The busiest shopping season of the year will start soon with the holidays fast approaching. Retailers should expect and prepare for the massive traffic of shoppers online and offline.
The simultaneous requests from splurging shoppers can crash your site or make your pages load slow, upsetting your customers. As a result, it’ll leave a bad impression on your brand and you’ll eventually lose potential sales. They may even think that your website is unsafe.
Don’t miss out on the sales opportunity the holidays can offer your business. Ensure the best service to your customers at this time of the year and prepare your website to handle a significant surge of traffic.
9 Things to Prepare Your Business for Black Friday
The proper steps and planning are crucial to launching a successful campaign. With only days before Black Friday, here’s a list of last-minute preparations to help you prepare your business for the holiday rush.
Review Your Content
Proofread your website content and promotional emails. Check the grammar, links, and images in your website and copies. Looking unprofessional because of a typo or non-working link can damage your brand reputation.
Customers put their confidence in businesses who are efficient, reliable, and precise. You won’t convince your audience if you show up with an incomplete, faulty, or inaccurate content.
Schedule Your Deals and Promos
Deals and promos are one of the easiest ways to entice customers to shop at your business.
Schedule your promos and sale announcements on social media and send email reminders to your customers. A countdown timer plugin for your website can create suspense and urgency in your sales. Putting your customers into a buying state is proven to drive more sales.
Be creative and strategic when scheduling your deals. Give your customers enough time to know about your deals, but not too long for them to forget or have second thoughts.
Optimise Your Website’s Speed
A significant surge of traffic could crash your website. Your site will have more visits and interactions when you start promoting deals several days before Black Friday.
Everything is meaningless if your website is down when it’s needed the most. Your customers have nothing to lose, but you do.
Irate shoppers are unlikely to buy from your business. Don’t lose them due to slow-loading pages and downtime. To adopt a better-fitting hosting plan, measure and evaluate your traffic ahead of time.
Back up Your Website
The holiday season presents lots of opportunities for cybercrime due to the high revenue it presents. It doesn’t only target businesses, but shoppers as well. With this, you could lose website data that may cause business interruption.
Don’t take your chances; back up all your website elements, files, databases, images, and content. Use a reliable Cloud Backup that you can access anywhere, anytime, with a single click.
Don’t Forget About Your SEO
An SEO strategy lets your website appear on top search engine results, increasing your visibility to shoppers online.
While Black Friday is fast approaching, there’s still ample time to prepare your SEO strategy. Perform simple on-page SEO by optimising your site for holiday-related keywords, using alt text on images, and creating effective meta-tags on your webpages.
Or you can work with SEO experts to kickstart your site’s visibility and traffic without the stress.
Make Shoppers Feel Safe
Most business transactions nowadays are done on the internet, especially if you’re selling online. Customers will be more willing to purchase from a reliable and safe store.
Use fraud-checking systems and an SSL Certificate to secure your customer’s information and gain their trust. Use stamps of confidence and reviews to assure your credibility with your shopper.
Read: [UPDATED] 9 Cyberthreats to Look Out For and Tips to Secure Your Website
Check Your Inventory
If you deal with physical inventory, take one last look at your stock levels. You don’t want to miss out on sales because you ran out of stock.
Evaluate your expected sales from previous data and adjust your inventory accordingly. Ensure your item count is accurate and that all your items are organised. Update your product database and avail for an inventory management software if you must. Get them ready for sale and shipping.
Create a Contingency Plan
Meet your team and finalise your plans. All your colleagues, partners, and employees must know how to address incidents that may occur efficiently.
Open up helplines and install chatbots in your website to let your clients get ahold of you instantly in case they need assistance. The faster you resolve a customer’s issue, the more they’ll trust you and become a repeat customer.
Present your best customer service to assist your clients. Black Friday is a great avenue for sales and an excellent opportunity to establish long-term customer relationships.
Read: 7 Good Reasons to Add a Chatbot to Your Website
Engage Your Shoppers After
Connect with your customers by showing appreciation with a thank you note after the campaign. Send them a personalised email to show gratitude for their interest in your products. They might return for more if they liked the experience. This is also the best opportunity to upsell your other products.
Remind them of their abandoned shopping cart. Some customers may want to revisit their pending purchases after learning so much about your products. Others may be interested in what else you can offer or opt for a more expensive alternative if they’re satisfied with their purchases from your business.
Get Ready to Start Selling This Black Friday
Black Friday is a must-not-miss opportunity for brands and businesses as it offers an excellent opportunity to push your brand to new heights and encourage growth.
Take advantage of this occasion. Follow these tips and make this the most successful Black Friday campaign for your brand.
