4 Black Friday eCommerce trends for 2017
Black Friday originally started in America and is the day after Thanksgiving, when retailers would offer discounts ahead of the Christmas period.
This has resulted in huge queues outside the stores, parking nightmares and crowd madness – which now pushes people to buy online and avoid all the craziness around Black Friday.
Let’s explore the 4 trends of eCommerce Black Friday for 2017.
#1 Start early
Black Friday is a great opportunity for businesses. Reports from Qubit found traffic was up 220% and the revenue was up 240% compared to a normal Friday in 2016.
The NRF (National Retail Federation) research shows that more than 50% of holiday shoppers start to plan their gifts ahead of Black Friday, early in October. Therefore, it is essential to plan your promotions early.
In 2016, Amazon started “the countdown to Black Friday” one month ahead. eBay started offering discounts on the 17th November and Walmart started deals from the 4th November.
Starting earlier is definitely becoming a new trend.
Moreover, gaining new customers during Black Friday is a great strategy to generate leads ahead of Christmas. By acquiring new subscriptions to your mailing list for special Black Friday deals, this will serve you in the long run.
#2 Be prepared for the rush
Your site might not be prepared for the peak in traffic associated with holiday promotions – and can consequently crash.
This would force your potential consumers to buy from other online retailers and, eventually, your conversion rate to drop.
A quick and easy option to increase your server speed is to subscribe to a website acceleration service to speed up your performance.
They are cloud-based solutions that can reduce network latency, optimize content and deliver consistent performance levels to your visitors. They require little to no implementation – all you need is a URL and a CDN (Content Delivery Network) company.
We recommend doing a performance test before the big rush to ensure your website can support the traffic overload.
#3 Best promotions and deals
Free Shipping is everywhere: major retailers will offer instant gratification as free shipping, or same day delivery.
While Walmart offers free shipping for purchases over $35, Amazon offers free two-day shipping by signing up for a free 30-day trial of Amazon Prime.
This will improve the online experience and visitors are expecting more and more of these amenities.
Also, visitors are expecting huge discounts and more than 4 in 10 consumers won’t pay the full item price during the holiday promotion.
Last year however, according to The Telegraph, UK retailers cut prices by 9% only, which is low compared to other countries (Germany: 23%, France: 26%, USA: 29%, Canada: 36%).
#4 Cross-selling opportunities
Cross-selling is offering additional products or services to customers to eventually increase your revenue.
However, those products must be something relevant to customers and relate to the product they are already looking at.
You can also present additional products and offer a discount if people buy them as a package.
Cross-selling is a great strategy to create visibility for products and help discoverability,
especially during holiday promotions, where customers have a clear intent to purchase.
Conclusion: E-commerce will hugely be affected by Black Friday.
Jumping on these trends earlier in November will help sales success.
If you want to know more about our CRO services and what we can do for you, contact us today!