The busiest shopping days of the year are just around the corner. Black Friday that fell on November 24 this year marks the beginning of a long-awaited Christmas shopping and discount season. Soon shoppers will flock into brick-and-mortar and online stores to spend their money on gifts for relatives and friends.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday (that will follow it on November 27) are an excellent opportunity for online retailers to sharply increase their sales thanks to huge discounts they offer. In 2016, for instance, U.S. consumers spent USD 3.45 billion on Monday, thus establishing an all-time record.
Online shoppers have already held their breath in anticipation of generous discounts, as less than two weeks are left until ecommerce stores get the show on the road. Have you prepared your Magento store for Black Friday and Cyber Monday? Use these tips to ensure that everything will go off without a hitch during the campaign.
Learn from Experience
Take into account mistakes of previous years. Discuss with your team which false steps you took earlier and which things helped you to make the profit. Decide on the tactic you are going to employ this time. For instance, you can launch hourly deals to keep customers engaged.
Consider the experience of your successful competitors. Take a look at their Black Friday and Cyber Monday cases to learn what exactly they did to entice customers.
Make sure that all the employees have clearly defined roles. Note that multitasking will make them less efficient. Beef up your sales team, as you’ll need all hands on deck. Utilize a live chat service to communicate with shoppers, if possible.
Promote Heavily
Set the stage for the Big Game by promoting your sales campaign. Send out dedicated newsletters to your clients and subscribers, since shoppers commence looking for discount offers at the beginning of November. In Magento 2, you can create coupon codes and send them to customers in newsletters.
Consider posting on social media: people actively express themselves online, and they often follow social media pages of their favorite stores. Shoppers also tend to use social networks and search engines to seek lucrative deals. So, if your marketing budget is large enough, buy online ads on Facebook or elsewhere.
Post on Reddit: this site is extremely popular among Americans. Post on threads about different deals (e.g., check out this one) or submit a new deal to the Black Friday thread.
Add social media buttons to your product pages to encourage visitors to share your offers with others.
Change Your Store’s Look
If you want your products to jump off the shelves during the campaign, you need to change the look of your website. It’s a common practice to turn headers into banners to promote discounts. Some Magento stores even install new themes to let shoppers know that they have their ducks in a row.
Since customers are spoilt for choice, wise practitioners display trending products on the home page during the sales season to lure visitors to stay on the site. Utilize Google Trends to find out which products are on the rise.
Prepare Products for the Campaign
In Magento 2, create configurable products to allow shoppers to choose from all the available options (e.g., sizes and colors) on a single page. You can also take advantage of grouped and bundled products. Shoppers will not resist buying such products in case your offer is really generous.
Optimize Your Website
Seasonal landing pages have paramount importance for driving more traffic to your Magento store during the holiday campaign. SEO-optimize these pages by using Black Friday- and Cyber Monday-related keywords. Use captivating images, write great content to allure shoppers, use CTA and ‘add-to-cart’ buttons to make them buy, and so on.
You may also temporarily add new SEO keywords to existing product pages to enhance your chances of getting new customers who utilize search engines to find discounts on the Internet.
Your Magento site must be mobile-optimized: a large number of shoppers access ecommerce stores from their mobile devices. Having an SSL certificate is also essential: shoppers may abandon your shopping cart if they see that the connection is not secure and they may be at risk of losing their credit card data.
Simplify Checkout and Payment Processes
Make it easy for your customers to purchase by improving the checkout process. For instance, you can use Magento One Page Checkout to manage the look and feel of the Magento 1 checkout.
Think of adding the most popular payment gateways to your store. Let shoppers choose the most appropriate payment method, such as PayPal and credit card payments.
Test Your Site
Test your website to eliminate any problems that may occur when it deals with a large number of concurrent visitors. Check whether the site is easy to use, how well its navigation works, etc. Such testing will allow you to make all the vital tweaks and have the store done and dusted for the campaign.
Conclusion
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the best time of the year for ecommerce businesses to generate a fat profit. Don’t miss this chance by failing to prepare your Magento site for these days. Employ the above-mentioned tips to deliver your customers a shopping experience that transcends your rivals’ stores and stand out from the competition.
