As November rolls along and keener neighbours start putting up lights a little too prematurely and we want to share our top five eCommerce tips for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. We wanted to share our top five tips to get yourself ready for what can be the biggest revenue day of the year for online retailers.

1. Look at your product

Do you sell tangible products that need to be shipped or digital products? Take a hard look at your bottom line and what you can get away with as far as discounts. Remember you’re competing with some pretty substantial sales so if you’re going to play, go all in. Maybe it’s a service and you’re selling memberships or subscriptions? Black Friday and Cyber Monday can be a great opportunity to offer a sign-up bonus to your site and secure new members!

2. Budget to advertise

Not only are you competing against some big players but you’re going up against their budgets too so take a stab at increasing your bid cap on advertising during the lead up. Even upping your bid by a couple of dollars can make a difference – statistically users are 35-50% more willing to buy online on Black Friday and Cyber Monday than on any other average day.

3. Pre-promote

This is almost a precursor to the above as the closer we get to the date the higher the bids are going to be. So the earlier you get yourself setup and promoting the better. Try promoting a promo code that’s good for Black Friday or Cyber Monday or even for a more exclusive feel encourage people to signup for your email list and restrict your promotion to members of your email list. Make sure it’s an irresistible offer for this one.

4. E-mail

Now that we’re thinking about emails let’s get more in-depth. Your email list is invaluable. It’s the easiest way to communicate with your most dedicated customers, it results in the most sales (percentage wise on average vs other forms of digital advertising), and its one of, if not the cheapest way of advertising online. Make sure you have automations setup to tell users about your best products, active sales or just to remind users they left an item or two in their cart.

5. Be Active and Be Available on the day

One of the biggest obstacles to overcome, that prevents users from converting to buyers is not being in front of them. If you’re at home right now, take a look around you, maybe in the closet… how many items do you see that you might not have purchased had a sales person not been present, or you had mastered a ninja-style disappearing maneuver. I’m going to bet there is at least one thing. It’s just a bit harder to say no to a purchase when someone who represents the product is standing right in front of you. The same holds true online. It’s not as easy to click away from a website once you’ve gotten in touch with a real person from said website. Make sure at the very least you’re available to respond to customer emails quickly; if you don’t have a live chat window on your site, consider getting one and check out something like Formilla.com – these services link right up to an app so you can answer users questions right from your smartphone. Last but not least don’t hide from your customers, if you don’t have a customer support phone number listed on your site consider getting one of those too. If users simply have the option to call you on the phone it can significantly increase the level of trust a potential customer will have for your brand.

BONUS: Secure your site

It honestly shocks me that it’s 2018 and there are still unsecured eCommerce sites. I don’t mean sites with security holes, which of course isn’t a good thing or a common thing but it does happen. No. I’m talking about sites that are straight up playing fast and loose with security. Sites without malware scans, SSL certificates, or even strong passwords. Looking at you OCS… the fact is that securing your site properly – green padlock and all – will go a long way to establish confidence in consumers when purchasing; and it’s also worth noting that a secure site will always rank higher on google than an unsecured site.

So that’s our advice for 2018 Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it all seems like pretty obvious stuff to touch on but in marketing as in life it’s often a good idea to stop, step back, reevaluate, adjust if necessary and then if all looks good, move forward again. If it looks like a tire fire you’re going to know it pretty fast.

Comments

comments