Black Friday: Find Your E-Commerce Strategy
The weather’s getting colder, the smell of pumpkin pie is wafting through the air, and everyone is checking their Amazon wish lists while waiting for the sales to hit.
Black Friday is only a few days away, and the following Cyber Monday is quickly gaining traction in holiday shopping trends. With such a growing shift to online shopping, e-commerce businesses should stock their shelves with these strategies to survive the holidays.
Update Everything
Are all of your plugins updated? Does your hosting provider know that you’re expecting rapid changes in traffic, and is your infrastructure strong enough to support it? Make sure everything is in order behind the scenes before midnight hits.
Also do everything you can to check your security in order to prevent a data breach, which could be catastrophic to your holiday projections and loyal customer base.
Promote Everything
Let’s be real – the drive behind Black Friday is the sale. What are you offering your customers to bring them in?
One tip for success is to build a separate landing page on your site for the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. Research shows that searches for online sales peak during the week-long build to Black Friday. Make sure your potential customers know what you’ll be offering this season by sharing the information on one easily searchable page. Then drive more traffic to your website by a separate pay-per-click campaign for the holidays.
With the constant flow of information customers receive through social media, the rise of flash sales has proven to be popular during the holidays. If your shoppers know that sales are time-sensitive, they might be more inclined to make the purchase instead of waiting around.
Free shipping is another promotion that could close the deal. Shoppers list shipping fees as one of their top complaints about online shopping versus brick-and-mortar retail shopping. Take their discomforts away and you may find your customers spending more money if they know they’re getting a good deal.
Share Everything
Spread the holiday cheer with your customers and announce your Black Friday promotions through your social media platforms and mailing lists. Entice the world to stay at home and shop on your website rather than brave the midnight mall craze.
Then reward your loyal customers with gifts like email coupons, and use the holiday to build your following. If customers have a happy experience shopping with you on Black Friday, they may return again before December is over.
Read RTS Labs’ “Essential Guide to a Winning Mobile Website and E-Commerce Strategy,” originally published in SmallBizClub, to learn what features you should consider for your e-commerce platform and read some more strategies for success.
You can also find out more about our custom web development solutions by calling us today.