Kicking off Black Friday Season

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We officially kicked off Black Friday season with the first webinar in our Black Friday Series – “Black Friday Survival Kit: Everything You Need to Survive and Thrive on Black Friday.”

As usual, the panel was fantastic:

Shaun Lin, Director Channel Partnerships, Bazaarvoice
Bryan Swift, SEO Director, BlueSwitch

Both panelists have years of experience working with ecommerce merchants to optimize sites and shopping experiences for Black Friday. Our goal for this session is to really understand a few key items to the start of the busy online shopping season:

Identify top trends and predictions
Timeline for when merchants should start preparing for Black Friday
What specific strategies and tools merchants need to think about and what they should using
How merchants can optimize the tools they already have

With these as guideposts, we started the discussion.

Some Key Takeaways:

Always On

In today’s online shopping environment, shoppers buy all year-’round. They don’t wait for November. So, your strategy needs to take that into account. How will shoppers engage in April as well as November?

No Such Thing as Perfect

If you are trying to build perfection, you will undoubtedly fail. Focus on doing what is right for the shopper and through that, you will do what is right for the business. Along the way, you will learn that what you thought was “perfection” is likely far from it.

What to Do About Headwinds in the Market

Rising inflation, continued supply chain disruption, lower traffic – all these issues can bog down strategy and optimism. Since supply chain issues aren’t going away any time soon, this is the time to over order and, most definitely, over communicate with customers. Communication goes a long way in alleviating pain presented by these macro challenges. Simple tactics include sending an email when out of stock items are back in stock and setting expectations for customers.

Shop Your Own Site

This is such a smart point made by the panel! And, if you can’t shop your own site because you know too much, ask family and friends to take the site for a spin. You will learn quickly where areas of improvement lie. This type of “secret shopping” has a major impact on the shopper experience.

Audit Your Site

Similar to asking someone to use your site, you should also audit your site and tech stack to find gaps in experience and performance. This includes everything from SEO to shipping from site search to user-generated content.

Ultra-Personalized Experiences

While personalization is not a “new” trend, its technology is advancing quickly. Personalization tools enable you to understand customer’s behavior in more granular detail so you can help them discover more of what you have to offer. While your business rules might have gotten you this far, they won’t take you the rest of the way.

“Remember Your Credit Card Number”

Seriously! It’s too many numbers! The point being, the checkout process needs to be simple and iron-clad. This is all about performance. How fast and enjoyable can you make the shopping experience? Never let shoppers say “What?!”

And, the non sequitur gem of the entire webinar is the phrase Revenge Travel. This is the act of going on a trip because “I haven’t been anywhere for two years!” What a fantastic turn of phrase!

Join us for the remaining four webinars in the Searchspring Black Friday Series. Check out our Black Friday Content Hub to learn how you can #WinBlackFriday.