Getting Ready for Black Friday: Checklist for Your E-commerce

Ask any person who has made at least a couple or three purchases on the Internet, as called the main sale of the year, and almost everyone will respond without delay – Black Friday. Originally invented in the U.S., this tradition has spread to other countries and gradually became a world-class event.

Sales are held annually, every fourth Friday in November. In 2019 Black Friday falls on November 29. And if for buyers this is an excuse to spend well and make profitable purchases, then for the owner of an online store, this is an opportunity to get a very good revenue. Provided, of course, that you have time for this event is well prepared.

This article is a list of practical recommendations that will help you adequately cope with this task.

Make sure the technical part is reliable

A site on weak hosting even with a 20% increase in load can easily stop working. And sales during Black Friday sometimes lead to an increase in attendance at times. So it is quite possible to be in a situation where the traffic you were able to attract, and orders never received, because the site does not work due to overload.

Here are a few things to do in the first place:

• make sure that you can quickly switch to a more powerful hosting tariff, if necessary;
• enable page caching on the server’s side;
• check the user’s transaction path (the ordering process) and make sure that everything works without errors;
• check that the feedback form works correctly.
• Another important point is to make sure that you have configured regular backups. This is a kind of insurance, and if for some reason the site goes down, having a backup allows you to quickly restore everything.

Check your speed and mobility

If the site is slow, it has a direct impact on conversion, as most users simply will not wait for the page to load, but will return to the search and go to the competitors’ site. If in normal mode speed allows you to want the best, then with the increasing loading it will be a serious problem.

The second important point, which can be attributed to the list of critical – adapting the site for mobile devices. For most sites, the share of mobile traffic has already exceeded the transition rates from familiar computers and laptops. But their design remains focused primarily on desktop devices.

Make sure that at you in this plan all is good, otherwise, you will lose sales. To see how your site looks like on different devices, you can use the service iloveadaptive.com.

Think of ideas for promotions and discounts

In fact, this holiday itself is one big action. The opportunity to save is the main argument why buyers should spend their savings on Black Friday. And since most marketing activities require certain preparation, then making a strategy for their implementation should be in advance. Customer Prices Suite extension for Magento 2 may be helpful.

Plan logistics and inventory.

During Black Friday, the load is increasing not only for E-commerce but also for transport services. They are not always able to cope with it adequately, plus queues are formed at departure points and a number of other problems arise. Also, take into account the fact that you will most likely have to send orders through multiple delivery operators.

The second important point is the stock of goods. You need to make sure that the site correctly displays data on the commodity balances, as well as reserve additional volumes of the most popular products from suppliers.

Take care of multichannel service.

It’s a normal day you have most orders can go through the basket, plus a small proportion of phone calls. Get ready for what you’ll write to the post office, messengers and online consultant. You need to be prepared for this multi-channel process of communication, and for each of them to provide quick feedback.

Preparing on Facebook and Instagram

Social networks can be an excellent generator of profit for an online store, especially given the fact that many are used to seeing them only as an optional additional channel. In the context of preparations for Black Friday, do the following:

• Plan campaigns in targeted advertising – as a direct purchase of traffic to the site, and promotional posts for the sale of individual products and publications with information about promotions;
• limit offers by time so that buyers are motivated to postpone the purchase;
• take advantage of hashtags in Instagram: start using Black Friday theme tags 7-10 days before the start of sales;
• in addition to direct selling advertising, run promo articles from blog selections, if you have such a section on your website.

Also, it is important not to forget to prepare in advance all the necessary graphics, as visual design plays an important role in social networks.

Make a preliminary announcement

Start warming up your audience gradually by announcing future sales at least a week or two before Black Friday itself. You can send a series of emails to prepare existing subscribers for the event, make similar announcements on Facebook, Instagram and other social networks that you use.

Also, with the help of such announcements, you can attract a new audience, encouraging potential buyers to subscribe to the mailing list or a page in social networks, so as not to miss interesting promotions.

Conclusion

All these advantages you will be able to get only if you are well prepared, and if your marketing campaigns are implemented at a decent level. So use my article as a checklist for preparation and get to work. Good luck with that, and a good profit. And if you need a reliable marketing partner who can help you with this task – contact us and our specialists will be happy to help you!