ONE MONTH TO GO

E-Commerce Focus
As majority of shopping sprees will be made digital this year in the UK, it is crucial that your e-commerce website is optimised to be able to handle a huge surge of traffic whilst providing a seamless and positive shopping experience. In addition to this, you will need to ensure that your e-commerce website is optimised for mobile & tablet use. Last year 52% of traffic was coming from mobile devices on Black Friday and in response to the current climate you can imagine that this figure will increase drastically without a doubt. Take advantage of this year to take your business online and grab the opportunity to make some big sales on Black Friday & Cyber Monday with a brand new, functional and optimised e-commerce website, read more here to see how we can help!

Product Inventory
Be sure that you have enough products and stock in preparation for Black Friday & Cyber Monday. It’s better to over-perform than under-perform on the big day. Check over the stock that you have, analyse whether you need to order anymore and what promotional deals you will be offering with each. Ensure that you have already set these products up on your website, hidden from users, with accurate sale prices, product names, descriptions and SKU numbers. There will be no time or room for mistakes on Black Friday & Cyber Monday which is why it is so important to trial and error much quicker before hand.

Optimise your Website for Black Friday Traffic
If page loading time wasn’t critical enough on a daily basis, it will play a crucial, decisive factor on the big day. Black Friday & Cyber Monday are all about speed and securing your purchases before everyone else. Your website needs to be prepared for the amount of traffic that will be heading its way and therefore needs to ensure that factors like page speed are optimised and will not affect the user experience negatively on the day. Otherwise you are in danger of losing out on a lot of sales and essentially giving your customers away to fellow competitors.

Confirm your Shipping Strategy
Step Two to ensuring a positive shopping experience is selling your products and business as the best and most efficient. There is nothing better for a customer than being offered free shipping or even a two / three day turnaround time. Also look at the amount of boxes and postage that you have in your unit to eliminate any possibility of delayed shipping.

THREE WEEKS TO GO

Partner with Influencers
Choosing to partner up with an influencer especially during the holiday season will no doubt amplify your presence and reach. You don’t have to reach to influencers with millions of followers, look for people that align with your brand and your beliefs that have around 5-10k followers. Once you have found a partner that you are happy to work with, plan out a campaign, marketing strategies and sale approach. Think about what platform you want to reach out on the most and how you will do that i.e. posting a story, reel or a post? Ensure that your time it wise too. Not too early as users may forget about your business by Black Friday but not too late as users may already have chosen where they want to shop from.

Advertise your business
Majority of businesses big or small all use advertisements as a way to increase their reach. Adverts create an opportunity for your business to get infront of the customer in an area full of competition. In fact, 30% of users online confirm that they have discovered a new brand / product through finding them as a result of an advertisement. Especially now due to the pandemic, ads will become much more costly as businesses battle to get ahead of their competitors but despite a higher cost, your return on investment may be higher.

Begin promoting your seasonal products / deals
The biggest and most important part of Black Friday & Cyber Monday are the promotions and sales. To ensure the success of your business, planning a strategic promotional system requires looking at several factors to secure your sales. You can do this through: posting teaser shots of your new products, offer a free gift with each purchase, utilise stories and carousels to promote your products, extend your sales and optimise the checkout experience by eliminating unnecessary fields and so that users can easily & efficiently can make purchases.

TWO WEEKS TO GO

Generate amazing visual content
To win over your Black Friday & Cyber Monday customers, captivating and attractive imagery will be sure to catch their attention on social media. To help you boost your sales, use striking graphics, thoughout ads and promotional banners.

Get blogging
Start writing engaging and editorial content based on your products and what your customers can expect to see on Black Friday & Cyber Monday. Treat this as a sales pitch but with a dash of mystery and fun. You want to convince your audience to purchase your products but creating a mystery around your products, people are likely to come and see your shop on Black Friday to see what the whole mystery was about. However, you don’t want to drive your customers away so make sure that your blogs look visually pleasing with plenty of image and colours.

Prep your Email Campaigns
This is one of the best ways to reach out to new and existing customers. They make all the difference during promotional periods like Black Friday & Cyber Monday. Feature all the important information that relates to your promotion but keep it short & sweet! Make your customers life easier and add links to all the relevant places that users will need to access during and prior to the big sale storm. If you are providing loyal customers with discount codes or coupons then now is the time to send them over.

Track Analytics
One of the best ways to see whether what you are doing is working is by tracking your analytics. Compare findings before your Black Friday & Cyber Monday campaign with the analytics during and after the event to see how well your business has performed online. You will be able to gauge how much engagement you are receiving and where it is coming from to see which platforms work best for you and your business. We highly recommend using Google Analytics & HotJar to track your online performance.

ONE WEEK TO GO

Schedule our your content
There is only one week left before you are about o experience the busiest season of the year. Now is the time to strategically schedule your content and grab as much attention as possible that diverts traffic to your website. Get it done before 27th November as you won’t have the time to plan, schedule and track your progress on the day. There are so many different scheduling tools that you can use which will auto-post the content out for you at a specific date and time. We recommend using Zoho as it is a tool that we personally sue with our marketing campaigns.

VIP Customers
You are now able to reward your loyal customers with early access to pre-orders and first look at your products. Ensure that you make your VIP customers feel that they are important to your business and build on that trust. This will allow your business to strengthen its brand presence and appreciation within your audience.

Create a back-up plan
It is inevitable that things go wrong. Business is a continuous learning curve for all of us but if we can identify issues before they happen then we can have a plan in place to eliminate or minimise the damage. What will happen if you run out of a product? What if your website experiences technical issues or maybe the coupon codes are defective? There is a solution for all and the biggest and most important factor is to prepare for the worst.

What will happen if you run out of a product?

Order more stock than needed to avoid running out.

What if your website experiences technical issues?

Have an IT team on standby that will manage and monitor any issues during the sale.

The coupon codes are defective?

Create spare coupon codes in advance.

There is still time to prepare your business for one of the busiest times of the year. If you are looking for a Design Agency that will assist you during the busy Black Friday & Cyber Monday then get in touch. Time is of the essence, don’t let your business fall behind and lets start creating & planning content, optimising / building you a e-commerce shop now before the huge sale storm!

Call our Creative Studio on 01562 747411 or email kidderminster@nettl.com