There's still time to make the most of Black Friday!
There’s still time for retailers to get their website, social media accounts and paid search campaigns in order for Black Friday – but the clock’s ticking!
The Cyber Weekend, running from Black Friday to Cyber Monday (24th-27th November), encompasses two of the UK’s biggest online shopping days.
They represent a major opportunity for brands to shift unwanted stock and capture new, bargain-hungry audiences in the run-up to Christmas. But retailers can’t simply expect shoppers to blindly hand over their money. Every other eCommerce company will be chasing the same customers, so if you don’t put the effort in you won’t reap the rewards.
Worried that you’ve left things too late? Not sure where to start? Fortunately, help is at hand. We’ve put together five tips to help you make the most of the Cyber Weekend:
- Build a dedicated Black Friday landing page to showcase your best deals (and give you the best chance of ranking)
Your first priority should be creating a Black Friday landing page to house all your promotions. Build and optimise the page as soon as possible – including a meta description with a strong call to action to encourage click-through – to give search engines chance to index it. Ahead of Cyber Weekend, use this landing page to display the regular prices of items, which will help you establish trust in the discounts you’re offering.
- Speed up your checkout process by removing registration questions for Cyber Weekend
Generally speaking, there are obvious benefits to capturing customer information while they’re making a purchase – after all, you want to encourage them to buy from you again in future. But a drawn-out checkout process – in which you try to capture as much information as possible – is likely to cost you sales. Remember that attitudes during Cyber Weekend are different to normal shopping times; your checkout process should reflect the “get in, get out quick” mindset.
- Set up abandoned basket campaigns to drive sales from shoppers who didn’t check out
We know that shoppers will be looking for the best deals, and are likely to have multiple tabs open at any given time. If a customer doesn’t buy from you immediately, abandoned basket campaigns will allow you to follow them around the web, reminding them that you’re offering the best products at the best prices.
- Refresh your ad copy and creative to highlight your amazing deals and drive click-through
Expect competition to be even fiercer than normal throughout Cyber Weekend. That means you’ll need to adjust your paid search campaigns, and be prepared to bid more aggressively if you want to promote your best products and services. Copy should be updated to reference Black Friday deals and include strong calls to action to target users specifically searching for bargains. Make every penny of your ad budget count!
- Ensure your whole site is mobile-optimised
Black Friday may be a huge shopping day in the UK, but it’s not a public holiday like in the US. That means many potential buyers will be looking for bargains on their phones when commuting to work, eating their sandwiches at lunch, and heading home. According to PayPal, a third of payments processed on Black Friday 2016 came from mobile devices, with the company handling £12,000 in payments per second.
Don’t want to miss out on these mobile shoppers? Do some user testing beforehand to make sure your site performs well on mobile – it’ll save you a lot of problems and potentially wasted advertising over the course of Cyber Weekend.
About Return
Return was born in September 2008 with one simple aim: to maximise our clients’ return on digital. From a one-man band, we’ve grown to an award-winning, market-leading agency with a team of some of the brightest digital minds in Europe.