Tips for A Powerful Black Friday & Cyber Monday Customer Experience
Black Friday & Cyber Monday are the days which mark the beginning of Christmas sales. Retailers show their clients their best bids with discounts that range from 10% to 60% attracting a large number of buyers. The 46% of Christmas purchases are made during both days.
The 70% of customers prefer online commerce against the 30% which prefer brick and mortar stores, even if this means fight with frantic crowds, messy inventories, and long lines to pay. The most demanded products in the Christmas pre-purchases are fashion with 74%, accessories with 52%, and electronics with 45%. The most popular articles for personal purchases are fashion with 83%, and footwear with 56%. After being a premium category, electronics were displaced to the fourth place with 32% behind accessories with 33%.
For the fashion industry Black Friday & Cyber Monday are the most stressful days due to large component of the budget of marketing and advertising is assigned to these campaigns including Christmas. In many cases the results worth it. Despite competition is constantly increasing, new customers are attracted and sales rise sharply specially between eCommerces which experience their particular “Cold War”.
The customer experience on Black Friday & Cyber Monday is even more important than offers
Obviously as customer you might have experienced the situation of not being able to complete a purchase. Either the website doesn’t respond or there’s not stock available. In fact, 30% of customers hate Black Friday due to this. Hence customer experience on Black Friday & Cyber Monday is even more important than offers. What’s the point in attracting lots of buyers with great offers if they won’t be able to complete the purchase?
These are the two things you should never do on Black Friday & Cyber Monday if you want to improve your sales
1. Not providing properly your website traffic:
Every year more and more customers leave the streets to purchase online, mostly during Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas sales. Online purchases help to save time and become more effective. So, what would happen if we don’t take care of the huge amount of visitors our website receives? Surely retailers and customers will be frustrated.
Increased load can cause sites to slow down which impacts directly in conversion rates causing a reduction in income, but most devastating of all is the potential to take your website down completely. On average, website down time costs ecommerce companies $40,000 per hour, but during peak trading events this can double or triple to over $120,000.
Customers become aware of the hard and stressful tests eCommerces must submit those days so they try to be patient and spend more time in purchase process. They understand it as the price they have to pay for the best offers. But everything has its limits and time is the most precious resource.
2. Not providing options in out-of-stocks situations:
Replenishing stock is important but also knowing how to manage properly out-of-stock situations. Many eCommerces don’t offer immediate solutions to their customers.
On these days customers show a special behavior: they are willing to buy no matter what. In the out-of-stock situations is imperative offer instantly options with similar products to seize the opportunity and prevent customers leave our eCommerce. Remember that if they can’t buy in your website they will do it in other one.
“You might also like” section in very important these days. Show similar articles to the desired product can be a great solution to improve the customer’s experience. Shifting from frustration to satisfaction can help to get better conversion rates and sales.
Wide Eyes Technologies solutions are the best tool for fashion eCommerces. It’s very easy to use an API which let “empower” this section, allowing customers look into the available options easily.
Another AI Visual Technology solution to improve purchase experience and promote cross selling is enabled again the autocomplete look option with the items in stock. Some eCommerces provide lookbooks or predetermined looks to specific products, but with mix & match options which disappear as items run out. Automating this section with the AI solutions of Wide Eyes Technologies allows give always the best answer apart from being removable of all items in the list.
The success of Black Friday & Cyber Monday sales is in your hands. Wanna talk?
