5 Tips On How eCommerce Traders Take Advantage Of The Festive Market

In the past few years, shopping events such as 'Black Friday' and 'Cyber Monday' have made a huge impact on the UK retail market – 2015 alone saw £3.3bn of sales happen over the now -dubbed Black Friday Weekend. Traditionally an American institution, Black Friday takes place the day after Thanksgiving (think of it like our Boxing Day) which sees the prices of items slashed to encourage sales. Whilst the benefits to shoppers and retailers alike are obvious, the event has raised much criticism for encouraging somewhat of a frenzied free-for-all; people have been known to literally fight over heavily-discounted products.

Thankfully, the online world is completely different – Cyber Monday forms the finishing post for Black Friday Weekend and sees online retailers take centre stage. The only pushing and shoving that will happen here, is with your mouse! Many large retailers, such as Amazon (who also offer a third-party marketplace for other retailers to utilise) undertake a 'Black Friday Week' which sees sales and offers rolled out for the entire week that Black Friday falls in. So whether you're an online or a physical store (or both!), you can see why this period is such an important one to generate sales.

Bespoke eCommerce solutions

At Advansys, we are an industry leader in eCommerce solutions – our services include promotional activities, such as search engine optimisation, e-mail marketing and the implementation of multi-channels. With a vast experience and many successful projects undertaken for businesses of all sizes, we know that we are able to help you to achieve the conversions that you require.

How can I get my eCommerce website ready for the upcoming season?

With the season ever-approaching, here are 5 tips on how eCommerce traders can get the most out of Black Friday Weekend;

1. Utilising emails. Throughout the year, an eCommerce website will have been storing email addresses from people who have either purchased something, or signed up to a mailing list. This will give them the perfect opportunity to send out emails, promoting their Black Friday deals.
   
   If you take a more considered approach (rather than sending out email, after email) and target your campaign at specific people, showing them offers that they may be interested in, then this could work to help generate sales. Keeping your campaign to one email per address will hit the balance of you advertising yourself – but not falling foul of the spam button, which many people will press if they receive email after email.
2. Getting serious with remarketing. It's important to remember that people will be doing their browsing in different stores and on different websites. It's likely that they'll just be placing items into a shopping cart, just to compare the prices with another website. When shoppers do this – it's no surprise that many lose track of the websites they've been on or which offered the best deal – remarketing can help you to rescue that lost shopping cart.
   
   Using a service such as Google's AdWords, remarketing is a process in which you can target adverts (based on whatever they placed into their shopping carts) to appear on their screens as they continue to browse the web. Seeing as this time of year is one where people will be browsing with a real intent to make a purchase, remarketing will give you a great opportunity to attempt to rescue any lost sales, as your advert will convey the products they want - and your brilliant seasonal offer that they can't resist!
   
3. Making use of social media. Aside from being an extremely busy day for shopping – the Black Friday weekend is also a peak time for activity on social media. With the upcoming Christmas season to get excited about, as well as writing about their shopping experiences – many people will be browsing, looking for any deals they can spot on their social media channel(s). With social media being a somewhat cost-effective way to advertise, this will give any eCommerce trader the perfect opportunity to promote their deals on the big day. By using promoted posts and adverts, you can ensure that your posts get seen by the people who you target, which will hopefully lead to an eventual sale.
   
4. Multi-channels. Another attraction of shopping online on Black Friday and Cyber Monday (aside from the great deals) is that it offers shoppers a somewhat less-pressurised environment for them to go about purchasing presents for Christmas. With the shopping done with a month in hand – they are able to relax and just wait for them to be delivered. On occasions such as this, it's always the bigger retailers – such as Amazon and eBay – that grab the attentions of online shoppers. Thankfully, these websites offer traders a chance to set their stalls out on their marketplaces – giving them a chance to promote their products on the busiest of sites at the busiest of times. Making sure that you are able to have a presence on as many of these sites as possible is of paramount importance - this is something that multi-channels can do, as it gives you one software package to manage all of your individual stores.
   
5. Don't forget about the fundamentals. With it being an extremely-busy season, it's understandable that retailers (as well as shoppers) will be rushing about, as they're pulled from pillar-to-post as they try and get their business done. As an eCommerce trader, it's vitally important to remember to treat the season's sales as you would at any other time of the year – namely giving each and every customer a great shopping experience. This is an important aspect if you wish to retain their custom – and with you likely to receive more customers than you normally do during the season, you can see why it'll work in your favour if you can hold on to most of them for the upcoming year.

Need affective ecommerce solutions to help your website to achieve the conversions it needs? Advansys can help!

Being specialists in helping all kinds of business to achieve eCommerce solutions that will help to progress their presence online, we can say that it's vitally important for any eCommerce retailer to prepare themselves for the Black Friday Weekend. Whether you need help with advertising, marketing – or need a completely new website design, Advansys are here to help.

For more information on how we can help to improve your eCommerce conversions, please don't hesitate to contact our friendly team on 0838 050 2700 or send us an e-mail at sales@advansys.com