This is a chance for your e-commerce website to capitalise on one of the busiest shopping weekends in the year – from Black Friday through to Cyber Monday – to reduce any unwanted stock you have in the run-up to Christmas.
Just under a month and a half till Black Friday on 24th November 2017. Although relatively new to the UK it is fast becoming one of the biggest shopping days of the year. Many, online retailers are seeing spikes in their sales on both the Friday and Cyber Monday. Such big changes from the norm in terms of traffic and sales can take some by surprise and often businesses see their websites struggle to deal with the sudden increase.
Here are some tips to make the most of Black Friday.
Test Your Website
Make sure your website can deal with the high spike in traffic and sales. There’s nothing worse than a website going down at these import times of your trading year. Speed and load test to make sure your website can cope with a hig s increase in traffic. Major retailers have suffered the consequences of a lack of testing, with the huge growth of Black Friday in 2014 causing Tesco, Argos, Boots and PC World (among others) to experience website crashes.
We know some of you are experiencing problems getting on to our site this #BlackFriday. Please bear with us, we hope to be with you soon.
— Argos (@Argos_Online) November 28, 2014
Test your site with Google Speed Test and also consider speaking with your host provider about the possibility of receiving extra traffic on you website. Be sure to test your website on your smartphone and use Google’s Mobile Friendly test.
Simplify the checkout process
Go through the checkout process yourself and eliminate any unnecessary form fields that could potentially slow down your website or put the user off completing the checkout process. Additionally, enabling guest checkout might be an option too. Guest Checkout allows the user to checkout without registering an account but remember that the average Black Friday buyer just wants a quick bargain with no fuss, so a lengthy, detailed checkout process could well put some users off. Just for Black Friday consider removing the need to register, and instead offer your customers the option to check out as a Guest to speed up the checkout process.
Enable SSL
SSL, or Secure Sockets Layer, is a technology that encrypts the connection between your visitors browser and your website.
This should be enabled for your checkout process to ensure the users private information remains safe, and the confidence their security when they shop with you remains high.
Plan Your Homepage
Now is also the time to start thinking about how you want your homepage to look during the Black Friday weekend. How will you draw attention to the sale, and how will users navigate their way to sale products?
Consider appropriate banners and calls to action on the homepage to promote this limited-time sale effectively.
A countdown clock or timer can also be a useful addition to a homepage. Use a countdown to generate interest and excitement ahead of the sale, building anticipation as the clock ticks down. During the weekend itself, a timer is an effective way of promoting urgency, indicating just how long is left in the sale. The aim is to really draw attention to the sale, and make it as simple as possible for users to find the deals and products that they’re looking for.
It’s all in the planning
If your business is taking part in Black Friday or even Cyber Monday no escaping the fact you’ve got busy days ahead! By putting your plans in place now you stand a good chance of cashing in on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. Good luck
If you still need a bit of assistance then give us a call or you contact us, we’ll be happy to help you get prepared for the big day.
