Steps to Optimize Your eCommerce Site for Black Friday
The focus will be online this year, make sure to run through these quick steps to optimize your eCommerce site for Black Friday.
Black Friday is on the horizon, and millions of shoppers are gearing up for one of the biggest shopping days of the year. Many people use Black Friday as the official kick-off for the holiday season, and the shopping holiday has become somewhat of a cultural icon. However, this year, the videos of mobs rushing into stores have been replaced with customers refreshing web pages to grab the best deals.
You’re going to want to be ready and it’s not too late to optimize your eCommerce site for Black Friday.
With everything that’s happened this year, your eCommerce storefront must be ready for a massive influx of customers. How? Optimize your eCommerce site for Black Friday!
Optimizing your eCommerce site for Black Friday is about more than preparing for a big customer rush on one date; it’s about ensuring your website can handle high traffic for the whole holiday season and beyond.
We’re going to walk you through some quick steps that you can use to optimize your eCommerce site for Black Friday before it’s too late. Use these tips and tricks to make sure your website can handle the Black Friday rush and whatever comes after.
1. Run a Website Audit
Before you can optimizing your eCommerce site for Black Friday, you must fully understand where your website currently stands.
Do not waste your time starting to make changes before you understand what the true problems are. Find out where the holes are in your current conversion funnel so you can find a solution before the holiday surge arrives. You might discover the reason your site loads slow or a broken link that sends a customer to the wrong place.
Before you dive into holiday preparations, take the time to seriously evaluate your current situation and what needs to be improved. This site audit should also include taking inventory as you do not want to have stock issues once the sales get underway. Your eCommerce site is about to be hit with a wave of traffic, and you want to make sure you have a good foundation before you start building something new or improving features.
2. Checkout Process
Checkout is the final hurdle for conversion, but a percentage of customers will never complete checkout for a few reasons. One of the most common reasons customers walk away from items is unexpected shipping issues, delivery time, or price.
One of the easiest ways to optimize your eCommerce site for Black Friday, is to ship for free to increase the number of sales; don’t let shipping be the reason you lose sales on one of the biggest shopping days of the year.
When it comes time to checkout, customers do not want to be surprised. If you have been promoting a deal through direct response marketing, email, and social media platforms, that deal should be instantly reflected at checkout, so there is no confusion. No one wants to see a different total than they expected, so make sure your advertised offers are accurately reflected. Website usability testing is never a bad idea; it may feel like overkill, but testing each code or promotion will only ensure your Black Friday goes smoother.
Accepting multiple payment methods might be more work for you initially, but you will find customers are more willing to buy when they have options. Do not limit your customers to only one or two payment options as they will not work for everyone, potentially limiting your sales.
Forcing customers to make an account for check out is another common reason customers leave. While that account data would be nice to collect, it is not more valuable than a complete conversion.
Remove every step that is not necessary from the checkout process to increase your odds of customers finishing the sale.
3. Customer Experience Review
Customers expect a seamless shopping experience and accompanying service. Ensuring your website doesn’t have technical gaps is just the first step, as you can go through your site analytics to find pages that could be causing problems. Use the data you have available to get a clear picture of your current customer experience and consider what you could do to boost that experience during the holidays.
Adding a chatbot will help your customers find the answers they are looking for faster without requiring an employee to handle the chat. Chatbots have risen in popularity in recent years because of the convenience they provide customers and how easy they are to add to a site.
Black Friday is a big day for everyone, including you if you make sure to optimize your eCommerce site!
Customers are excited about deals, and businesses are anticipating the rush to kick off the holiday season. Before you can enjoy the boost in business, you must make sure you are ready for it.
- Start with a site-wide audit to discover existing problems and troubleshoot solutions.
- Keep checkout as user-friendly and straightforward as possible to prevent customers from leaving their cart behind.
- Free shipping, multiple payment options, and not requiring an account are great places to start.
- Use website data to find trouble pages and consider adding a chatbot to help customers find their way this Black Friday.
Happy Optimizing and good luck this Black Friday!
