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How to prepare your shop for Black Friday 2021? Checklist from IdoSell
Black Friday, the big sales holiday, falls on the last weekend of November. It's a time when customers buy a lot more and retailers increase conversions. How do you prepare your shop for Black Friday in 2021? Our experts have put together some tips you should keep in mind.
How to prepare my shop for Black Friday 2021?
The year 2020 was a watershed year and moved Black Friday almost entirely online. Pandemic restrictions and the closure of shopping malls meant that consumers hunted for bargains mainly at home. Black Friday 2021 will be a record-breaker. Consumers have become accustomed to the convenience of online shopping and the security that comes with it. Moving commerce online is a definite trend in modern commerce. And there is nothing to suggest that it may slow down any time soon.
Black Friday, which in the past was a typically stationary holiday and drew crowds to shopping malls, combined with Cyber Monday is almost a week of online sales. Black Week is growing bigger and bigger, and the whole idea of Black Friday is stretching out over time.
As e-commerce competition is getting tougher and Black Friday 2021 is a special day when your sales will increase several times, you should make every effort to prepare your shop for it. Black Friday 2021 will be a test of your shop's solutions and functionality, a real challenge. What should you bear in mind? We give you a hint!
Don't start promotion too soon
Don't go beyond Black Week 2021 with the price reductions, so as not to distract the customer and their motivation to buy. The whole idea of Black Friday is that the customer is convinced that on this day (a weekend or a week at most) they can buy something in exceptional conditions. If consumers start to get used to having more time to do this, the whole idea of a sales holiday will lose its meaning.
Clear discounts for Black Friday
The simpler the better - these are the promotions that are most effective. The best way to attract customers is to reduce the prices of the entire assortment. A "lure", such as a big discount, but only on a few offers, may discourage the customer and make them leave the shop and look for another place to shop.
As IdoSell expert, Account Manager Patryk Matusiak, explains - it's best for your brand if you discount your entire assortment or specific categories. This way your customer won't have to search for and enter a discount code for the discount. Additionally, he or she will not abandon the shopping cart in order to find a better code on Google. So you do not run the risk that he will find a code for a competitor and that is where he will shop.
It happens that customers even before Black Friday, are looking for discount codes. This is why websites, such as Dobrekody.pl, have a huge increase in visits at this time. Remember to mark your presence there.
If not promotions, what else?
If your margin doesn't allow you to offer customers higher discounts, try to look for other benefits. This could be free delivery or freebies.
Offering discounts of a few percent for a big sale can only discourage customers from buying. Discounts should not be in single digits.
Technological background
An increase in orders means more people interested in and visiting your online shop. Imagine that a maximum of 100 customers can enter a conventional shop. If there are more takers, you may have to wait your turn before entering. Online shops also have their limitations, but they are much easier to expand to accommodate more people.
IdoSell shops stand out because their performance is scalable. It adjusts very quickly and flexibly to the number of visitors. If your shop doesn't have such capabilities, you should take care of the server resources in advance.
The most difficult situation is for retailers with their own infrastructure, who have to take care of performance completely on their own.
Marketing and promotion
Without a properly prepared marketing campaign, hardly anyone will hear about your shop and the promotions you have planned. Remember about mailing, pre- and reminder campaigns. We will devote a separate article to the topic of marketing and promotions before and during Black Friday 2021.
Order processing
The conventional dimension of preparation, i.e. adequate staff numbers and well-stocked warehouses, are essential for a smooth Black Friday service.
Be prepared for the number of orders in your shop to increase several times. This will increase the number of parcels that need to be packed, secured, and shipped. Such activities consume time and human resources.
- Perhaps during Black Week it is not enough to send parcels by one courier company and you should consider hiring an additional courier, even if he offers inferior conditions. At the end of the day, the important thing is that your orders are delivered to your customers quickly. - explains IdoSell expert, Patryk Matusiak. - Your shop, during Black Friday 2021, may stand out precisely because of the shipping time.
- The fact that we want to have the ordered thing as soon as possible is a natural mechanism of buying on the Internet - adds our expert.
Handling, packing, shipping and checking orders - this also means hands-on work. Additional seasonal employment for the duration of Black Week is becoming increasingly popular. You might want to consider hiring additional machines if it would make a difference in fulfilling orders faster. If this becomes too difficult, fulfillment may be the answer. This is the comprehensive handling of warehouse processes by a specialist external company.
What will Black Friday 2021 be like?
According to our experts, during Black Friday in 2021, we can estimate an increase of up to a dozen times in the number of visitors to online shops and a several to a dozen times increase in the number of orders, depending on the industry. The industries that are most popular are clothing, footwear, pet supplies, and children's accessories.
Experts predict that there will be very high traffic in online shops on Black Friday. Despite this, conversions in your shop may drop. This is because customers browse through many offers, click on ads, but also quickly withdraw from purchases. During Black Friday, shoppers open the websites of many shops, add products to their shopping cart, compare offers, but choose only one shop that has the best offer.
- A consumer who wants to buy a supplement will compare several websites of online pharmacies and choose the one that inspires his confidence - explains Patryk - And for this, the seller actually has a few seconds. So a modern design and a fast website are very important.
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