Black Friday in Africa is quickly picking up, with PayGate predicting a 30% rise in South Africa in 2019. We have seen e-commerce sites up their game with crazy offers in previous years with stores putting their best foot forward to outdo each other.
In Kenya, ease of payment thanks to Mpesa and convenient and quick deliveries have been an added advantage in the online shopping business. Holiday offers have also become extremely attractive - I mean, you waited for that a holiday discount to buy one or several items in your house, right?
If this is your first major seasonal campaign, preparation is everything. This guide on how to prepare your new online store for the first holiday season can help you get your store, offers, and customer journey ready before traffic spikes.
Holiday Shopping: 5 Hacks for your online store to make big wins.
*How do you join in the holiday haul ahead of the much anticipated Black Friday Sales?*
Ready your tools. Not in your tool shed but your online tools. I'm talking about your website and social media. Ensure your website is fast, responsive and well secured with an SSL certificate. It will give your customers the confidence to keep shopping. A slow website will repel your customers. We can help you improve your website's speed. Slowness can result from outdated features, a hosting plan with fewer resources than required or the design of the website.
Your website also needs to handle the extra attention that comes with Black Friday campaigns. Before the rush begins, follow these steps on how to prepare your website for holiday traffic so shoppers can browse, add to cart, and checkout without frustration. Design also plays a big role in seasonal conversions. Simple changes like festive banners, clear product categories, visible discounts, and stronger calls to action can make your offers easier to find. Here’s how to prep your website design for the holiday season.
Leverage social media. Push the right content through your social accounts. Have the adverts running and ensure your discounts are competitive. Focus on the graphics of the advert to attract the customers and most importantly, though cliche, ensure words like; sale, discount, %, save, gift appear on your content. The key is to meet shoppers where they are already browsing and comparing deals. Use social media, email, search, and your website together so customers see your offer more than once. This guide explains how to meet your holiday customers where they are shopping.
Analyse Searches. Find out what customers are looking for most in line with what you provide and ensure that it's easy to find. You can get statistics from social media analytical tools and your website. Combine items based on frequent searches and purchases. Study your customer's behavior daily and position your products based on the results during the holiday season.
Re-organize your merchandise. Black Friday promos going for an entire month should have a variety of deals. Keep your customers enticed with different deals every several days. Here's a helpful trick to use, rank first the products with limited discount time or limited offer to strategically create scarcity. Most stores do that especially on items with huge discounts. To keep those offers profitable, plan your discounts, product bundles, timelines, and checkout flow before the campaign starts. These tips on how to run a successful online sale can help you avoid rushed promotions that hurt your margins.
Focus on your customers, not competitors. This one right here has many companies as culprits; having discount battles (They go low you go lower) with your competitors. As fun as the showdown might be, you will miss the bigger picture and end up making loses. Strategize on the discounts you want to offer and know what your limits should be.
While there are so many tips to share, this five will give you a heads up now that we've already jumped into the holiday bandwagon. Have everything ready and go for it. It's not too late for the Black Friday pie. You might as well have a big bite!
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