Straight to the point
Even if it’s unintentional, your e-commerce already has a very special day coming up in November. Black Friday is currently one of the most relevant dates for the calendar of online stores. Regardless of the market type, consumers are highly anticipated to shop on that day.
Black Friday has already shown how successful sales can be during that frenzy. For example, in 2020, the North American market spent $9.0 billion dollars on products for Black Friday, which is about 21.6% more than they did in 2019 as according to data retrieved from Adobe Analytics.
With all this buzz going on, how do you prepare your e-commerce to experience more sales and have a higher conversion rate in this period that is so significant for billing?
This is what we will discuss in this article!
First, secure the best possible offer
Black Friday is a very much awaited day because it brings such great price opportunities, right? That’s why seeking better negotiations with suppliers is important for this particular date.
By negotiating a larger volume of orders, or having exclusivity with service providers, you gain margin to pass on good discounts to customers and you are able to provide a positive first shopping experience.
In addition to negotiating with suppliers, analyze inventory to see which products could lose individual margin to improve revenue and increase sales in larger quantities.
It is also important to study the sales volume by category of previous years to ensure that the availability of products are in stock! Remember: one of the most difficult experiences for shoppers is the delay in receiving the purchased product.
Offer express logistics options
As mentioned above, online shoppers love it when products arrive fast. That’s why it’s important to offer logistics options with different delivery speeds (even prices) for consumers.
By negotiating with logistics companies, it is possible to define regions that can receive the products in up to two days, for example, and this personalized communication can add a lot of value to this awaited date.
Prepare by evaluating (and fixing) the user experience
User experience is a very important topic, defined by Consultant Neil Patel as “a strategy whose actions seek not only to deliver the best content, but also to ensure that it is consumed in the most pleasant way possible.”
In the context of fashion e-commerce, this encompasses different aspects that need to be evaluated and can be more or less worked on, depending on the team that works with e-commerce.
We can list:
Evaluate the platform well
Does the chosen partner offer the customization that the store needs between the different categories of e-commerce? Is there support that is attentive to technical and business needs that are sure to arise, and that can negatively influence the shopping experience?
Does the platform scale to handle a large volume of traffic, as is normal on Black Friday? Taking down websites is a specialty of the public looking for good deals, and depending on the settings of the contracted plan, your simultaneous access may be low.
Focus on providing great photos
Anyone who buys online is not just interested in good prices. The individual is interested in the proposal of the product being used in practice. For example, provide photographs taken professionally so that they can bring greater insight on the product as well as provide inspo for the potential buyer.
After all, photographs do not only serve to show an item, but to also express the beauty in the details of each piece your ecommerce has to offer.
How are your buttons and banners?
Banners and buttons are central elements of every action we want shoppers to take. Therefore, analyzing different compositions and versions of buttons and banners is essential in the race to improve conversion rates.
In e-commerces, this practice of exchanging elements for performance comparison is called A/B testing, when we use tools like Google Optimize to show a button variation for one sample group of your visitors, and another button for the other sample group.
This type of practice allows you to compare which range of colors, photos and texts had the most goals and events completed.
Also rate the Mobile experience
Access via cell phone already dominates the attention of most e-commerces around the world, perhaps this is also your case.
The fact is, smartphones are at the center of different touchpoints for people with brands. A recent Google article showed that 40% of online purchases are influenced via cellphone use!
This shows the importance of investing in research and ongoing effort to deliver a satisfying mobile experience. Especially since, according to the same Google research, the conversion rate on mobile use doesn’t grow the same way as the importance of this device for the shopping journey.
The conversion rate depends on different aspects, and the topic below could also be one of them!
Prepare your service well
Increasing the availability of support to address the public’s inquiries is essential to ensure that the traffic and awareness you’ve generated won’t go to waste.
Ensure that the internal team is in a Black Friday mood and create processes where attendants have the freedom to solve problems quickly.
This is a very important mission before, during and after Black Friday! Don’t forget that, first of all, Black Friday is a time for new consumers to get to know your store and the experience you provide.
Act preventively to reduce the main doubts
During this period of Black Friday, people are impacted by different stores and offers.
So it’s no exaggeration to say that every person who accesses e-commerce has an “energy bar” that starts out full and decreases as navigation takes place.
If there are doubts or uncertainties in the process that are not dealt with by e-commerce, it is very likely that the energy goes out much faster and the person looks for another store, do you agree?
In this case, ensure that the main questions of those who buy clothes online are full of information:
Will the clothes fit me?
Insecurity about the size of the pieces and how they will fit the consumer is one of the greatest challenges for fashion e-commerces. This is not always solved just by Measurement Tables, which can also be quite confusing and difficult to use.
Need help creating Measurement Tables? Keep reading.
Size recommendation solutions for your customer to buy more efficiently are a good alternative to make available together with efficient measurement tables.
How are the details of this product?
When the technical description of the product and photographs are insufficient or generic, the e-commerce is practically asking the customer to decide whether they like the piece or not once they have already purchased it and it is in their hands
And this is happening on average with 64.2% of online sales, according to data from consulting Sales Cycle.
We don’t even need to say how this affects the logistics, right?
What is the opinion of people who have already purchased the product?
Feedback from those who have already tried the product can be decisive for a new purchase. Study implementing tools that enable customers to give reviews on products can be evangelising product quality and service.
Avoid Exchanges and Returns to save your margin
The Black Friday period usually already brings a reduction in the profit margin for e-commerces, so following these tips as much as possible is very important to minimize the need for reverse logistics.
Thus, we guarantee a good shopping experience and a reduction of energy spent by the team with the return of products that may be difficult to resell.
Use available data to generate demand for Black Friday
Your e-commerce store probably already has several types of audience data that can be used to offer interesting offers to those who may be more aware of your brand and products.
Data from the e-commerce itself
Each e-commerce probably has two types of data that can be used. There’s browsing data through store sessions and there’s shopping data, which is extremely rich for targeting.
Create specific audiences to delimit people who have browsed between these profiles. It could be browsing different categories on your site, such as men’s and women’s clothing, or a specific collection that has its own url in your store.
Also make use of your lead bases to email everyone who has recently made purchases, and keep those audiences receiving frequent communication.
Engagement data on social networks
Another type of data is that of engagement with social networks. This type of data is one of the richest if e-commerce has a frequent production of good content. You can target very specifically to impact people who have recently visited your store.
Make an efficient after-sales to retain customers
Adapt the e-mail and messenger relationship rules that your e-commerce possibly already has to develop a specific communication after Black Friday.
It is common for people to buy on that particular date and not receive any special after-sales approach. Talk about the category of products the customer has purchased, promote new products within the same category, and you can also ask for feedback on the customer’s satisfaction with the products.
If you follow these suggestions you have everything you need to have a successful Black Friday!
