Preparing for Black Friday 2015

16 November 2015

Let’s face it - the biggest prep most companies and marketers are focusing on at the moment isn’t Christmas or the New Year, its Black Friday! The world has, quite simply, gone Black Friday mad – it does now last for a whole weekend after-all!

This year the bargain bonanza will happen on Friday 27th November, with offers and promotions lasting the weekend with cyber Monday on the 30th. It’s even been reported that some retailers will start their week of deals on Monday 23rd November – so there’s a whole week to grab a deal!

Bargain hunters across the country (and the world) are gearing up to save some money on their festive buys, but how are online retailers and businesses prepping? Here are our top tips on how you can make some last minute preparations for Black Friday promotions...

Make Your Website Festive

Make your customers think of Christmas as soon as they go onto your website. Small tweaks and changes can be added easily that can make your site look instantly festive. Adding a Santa hat to your logo for example, or changing your homepage colours to festive greens and reds. Create banners and hero images to advertise Christmas sales. You can really promote your festive sales with gorgeous Christmas graphics and visuals. Use special banner ads to show off your holiday offers, or change your header or hero image on your homepage especially for Black Friday.

Email your customers an enticing offer

Black Friday shoppers are the ultimate bargain hunters and they have very high expectations. They want massive discounts and huge sales – so let them know what you’re offering. Create a holiday-themed email campaign that presents shoppers with a few offers they can’t refuse.

Of course, for smaller businesses, matching the crazy deals that big retailers offer can be tough to do. If you can’t offer a similar discount, you can make up for it by offering additional incentives – Black Friday is the perfect time to use your up-selling techniques!

Grab attention with social media

This one kind of goes without saying, but this Christmas season you should really use your social media channels to the max. Customers won’t know about your Black Friday offers unless you tell them about them! Post, post and post again! Try and use as many pictures as possible as well to boost engagement (Research has shown that tweets with photos get 313% more engagement!)

Make sure your website can handle the surge in traffic

At times too many simultaneous requests to your website can slow it down and potentially crash your website. This will usually takes an enormous amount of traffic to happen, but it’s still a good idea to check and make sure your host can handle the surge of traffic. You can test the server load capacity of your store with various online tools.

If you have any questions regarding you Black Friday campaigns, Christmas promotions, or plans for 2016, please do not hesitate to give us a call. Our helpful and friendly team will be more than happy to help and advice you. Good luck - we hope your Black Friday goes off with a bang!