially, try putting discounted products together and ensure the category is unmissable.
4. Abandoned cart recovery
The global abandoned cart occurrence for Black Friday 2020 was 77.7%. To minimise the chances of consumers leaving site empty-handed, these are a few techniques to try:
- Offer shoppers a save cart option.
- Retarget abandoners with ads.
- Implement exit-intent overlays.
- Send out abandoned cart emails.
5. Black Friday flash sales
Behind offering free shipping, limited-time sales are the second highest factor influencing customers’ Black Friday spendings. Offering flash sales gives customers a sense of urgency, giving them an increased chance of impulse purchases.
6. Upselling and cross-selling
These evergreen sales tactics can be excellent drivers of sales on Black Friday as they illustrate the perceived value, which is what Black Friday is all about.
Whether providing a complimentary product with another purchase or including products in a bundle, these time-sensitive sales tactics can boost that all-important conversion rate.
7. Encourage Black Friday wish listing
Similar to the abandoned cart recovery technique, wish listing engages potential customers and those close to buying with the brand. It is a tactic useful to customers and the business as they can store their products conveniently and gather valuable data to make informed decisions about their customer’s interests.
Like abandoned cart recovery, wish listing engages potential customers and those close to buying with the brand. It is a win-win tactic as consumers can easily access their items, whilst the business can gain valuable data about the purchasing barrier and what things to discount.
Have these tips been helpful? These are just a few things you can do to optimise your brand for Black Friday and the Q4 period. If you want to learn how to get more out of your website, feel free to contact us, we’d be more than happy to help! Also, you can check out our Shopify Design & Development service.
.svg)