Who doesn’t love Black Friday, right? It’s the biggest shopping event of the year and customers, as well as businesses, focus on getting the maximum out of it. Slowly but steadily, the tradition of pulling an all-nighter at your traditional retail store seems to be fading away. Buyers have shifted sides and holiday shopping, like everything else, is more of an online affair now. Online shopping is taking over, with 60% of Australians saying they are more likely to shop online versus in store. In contrast to the in-store experience, eCommerce businesses have an added advantage of offering an extended and personalised inventory of goods. It’s not surprising that more consumers are expected to shop online than in stores on Black Friday 2022.So, are you ready for all the holiday attention? Here we have compiled some of the best Black Friday strategies your eCommerce business could adopt and smash all the sales records:
It’s better to target customers based on their previous buying experience. Having customised eCommerce product listings that are exclusively created for the sale will improve your conversion. Curating special gift guides may also help your customers get started on their holiday buying spree. Offering discounts on gift bundles instead of individual products will also enhance your overall profit.
For any eCommerce business, there is a lot to cover on the merchandising front. Starting from the basics, you need to adopt the best visual merchandising practices. Ensure a balanced UI of your website that leaves a pleasant expression on the user and drives interest. To boost your conversion rates, you may adopt the tried and tested methods of cross-selling and up-selling also. Your customers will be on a shopping extravaganza and luring phrases like “frequently bought together” and “people who bought this also bought” may drive some serious value for you. Based on your analysis of customer behaviour, you may also employ dynamic pricing for the highly demanded products. All your eCommerce merchandising woes may be covered by qualified third party software solution providers who could use high-end techniques like machine learning and SaaS for an added benefit.
Most of the Black Friday 2022 buyers will approach your eCommerce website via their smartphones. Research states that around 43% of customers shopped for Black Friday from mobile devices in 2021. So, as the holiday season approaches, it becomes increasingly important to enhance the mobile functionality of your website. For eCommerce businesses, Black Friday is all about bringing in more and more customers. Most of the eCommerce experts unanimously agree to this fact – if your online store’s pages are responding slowly, your customers would most likely go buy somewhere else. It is, therefore, advisable to use optimization tools and make your site lightning fast.
You need to start planning and executing your holiday campaigns early. According to a survey, 61% of the people started their holiday shopping much before Black Friday. So, it’s better to start creating a pre-sale buzz. You can start your Black Friday campaign by sending out emails about a month early and later communicate deal alerts as the big day approaches. Customised email advertising campaigns for each customer group may also make matters even more appealing.
There is no denying the fact that an optimised site search can be a big saviour during the holiday shopping season. While many of your competitors are ignoring it, you can capitalise on it big time. Make sure your search box is clearly noticeable and appropriately optimised to deliver the best search results. The best thing about the eCommerce site search is that you can use it to dictate your major eCommerce merchandising decisions. You can easily influence which products you wish to promote this Black Friday or which ones will appear in searches initiated by customers from specific demographics. Features like strong auto-complete function and auto-correct will make matters even more efficient. It’s really straightforward – if your customers can quickly find what they were looking for, there are fair chances that they will buy it soon.
In 2021, it was predicted that over $1 million would be spent per minute. Victoria was the biggest Black Friday sales spending state in 2021, spending approximately $190 million over the weekend. The other east coast states were second and third, with New South Wales and Queensland spending about $163 million and $73 million, respectively. The 2021 Black Friday sales in Australia had an average discount of 24%. If everything goes according to the predictions, your business’s website will observe a massive traffic surge this Black Friday. And you must be ready to cope up with this holiday boom. It is better to test the capacity of your servers and site performance in advance and not let down customers during the peak deal hours.
Adopting the right retargeting strategies may help you win back the customers who visited your site and chose not to buy anything. By using the appropriate eCommerce tools, you can follow up with those users and push notifications and even other lucrative offers to make them come back. Gaining insights on critical consumer behaviour may also help you get prepared for the upcoming shopping seasons.
This Black Friday, your customers will be receiving a lot of product recommendations. You just have to make sure that yours are the best. From the options available, the best one is to choose a powerful eCommerce product recommendation engine.According to a survey, one can create the best Black Friday experience by focusing on your best-performing products and consider selling on Amazon. Landing pages featuring your Black Friday bargains could see you increase conversion rates by over 50% in 2022.You can focus on certain best practices like adjusting your recommendations to highlight the best-selling items, archiving customer’s browsing history to help them revisit lost product pages, and so on. What’s so great about personalised recommendations is that they will not only lift your holiday sales but also build long-lasting relationships with users so they might keep coming back.
During the holiday season, customers usually explore around and take time to find the cheapest product. Anyhow, they are completely in the mood to buy. Creating a sense of urgency through limited-time shopping offers, codes, and coupons may prompt customers to make quick buying decisions. Moreover, time-bound deals like free or priority shipping may also do the trick for your eCommerce business.
After browsing through tonnes of deals, customers generally prefer a hassle-free checkout method. That is why the checkout process of your eCommerce business needs to be seamless. It’s better if you provide easy and well-known payment methods and who knows, they might come back to check out again.
Black Friday is all about the best buying experience for customers. Customers might want a blend of both online and offline channels and eCommerce players could utilise it to their benefit. According to a commissioned Forrester Consulting study conducted on behalf of Shopify, more than 50% of consumers will hop on the trend of Online Pick Up In-Store (BOPIS). Even if you don’t have a brick and mortar store, you could open holiday pop-up shops at select locations and get your products in front of customers.
Black Friday marks the beginning of the shopping season and its influence can be seen in most of the countries around the globe. With proper planning and adequate preparation, your business will not only earn huge dividends but also gain a new and loyal base of customers. Utilising these eCommerce merchandising and optimization techniques, and thinking and testing your scenarios in advance will surely help you reap the best sales rewards. Tagalys maximises conversion rate & gives merchants visual control of products displayed in Site Search, Category Pages&Product Recommendations at their online store. To know more about our solutions and features, get in touch with us now.
Vanja S
Sheike
"Tagalys makes merchandising effortless. Their data driven sequencing and sorting drastically improves our effectiveness. Tagalys takes the guesswork out of merchandising and product recommendations."
Ryan R.
Camilla
"I love that Tagalys listens to customer needs and has an innovative + agile team around them which can support addressing those needs and adding improvements to the roadmap."
Rafaelle C.
Blue Bungalow
"Tagalys is the powerful and reliable data-driven solution that we were looking for when it came to search & merchandising for our Shopify Plus store. There is no limit as to how custom you can get with your merchandising, which is exactly what we were after!"
Tiarne Warren
Meshki
"The dedication of Tagalys team is evident from the feature developments. I appreciate their effort in understanding our business needs and feedback. We have saved numerous working hours and achieved great performances."