It is that time of year again! The holiday season is right around the corner. Everyone is eagerly preparing for the upcoming deals, sales, and slashed prices! Is your online store ready, though? There is still about a month left before the Big Weekend, but you should not wait until the final moment! That is why we are here to give you a checklist of Black Friday prep to optimize your store!
Below, you will read about the most important steps you must take to ensure your online store is set to accommodate the influx of shoppers during Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM, in short). If, for some reason, you do not know what those two things are, you can refer to our blog post about them to learn more! With all of that said, let us dive right into what you need to do to prepare your e-commerce store for the biggest shopping days of the year!
Why Prepare for Black Friday?
We must first discuss the reasons you need to prepare your online store for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. If you are wondering what is so special about those few days, read on and you will find out.
BFCM is the biggest shopping event of the year to the point that it has its own folklore! People genuinely believe that retailers operate at a loss or razor-thin profit margins throughout the year only so they can then go “in the black” during the BFCM weekend. Of course, that is just folklore, and it is not entirely true, but it is a good way to illustrate just how important those days were for retailers.
Aside from the most important benefit – the revenue boost – Black Friday actually has several other upsides for store owners.
- Customer Acquisition and Loyalty – The second most important benefit a good Black Friday weekend can have for your store is the exposure it creates. A lot more people will likely visit your online store. If you offer them good service and prices, there is a high likelihood they become repeat customers;
- Competition – Black Friday allows you to stand out from your competition with exclusive deals, well-thought-out campaigns, and excellent prices. Through such competition, you can attract more customers but also learn where your store’s strengths lie;
- Inventory Clearance – BFCM is the time to clear out any excess stock you have left lying around. Slash prices and move those items along! There is no point clinging to it since its price will only deprecate as time passes;
As you can see, a successful Black Friday can do a lot more for you than improve your Q4 earnings. The fact that you will expose your shop to a lot more customers is even better in the long run! Now that you know why you should ensure your store is ready let us give you some pointers about what matters most!
Laying the Foundation
First and foremost, before you even consider slashing the prices, you must have a solid foundation to start from. You must prepare before the rush has begun. Otherwise, your profits and reputation might suffer due to slow website speeds, missing items, or subpar marketing campaigns. So, here are the three things you must prepare beforehand.
Analyze the Data
To begin with, review all your data for the year—or even last year’s Black Friday if you participated. How you go about doing that is obviously up to you and the systems you use to track your store’s statistics and metrics. These are a few important things to keep an eye on.
- The products you have sold the most of;
- Additionally, those you have sold the least of;
- Particular categories that people are interested in;
- Customers’ spending habits;
- Which ads (if you are running any) were the most successful;
- And which ads were not as successful;
- Find out which email marketing campaigns were the most effective;
- Determine if you have returning customers;
That is just a small sample of the analytical data you should be privy to. Of course, study any other data that will help you this holiday season. What we have outlined is a solid starting point, though!
Now that you know what customers are interested in, how much they are willing to spend, and what marketing campaigns work for them, it is time to check if you are well-stocked!
Inventory
This one is self-explanatory. Stores often forget about their inventory in the bluster of Black Friday. How many times have you tried shopping, only to find out an item – that is not all that popular, to begin with – is sold out not a day into the weekend?
Do not make that mistake. With the data from above in hand, check that your warehouse or distribution center is well stocked with all the vital items your customers might be interested in. Running out of stock on your best-selling items could spell disaster.
Additionally, it would help if you organized the flow between your warehouse and fulfillment area. If they are in the same building, that makes things much easier. However, if there is travel time between the two, you must ensure everything can run without a hitch. This is also a great time to assess your fulfillment capabilities. Hire part-time workers or ask family to help. At the end of the day you must be ready for the influx of orders to be shipped out!
Finally, organizing everything in the warehouse and the fulfillment area will help immensely. Put the products you expect to move the most up front, where they are easy to get. Next, streamline the fulfillment process itself. It does not matter if you are a big or small company. You should have all the supplies you might need in plentiful quantities, and the workflow should be easy to follow.
Website Speed
The last piece of the preplanning puzzle is preparing your website for the hordes of eager customers that will swarm it. A good place to start is to establish a performance baseline. That way, you can see if there are any outstanding issues with it under normal circumstances.
Site speed is absolutely critical during high-traffic periods like Black Friday. Customers prefer fast and reliable websites. If yours is struggling with one or both of those requirements, you will see a significant dip in your sales. We do not need to provide you with statistics to convince you here. We are certain you have clicked out of a sluggish or confusing website yourself! Now imagine it ten times worse because it is Black Friday, and ten times more people are trying to interact with the site.
There are plenty of tools online to test your website. We recommend you check our blog post for the best ones. With them, you should be able to establish a good baseline and see if there are any issues that need fixing. As for stress-testing it to see if it can handle more users than it usually gets, you can use plenty of tools online to achieve that. A good rule of thumb is to ensure you have enough bandwidth and processing power overhead so that your website can handle all the visitors. All our plans are easy to scale up or down, so contact us if you need our help!
Finally, you can check out this article, where we outline many good practices for setting up your website prior to testing it. You must also ensure that your website is optimized for mobile devices. We posted a blog a few weeks ago about the “Dos and Don’ts of building a website,” a big thing to keep in mind is website responsiveness since many people shop via their mobile devices nowadays.
