Black Friday will start the Christmas shopping season on 26 November this year. It is also the perfect day to maximize your e-store’s profit. All statistical data leads to one inescapable conclusion – e-commerce traders need to be ready for holiday season 2021, long before Black Friday arrives. A sudden recurrence of Covid or a flu explosion will only strengthen your customers’ commitment to online shopping, not diminish it: a win-win situation for online store owners.
Calling all Magento store owners:
Are you ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday?
THE ESSENTIALS FOR A SUCCESSFUL BLACK FRIDAY
While it presents great opportunities, Black Friday is also highly competitive. If your e-commerce store cannot give customers a fast and transparent purchasing experience, your many competitors are ready and waiting. To maximize sales on this special day and meet the unique technical demands of the BFCM bonanza, all Magento store owners need to focus on the following:
- Sufficient server space to prevent frantic BFCM web traffic overloading your system.
- An inventory management system to avoid disastrous stockouts on the big day.
- A wide and appropriate range of payment options, including BNPL (Buy Now, Pay later). According to Netfluential, 70% of consumers will spend more at a retailer that offers their preferred payment method.
- An automated ‘abandoned cart’ email triggered in the event that a customer abandons their sales cart. Amazingly, Black Friday customers abandon 64% of their carts before the purchase process is complete.
- A live chat function or customer service desk like Gorgias to deal with the inevitable surge in customer inquiries.
- A complete backup of your website, including your site files, database and third party integrations. Better safe than sorry.
- A website that provides an effective and satisfying purchasing experience on mobile phone. Request an UX Mobile Best Practices eBook from our team.
- A seamless, fast and enjoyable User Experience for your customers that eliminates confusion and misunderstanding. Schedule a thorough UX audit with us if necessary.
- Multiple marketing channels, including email campaigns and Facebook ads with retargeting.
- A secure Magento site with the latest security patches applied, an updated or renewed SSL certificate and strong passwords in place.
- A contingency plan. You need to know what might go wrong and have a viable strategy prepared to deal with these disruptions.
- A site performance audit and load test to understand and address any gaps. Schedule a thorough Technical audit with us if necessary.
How Black Friday is changing
Not only has Black Friday become the most important shopping day across the world, it is rapidly becoming an online event. For example, an ever-increasing proportion of Black Friday shoppers use a mobile phone to make their purchases. According to Adobe:
- Consumers will spend more than $8 billion online using their smartphones this holiday season, outgrowing the overall spend at over 16.6% year-over-year.
- According to Businesswire 32.6% of US respondents, 29.9% of UK respondents and 29.7% of Australian respondents said the convenience of online shopping outweighs any drawbacks.
- Spending on smartphones surged 25.3% year over year to reach $3.6 billion in 2020, representing 40% of total e-commerce spending.
According to Businesswire, even payment methods are changing:
- Prior to March 2020, digital wallets were the preferred payment option for 28.3% of online shoppers globally, but that jumped to 35.2% after March 2020.
Even during the height of the pandemic in 2020, US customers spent more than ever before on online shopping:
- According to Google Analytics, shoppers spent 9 billion USD on Black Friday in 2020.
- On Black Friday 2020, Adobe found consumers spent $6.3 million per minute online, or $27.50 per person.
- Online spending jumped 21.7% compared with the same period in 2019.
- Adobe found web traffic on Magento sites soared 73% on Black Friday and 76% on Cyber Monday.
- According to Statistica, customers spent over $4.2 trillion USD worldwide in e-retail sales during 2020.
Nor is there any evidence that this juggernaut will be slowing down in 2021:
- According to Adobe, Americans will collectively spend 414 thousand years — a whopping 3.6 billion hours! — shopping online this Nov-Dec.
- With online spending high and demand levels poised to surge, the US online retail holiday season is expected to top $200 billion for the first time ($207 billion is the projected figure).
- In the US alone, year-over-year growth will come in anywhere between 5% ($198B) and 15% ($216B).
- Global spend for the holidays is likely to close at $910 billion, with an estimated growth of 11% year-over-year. This will push 2021 over the $4 trillion mark for the first time ($4.1T).
- Adobe expects Cyber Weekend to draw in $36 billion, or 17% of the whole season.
- During the ‘Golden Hours’ of e-commerce concluding Cyber Monday, 7-9% of consumers will spend over $2.9 billion — 50% more compared to the $1.9 billion spent on an average August day.
Magento and e-commerce specialists for over a decade, Luxinten have the skills to deliver all these things and more. You still have plenty of time to arrange a chat with us before Black Friday arrives, too.
Some key Luxinten statistics:
- 30+ projects with annual support
- 25+ successful full Magento migrations
- 99% customer retention rate
- Adobe Certified Experts
If you want to know more about any of our services, please contact us.