How to prepare your store for Black Friday 2021

Preparing store for Black Friday – at this time of year a problem for almost every store owner. Digitalization, and in particular the “contactless” e-commerce market has clearly accelerated. IBM’s research even says that within a few months there have been changes that under normal circumstances we would take about 5 years. And although not all industries have managed to adapt equally to the new situation, there is no turning back from the digitalization of sales channels. Analyses show that even if the world manages to deal with the pandemic, consumers will not return to their old habits.

How to prepare store for Black Friday – issues discussed:

1. What is Black Friday?
2. Performance
3. User Experience
4. Promotion in social media and ads
5. Offer

Internet users start looking for information about Black Friday promotions as early as early September, which online stores are learning to take advantage of. However, it can always be better. Therefore today we suggest how to prepare your shop for Black Friday.

What is Black Friday?

Black Friday is a day when stores announce one-day promotions and discount actions, often extending their opening hours. Black Friday falls at the end of November and opens the pre-Christmas sales season.

The “Black Friday” tradition has been around since the 1980s. The term was used by police in the United States to describe traffic jams caused by the opening of the season. In recent years, “Black Friday” has gained popularity all over the world, prompting retailers to extend their sale times. It is out of this commercial need that “Cyber Monday” was born, which is the Monday closest to “Black Friday” when discounts can be enjoyed at online stores.

Today, the traditions of Black Friday and Cyber Monday are popular almost everywhere but the boundaries between them have become blurred. Black Friday is also, or maybe even primarily, a celebration of online sales.

How to prepare store for Black Friday?

Performance

A very common occurrence observed during Black Friday, is website accessibility issues like crashes or its loading time increases. This happens even to the best stores and you should pay attention to it. The specific reasons for the drop in performance can vary, such as:

• operation of third-party applications,
• too many installed plug-ins,
• inadequate servers,
• too many high-resolution graphic elements.

User Experience

No less important aspect is the user experience. During the holiday season, and in fact not only then, the store should also take care of:

• an intuitive user interface,
• efficient search engine,
• seamless transaction service offering multiple payment methods,
• adjusting your website to the needs of mobile users.

Promotion in social media and ads

Buyers don’t wait until Black Friday to start looking and it’s worth taking advantage of that. Try promoting your site to, for example, increase newsletter subscriptions and acquire emails that you will use when the time comes.

You can also promote your listing on social media and Google ads for this purpose.

Offer

Ensure that your offerings do not run out before time. To do this, determine what products you will be promoting (and what they have a chance of selling) and contact your suppliers to make sure they are prepared to handle the anticipated sales.

One of the worst things that can happen during a sale is a lack of merchandise to meet customer demand.

Black Friday definitely is a busy time for store owners. But if you will plan it earlier, there is nothing to worry about! If you are wondering now how to create an ideal product description, read our recent article where we leave some top tips!

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