Preparing Your Website
Next, it is time to actually get your website ready for the Big Weekend of Spending. Assuming you are happy with everything that goes on behind the scenes (inventory, website speed and stability, etc.), now is the time to gussy it up for the season so it attracts even more customers. It is also time to put your marketing campaign together, plan your promotions, and even consider a reward or loyalty program for your customers. People love being rewarded for coming back.
However, the first thing you must do is make your website exciting and informative to look at!
Start With the Appearance
A good-looking website is awesome! However, what is better than that is a good-looking website that also changes its appearance depending on important seasonal events! If you want an example, our website is about to undergo several transformations in the next few months since Halloween is coming up, then Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and then Christmas!
With that in mind, get your graphics designers to whip up some exciting visuals for the sales period! We are not just talking about a few banners, we mean a whole front page if you can! If you can change the appearance of your entire website, with all of its pages, to reflect the Black Friday theme, then that would be even better! But do not worry if you cannot get that far! A front page is perfect to introduce your customers to the Black Friday sale! Here are a few tips about it, though.
- The page has to be easy to read and comprehend. Stay away from overwhelming colors or layouts;
- Additionally, the message should be clear. A visitor should be able to clearly see your most exciting discounts, a list of categories that have a sale on them, and your most purchased products, for example;
- Finally, the front page should be easy to navigate out of. Some websites hide the “Back to Website” button with tiny text in the screen’s corner, which is just annoying. Some people just want to browse your website without going through the Black Friday page.
A front page that appears when someone visits your website and announces your BFCM deals is a great way to inform customers and get them excited about your products. However, this advice and the three points from above apply to all the customizations you do to your site for the season! Make it eye-catching but convenient and thrilling without being overwhelming!
Then Come the Deals!
It is time for the main event. You have analyzed all the data from the last twelve months and know what you are discounting. Your warehouse and fulfillment area are so optimized that they can run themselves, and your website is like a rocketship and looks just as good! It is time to set some prices and determine percentages.
However, nowadays, it is much more than just picking out your products, checking how low you can sell them while still retaining profit, and shoving them on the virtual shelves. While, yes, that is one way you can do it, we recommend a few more steps to this process.
- Consider a truly irresistible offer on a popular item. Something jaw-dropping that will definitely make visitors look. That is not only a great way to sell that item but also to get your customers to stay on your website and browse;
- Upselling and cross-selling is another strong tactic when it comes to planning your discounts. In other words, include suggestions for different products that you think – or the analytics have suggested – people would be interested in when buying a specific item. It could be the better version of said item or a good combo between it and another one;
- Next, do not forget about marketing. You might have the best prices in the world, but not many will partake if people do not know about them. So, once again, look over your past year’s statistics and utilize the marketing channels that have worked best so far. Whether it is social media, emails, or Google ads, it does not matter as long as their performance is good. Launch your campaigns early to build up hype;
- Consider adding options, conditions, or bundles that offer free shipping. We will delve into this in the next section, but reward your customers who decide to buy a lot of things or a specific combination of products, for example;
- Finally, keep track of everything! In this case, a spreadsheet is your friend since you can input all the data you need for your sale. From new and old prices to discount rates, units in stock, and the date range of the sale, such a sheet is invaluable. It makes organizing data a lot easier.
This might seem like a lot to remember, but trust us, it is worth it. Create a BFCM plan that customers cannot resist. Stay on top of it, and you should see it reflected in your Q4 results!
Finally, Remember the Customers!
It is vital that you make your website’s user experience as good as possible. That is good advice in general, but it matters even more so on big occasions like Black Friday. We already mentioned one aspect of user experience you can implement above: options for free shipping.
However, there are three other significant things you can do to attract more customers and encourage them to return. The first requires some research, but you should have already done that earlier! This Black Friday, you can reward customers who have been loyal to your shop with even lower prices, discount codes for friends and family, free shipping, or even a points system if you want to go that far, or any other perks you can think of, really!
Such a tactic is good not only for retaining loyal customers but also for turning others into regulars. Customers are more likely to return and recommend a business with a good loyalty program.
The second thing you can do to encourage and respect your customers is to ensure your checkout experience is as user-friendly and straightforward as possible. Realistically, you should test it multiple times before launching your Black Friday campaign to iron out any bugs beforehand. It is critical that it works flawlessly on mobile devices. You can look for fields that can be skipped and offer payment options that automate the process. Checkout should be straightforward and easy to complete.
Last but not least, double-check your customer service procedures and return policies. As we mentioned before regarding the fulfillment center, you can hire additional part-time customer care representatives or ask friends and family to help. If you need to iron out any kinks in your processes or procedures regarding handling customer inquiries or returns, now is the time before the floodgates have opened! As always, we recommend keeping things as simple and straightforward as possible because convenience plays a huge role in retaining a customer’s interest in your website.
Customers are the driving force behind your store, so treat them with the attention and respect they deserve. If they have questions, ensure you have the means to answer them. A live chat system is always a good choice if you have the manpower to handle it. If not, an FAQ page is also a good idea!
You are All Set!
Following our advice, we believe your business will excel during this year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday. We know there is a lot of work to be done – trust us, we are working hard on it as well, but it is all worth it in the end.
Those two days are still the biggest events in a shopper’s life. People will wait for months to purchase something they want just so they can get it at a steep discount during that November weekend. So, why not be one of the stores that sells it to them? If you are our customer, do not hesitate to contact us with any questions about your package you may have. Whether you need to scale your hosting plan to accommodate the upcoming rush of people, need an issue fixed, or anything else, we are here 24/7.
