The Christmas period is fast approaching which means that Black Friday is too! 

Once seen as purely an American celebration, it’s now taken the UK by storm seeing a 7.3% increase in online spending in 2018 from the previous year. Online retailers are encouraged to start prepping for the consumer onslaught sooner rather than later. So without further ado, let’s jump into it, shall we?

Alternative Discounting

Heavily discounting your prime stock isn’t the only way to attract switched on bargain hunters to your store. Vouchers and gift cards are a great alternative that won’t hurt your profit margins too much. This gives consumers an incentive to return at a later date. Consider adding this option as a spending incentive at checkout.

Email Campaigns

eCommerce stores are encouraged to build excitement early. A useful tactic for retailers is to begin emailing as soon as the end of October as the vast majority hit consumers inboxes the week of Black Friday or on occasion the morning of. This can be done as a part of digital marketing, you can take assistance from a PWA agency in Portsmouth.

With Black Friday being a time-sensitive event this is the perfect time to use a distinct sense of urgency with your emails! You can do this effectively by teasing a countdown of your official launch and added countdown of how much time they have remaining to snag their favourite deal. Try adding an email sign up pop up to your site incentivising that with exclusive deals.

Get SEO Savvy

Stats from PI Datametrics show, the most valuable and heavily searched terms last year used the phrase ‘‘Black Friday’’ and related concepts like deals or sales, as shoppers actively explore retailers offering deals around the event. Surprisingly some of the most popular websites surrounding the event were publishers, the Independent being the second most browsed website after Amazon. This is why it is so important for retailers to utilise this information. Maintain a black Friday deals page for your website, keep it fresh with new content, shopping tips and stats and ensure any links and publicity don’t go to waste!

Mobile Optimization

With those time-sensitive Black Friday deals, customers are likely to utilise their cellular phones to beat the ques. Your site should be optimised for mCommerce with the help of our Magento eCommerce agency in UK, regardless of the forthcoming season. Still, for this such an event, it’s essential to focus on payment methods to ensure the customer journey is smooth sailing.

I’ve written a blog specifically on mCommerce optimisation if you’d like to read more on this.

Up your site speed

Statistics show 46% of shoppers will not return to a slow website ergo a fast website is mandatory if you want success this holiday season. An effective and straightforward way to do this is to use adaptive images. According to the HTTP Archive, 61 percent of a website’s page weight on a desktop computer is images. PWA agency can use tools such as Adaptive Images or Picturefill on your website to save bandwidth. Even simpler, you can adopt new image formats such as WebP and JPeg XR, this can aid in reducing the image density without sacrificing on quality.

If you have any questions about anything discussed in this blog or if you’d like to chat about a project, feel free to get in touch. We’re always happy to help businesses reach and surpass their eCommerce potential.