How to prepare your website for Black Friday & Cyber Monday (BFCM)
Ah, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Black Friday – the holy trinity of fall festivities, each with their own focus: dressing up, eating & giving thanks, and the e-commerce favorite: shopping.
Black Friday used to be, first of all an American thing, but also the day to shop in-store, and Cyber Monday was the day to shop online, but that has obviously changed. During the past few years, online shopping has grown more than ever, and now with what COVID-19 has done to 2020, it’s grown even more. But hey, we’re not complaining! At least about the online shopping part. We will be continuing to complain about the Coronavirus.
Black Friday through Cyber Monday (BFCM) is probably the most important weekend for online retailers all year, as most people get started on their holiday shopping during this period. Black Friday is THIS Friday, only 4 days away (!!), which means you really should be all set already.
So – are you ready for Black Friday?!
You need to be prepared, and most importantly, your website needs to be prepared. Here are Flowbox’s top tips on how to optimize your website for BFCM and boost your sales in 2020:
1. Extend the “holiday”
Calling it a holiday might be a bit excessive, but just as we do with other celebrations, from birthday to birthday week, or even birthday month in some cases, extend your sales to a Black Weekend or full Black Week! We’ve actually even seen some examples of brands doing a full Black Month, but in those cases with one set discount applied throughout November.
2. Multiple payment options
Your customers all have different preferences and possibilities, so it’s important that they can choose themselves to either pay now, pay later, use a credit card, debit card, pay with PayPal or Klarna etc. Some people are attached to their habits while others might be financially limited to certain options, which means some people might choose or have to shop elsewhere if you don’t offer their preferred payment option. The more options, the more customers you can reel in.
3. Live chat
People always have questions, and BFCM is no exception. The faster you can reply and the least amount of effort the customers need to put in, the better. If you can, opt for real-people-service, but if you can’t, a bot is still a lot better than nothing. To decrease the load put on your customer service reps, incorporate your FAQ in the chat system so that, if people have questions that are general enough that there already are answers, they can find them right away before actually contacting one of your chat agents.
4. Strong servers
If it isn’t obvious to you yet, let us say it loud and clear: millions of people are going to be shopping on Black Friday. Your servers need to be ready to handle much more traffic than usual, and people will expect the loading time not to lag.
5. Provide a point system
Everyone loves rewards. Don’t lie, so do you. Let your customers earn some type of points for every purchase they make that they, when they’ve reached a certain level or amount, can redeem for discounts or other types of rewards. Point systems are great for building lasting relationships with your customers, as you obviously want them to return when BFCM is over as well. Alternative: provide gifts for people who shop for a certain amount or more.
6. Offer e-mail reminders
Create a landing page or widget where your customers can sign up to be reminded when your sales start (and what you’re offering!). Bonus tip x2: a) make the reminders a part of your newsletter and b) make a part of your sale exclusive (items, early access etc) to those that have signed up for your newsletter – boom, now you’ve got yourself some new potentially long-term subscribers.
Here’s a great example from one of our Flowboxers, Volt.
7. Create a countdown
Counting down to when your sale starts will get people excited (perhaps also a little bit stressed, but hopefully in a good way), and they might check out your website a couple more times to make sure they don’t miss it.
8. The power of graphics
Make sure it’s obvious to your customers that you’re having a sale, and get them excited for it! A great way of doing that is to include vibrant, can’t-miss-it graphics on your site and/or in your social media.
Bonus: host a competition on your social media! This is also a great way to get people to start tagging you in their posts and to gain more followers.
All in all, if you create a pleasant Black Friday & Cyber Monday shopping experience for your customers, they might return, or even become loyal customers. As you hopefully already know, it is much more expensive to gain new customers than it is to retain old ones, and BFCM is a great opportunity to do both.
Good luck! 🖤
For more information, contact:
Bianca Rior, Content Editor, Flowbox
bianca.rior@getflowbox.com
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