What Your Website Should be Doing to Take Advantage of Black Friday eCommerce sales

Now well-established dates on the festive shopping calendar, Black Friday (and to a lesser extent, Cyber Monday) have a major impact on the profit margins of retailers. In 2019, total retail spending on Black Friday weekend equated to £8.6 billion – one of the highest takings in the whole of Europe.

While spending was understandably down last year due to Coronavirus restrictions, this year is expected to see an upturn of in-person sales – when you consider the number of online shopping outlets that were established last year too, this all makes the Black Friday eCommerce market as competitive as it's ever been.

If you operate your own online retail business, is your website ready for the upcoming shopping season? Having your online marketing techniques down will be a massive help in getting your products out there – all it takes is a little bit of organisation and expert advice.

Expert tips on getting your website ready for the Black Friday eCommerce market

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. As such, we have all the experience and industry know how to achieve the conversions that you require – so without further ado, here are our best tips on getting your website ready for Black Friday:

1. Start with the landing pages – Throughout the period, shoppers are likely to be quickly perusing through websites in the search for the best Black Friday eCommerce deals. They are very likely to click away if their attention isn't captured immediately – this is why it's important to create attractive landing pages. A landing page is what a user will first come into contact with when they click on one of your website's links. By making a specific landing page for Black Friday, you can showcase all of your deals, without shoppers having to go and search through your product pages. This will ultimately give them less of an excuse to click away.
2. Make use of social media – The best way to promote your Black Friday landing page(s) has to be through the use of social media. Whether it's Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or TikTok, all of these platforms can help to promote your website and brand to a wide array of audiences. Many people will spend increasing amounts of time on social media simply to find the best deals, so having a presence on them (and the knowledge to target specific audiences) is vital for any eCommerce site wishing to take advantage of the Black Friday market.
3. Provide multi-channels – Aside from the great deals, another reason why shoppers are attracted to Black Friday eCommerce is that it offers them a less-pressurised environment to shop in than a physical store. We saw this in great detail at the height of the pandemic – instead of attending a store in person, we ordered things online and got them delivered. The issue is that the biggest brands will always have an advantage when it comes to jostling for attention – however, the likes of Amazon and eBay offer all retailers the opportunity to sell via their channels, providing somewhat of an equaliser. Having a presence as a seller on as many major online shopping platforms as possible will add extra cachet to your brand – so ensure you take advantage of multi-channel selling.
4. Remarket your products – it's important to think about the habits of shoppers if you want to understand them; price comparison is the perfect example of this. While shopping online, people will compare the prices of the same product on several different websites, even going as far as to add them to their basket to see what the delivery charge will be. Often, they may lose track of the websites they've been on and the deals they've been offered – remarketing can help to rescue that lost shopping cart. By using eCommerce programs such as Google AdWords, you can use ads to target specific browsers based on whatever they looked at or even placed in their shopping carts. If you've ever looked at something on an online retailer and later seen an advert for it on another website, you would have experienced remarketing – the trick is to create an attractive enough ad to lure them back. Black Friday eCommerce will be the perfect opportunity to do this.
5. Utilising e-mail marketing – Loyalty is an important factor in a successful retail business; if your products and service impress the shopper once, they are likely to return and be interested in what you have to sell on another occasion. If your shoppers registered their e-mail address with you to make their purchase, you will be able to target them with specific Black Friday deals. Once an e-mail campaign has been sent out, you can see who received it, who opened it, who clicked on which link, at what time and how often. This valuable information can help you to target customers more effectively and efficiently, creating more sales and repeat business.
   

Choose Advansys for all your eCommerce needs

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

If you would like more information on how we can help to improve your Black Friday eCommerce conversions, please don't hesitate to contact our team on 0118 380 0201. Alternatively, you can send an e-mail to sales@advansys.com and we'll get in touch as soon as possible.