The sale frenzy is moving online. According to estimates by Picodi, during last year's Black Friday as many as one in three internet users in Poland shopped online.
Meanwhile, according to data collected by Adobe, the value of online sales during Black Friday 2016 in the US exceeded USD 3 billion for the first time and grew by more than 20 percent compared with the previous year. There are many indications that this year's November sales could set further records. Whether that ultimately happens depends, among other things, on whether online store owners are caught off guard by increased web traffic and whether sales platforms can withstand the massive volume of orders placed over the internet.
If You're Going to Shop the Sales, Do It at an Online Store
According to data collected by Adobe, the value of online sales during Black Friday in the United States in 2016 exceeded USD 3 billion (USD 3.34 billion) for the first time and rose by more than 20 percent compared with Black Friday 2015. According to Picodi, during Black Friday 2016 as many as 35 percent of all Polish internet users, or 9.3 million people, may have shopped online.
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We are observing the growing role of online channels during sale periods. According to RetailNext, during Thanksgiving and the following Black Friday, sales in traditional stores in the US fell by 5 percent, while the value of transactions concluded dropped by 8 percent. The scale of this phenomenon is best illustrated by lower footfall during autumn promotions at brick-and-mortar stores of the most recognizable brands. For example, last year during Black Friday outside a hypermarket of a well-known chain in a southern district of London, where queues usually formed, only a dozen or so people waited for the store to open and the sale to begin. In Poland, a similar trend is becoming increasingly visible. At the end of 2016, the value of the domestic e-commerce market was PLN 36 billion, and according to forecasts, by the end of 2017 it is to exceed PLN 40 billion, before reaching PLN 63 billion in 2020, according to estimates by Sociomantic Labs experts – comments
Marek Safiejko, CEO of 9bits, a technology company specializing in creating mobile applications and technology solutions for e-commerce.
Counting Profits… and Losses
The value of online purchases made during Black Friday could be even higher if online stores were prepared for the increased number of customers that day. During the 2016 sales, the online sales system of Macy's – a well-known US department store chain – could not handle the massive volume of orders. Subsequent customers wanting to shop in the e-store could not do so because of an overly long technical outage. The brand ultimately posted information on its website about the possibility of placing orders by phone, which customers did not like. There is no shortage of similar examples in Poland. One of the leading electronics stores on our market did not expect increased customer traffic during Black Friday. The company could not keep up with removing sold-out products from its offer. Customers only found out when summing up the transaction that they could not buy a given item. As a result, the service could not withstand the load and customers could enjoy the promotions offered by the store only briefly.
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If companies do not prepare their sales platforms for the onslaught of online customers during the November sales, they will have to reckon not only with financial losses due to unfulfilled purchases, but also with further consequences. Bad experiences in contact with a given brand online may contribute to a consumer not becoming a regular customer of the e-store. There is also little chance that such a user will visit the given seller's brick-and-mortar store. Even isolated cases of online store websites crashing can scare off customers who will not return to the brand. Therefore, from a technical standpoint, companies must be ready to solve problems with the operation of sales platforms that may arise during the sales – explains
Marek Safiejko, 9bits.
An Embarrassment of Riches, or How to Prepare an E-store for Black Friday
The key to success is observing consumer behavior online. As John Rogers, owner of the British company Argos offering household appliances and consumer electronics, admits, within the first hour of Black Friday 2016 the company recorded 500,000 visits to its website, an increase of 50 percent compared with the previous year. The company managed to avoid problems related to a service outage by learning lessons from sales in previous years. Rogers had estimated that during Black Friday the number of online orders would increase by 70 percent compared with a normal sales day.
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You should start by analyzing traffic on the store's website in order to properly prepare the online sales system in the future for increased interest during promotions. The goal of such efforts should be to focus on preventing loss of access to the e-store on days such as Black Friday. Online business owners should remember that for them the autumn sale does not begin on the last Friday of November, but definitely much earlier. Marketing campaigns launch in advance, so a company can also, for example, track interest in organized promotional campaigns by analyzing posts published by potential customers, e.g. on social media belonging to a given brand – advises
Marek Safiejko, CEO of 9bits.
Marek Safiejko also suggests what additional steps every brand offering its products online should take to prepare for increased online customer traffic during Black Friday and to make consumers visiting the online store that day become loyal customers. Here is a list of 6 tips:
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Replace the online store's homepage with a landing page for the promotional campaign – in this way, online customers will be able to reach discounted goods without difficulty, without having to browse hundreds of products listed in the store.
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Take care of "flawless" search algorithms – a customer should be able to find what they are looking for easily and quickly. The product search engine on the online store's website or in the app should be
user friendly, that is, intuitive to use not only during sales.
3.
Simplify the ordering and payment process – not only a regular customer with an account in the e-store, but also a "casual" consumer should be able to shop. Customers increasingly choose shopping without registration (in larger e-stores this indicator reaches as much as 70%), so it is worth ensuring that the e-store has such functionality.
4.
Take care of the store's performance – traffic in an online store during the sale season, but also during the holiday period, increases many times over, so it is worth taking care of the server infrastructure and software performance even several months in advance, so as not to lose users and, consequently, revenue.
5.
'Mobile first', that is, take care of the responsiveness of the online store's website – data collected after Black Friday 2016 show that not only is the number of customers choosing sales in online stores increasing, but the value of purchases made via smartphones or tablets is also growing year by year. During last year's November sales in the US it was USD 1.2 billion – one third more than in 2015.
[1]. Therefore, it is essential that the e-store's website be compatible with mobile devices.
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Take care of technical support for customers – even putting the above tips into practice does not guarantee that during Black Friday customers will not encounter problems while shopping in the e-store. Therefore, the website owner should ensure technical support. Limiting yourself to placing a contact form on the store's website is not a good idea. Instead, the customer should be able to contact a store employee, for example via live chat. Thanks to such a solution, support staff will be able to help immediately and will try to ensure that in the event of technical problems, the consumer does not leave the store without placing an order, but finds help.
