Black Friday eCommerce: Your Ultimate Preparation Guide
As Black Friday approaches, the wheels of the eCommerce world begin spinning at full speed.
As a proprietor of an eCommerce business, Black Friday signifies a crucial period that demands precise planning and preparation. With countless tasks on your to-do list, like organizing a lucrative Black Friday sale and ensuring your inventory is well-stocked, it can be a hectic time for online retailers.
To effectively harness the potential of the epic Black Friday eCommerce frenzy, you need to ensure that your website is equipped to deal with the significant surge in traffic. We all know that Black Friday and Cyber Monday bring a deluge of online shoppers eager for holiday sales, so it’s vital that your eCommerce platform can handle this surge.
Often, it’s the seemingly minor details that get overlooked, so let’s kick-start with some fundamental preparations to optimize your eCommerce site for the upcoming Black Friday extravaganza!
Revisiting Your Black Friday eCommerce Marketing Strategy
How are you spreading the word about your Black Friday sales? What’s your strategy for bringing in new customers or retaining current clients? Especially with the heavier traffic websites see around the holiday season, it’s important to start thinking about how to increase your conversion and retention rates.
For example, collecting contact information before a purchase is made is a great strategy to work leads down the marketing funnel, bring past visitors back to your website, and ultimately increase your sales. To collect contact information, think about prompting your visitors to sign up for an exclusive ebook, your newsletter, the latest deals, the list goes on!
One strategy for boosting your Black Friday eCommerce performance could be developing a feature that allows potential customers to create an account and add items to their shopping cart. Not only does this secure their contact information, but it also enables you to implement targeted marketing strategies to minimize cart abandonment during the Black Friday frenzy. You can also propose related products and follow up with exclusive promotions, improving customer engagement and boosting your eCommerce success on Black Friday.
Think about the most natural transition for your site visitors. What benefit are they receiving for giving you their email address or contact information? Do you want to create a specific Black Friday strategy? Are you tying it into your overall lead flow? These are important questions to consider as you try to convert visitors into repeat eCommerce customers. From there you can shape your marketing strategy based on your ideal target audience and collect more leads.
Editing Content Ahead of Black Friday eCommerce Sales
With more sales comes more preparation. You want a clear and easy way for your customers to discover your Black Friday deals. Are your product prices and descriptions up to date? Does your discount code work correctly? How does your website respond when you run out of stock on an item?
[twitter_link]The better your user experience is, the more sales you can expect to make this Black Friday.[/twitter_link]
There are two simple things to do here. First, make sure your website details update as you start to sell out. Second, you can still collect contact information to email potential buyers when the item is back in stock.
By thinking through your site content, you can identify opportunities like this for a better user experience.
Hardening Site Security Ahead of Black Friday eCommerce Traffic
With all the buzz about website security, your site needs to be ready to tackle anything that comes your way. Having a plan in place for both reactive and proactive measures can make or break your success. For example, with a managed WordPress hosting company like WP Engine (for agencies with larger clients), we handle a bunch of security concerns for you, so you can sleep soundly knowing your site can handle anything thrown its way.
But let’s look a step further. Especially with eCommerce, you need to encrypt everything from passwords to credit cards. This is where your SSL certificate comes into play. Adding an SSL cert to your new site or checking your current certificate is extremely important.
There are countless resources out there to add an SSL certificate to your website. Let’sEncrypt, DigiCert, and VeriSign are all great options with various pricing and complexity options. Here at Flywheel, we’ve partnered with Let’sEncrypt to provide free SSL certificates with every site, and it just takes the click of a button to add one!
Especially during high-traffic times, you’ll want to make sure your site is on lockdown.
Working With Your Hosting Partner to Prep for Black Friday eCommerce
Ensure you remain at the forefront of the Black Friday eCommerce rush by checking in with your hosting provider ahead of time to make sure everything is on the up and up.
Did you establish your online store or secure your hosting plan during last year’s holiday season? To avoid any unforeseen shutdowns of your eCommerce site during the vital Black Friday sales period, always confirm that your domain name and hosting plan are up-to-date and set for renewal if needed.
Black Friday eCommerce is a highly competitive time, so keeping your site up and running is crucial for capitalizing on this profitable event.
You should also review your WooCommerce hosting plan to make sure you have enough resources. Is your site going to go down if you reach your traffic limit? Don’t overlook this point or it could really cost you.
Maximizing Black Friday eCommerce Success: Key Strategies and Insights
Are you feeling prepared for the holiday rush?
With Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and holiday sales around the corner, you can use these tips to make sure your site is ready to handle the eCommerce and holiday rush! What’s your strategy for your online store during this Black Friday sale?
Looking for more inspiration? Find additional tips for prepping your site ahead of the holiday rush here, and as always, you can speak to a WP Engine representative at any time for answers to your holiday prep questions.
