Start Planning Now To Relieve Black Friday Stress

Arcane Blog Post

Start Planning Now To Relieve Black Friday Stress

Start Planning Now To Relieve Black Friday Stress

 

You may be thinking about the end of summer, but you should really be thinking about the end of November. Black Friday is coming up quickly and it’s your chance to get in on the frenzy of door-crashing deals and intense shoppers looking for a great sale. The popular international shopping holiday has led companies to stretch out their promotions over the week and sometimes even the entire month.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) is a goldmine for businesses all over the world — generating an estimated $107 billion in holiday sales last year.

The shopping season is vital for retailers, but if not executed properly, it could end up in disaster. Avoid mayhem in November and start preparing in August to have a killer BFCM this year.

How To Win This Year

Optimize For Mobile

Mobile sales are projected to hit more than $2.44 billion for Black Friday in 2018. Today’s customers are using mobile more than ever for researching and purchasing product — 69% of shoppers research products on a mobile device before buying. Companies MUST optimize their sites for mobile. This isn’t an option, but a necessity. A site that isn’t optimized for mobile is missing out on tons of potential sales.

A loading time delayed by two seconds during the purchasing process leads to an 87% cart abandonment rate.

Easy ways to improve your site for mobile visitors include redesigning your navigation bar, improving website speed, and incorporating a one-click purchasing process.

Pop-Up Shops

If your company is strictly ecommerce, you can use real-world shopping traffic to your advantage and open a pop-up shop for the holiday season. Pop-up shops are appealing to shoppers for the same reason as sales promotions — urgency and scarcity. It also attracts consumers by creating a “fear of missing out”.

A company that has been a trendsetter in pop-up shops is Kylie Cosmetics. Founded by Kylie Jenner, the online beauty company took the cosmetic industry by storm and perfected the use of pop-up stores. The company leveraged exclusivity and scarcity to create huge demand and viral content.

Create Lifetime Loyalty Customers

The chance of an existing customer making a second purchase is 27%, however the chance they will make a third purchase jumps to 45%. Returning customers are incredibly valuable and should be prioritized due to their lifetime value. Continue special promotions past the holiday season and into January or February to keep customers coming back for more.

Loyalty programs are a great way to keep customers engaged with your brand. When customers are a part of a loyalty program, they expect to be treated as a privileged user, meaning that they should be offered exclusive deals and given early access to promotions.

Smile.io is a popular customer rewards program provider that can help you “motivate profitable actions” by awarding points to shoppers.

Prepare Your Developers

The most important task for any company before the holiday season is to ensure that your site is ready for the heavy concentration of traffic. If your site crashes, even for a short period of time, you could potentially be missing out on a significant amount of sales. Reliability in the back end of your site is crucial — in the case of a site crash, make sure that you have prepared a plan to get it back up and running as soon as possible, with minimal panic. Also, consider how the details of your sale will change with this lost time. For example, you could extend the length of the duration, offer an additional % off, etc.

Promotions

Significant price cuts are the reason that Black Friday has become the most important shopping day of the year. Shoppers expect jaw-dropping discounts and retailers need to deliver in order to keep up with competitors.

Tiered deals entice customers to purchase more and avoid abandoned carts. Brooklinen tried a tiered deal last BFCM. The first level of the promotion was gifting a free $35 candle for orders of at least $150. Once the customer added $150 worth of product to their cart, a text overlay popped up to notify them of the candle.

Another interesting feature of Brooklinen’s 2017 BFCM promotion was the countdown timer. Countdown timers create a sense of urgency by using a moving visual cue rather than just having a static “Sale Ending Soon” banner.

Other promotions to consider are free shipping, free gift wrapping, and upselling by offering special discounts for products that get bundled together.


Black Friday and Cyber Monday have taken over the holiday shopping season. Companies all over the world are fighting to get in on the action — making it more competitive than ever. The key to marketing success is to get ready early. Start talking with your marketing and development team now to develop your strategy and hit the ground running on Friday, November 23rd!

 

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