Finally, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are over! We can now go back to business as usual!”

Turn Seasonal Buyers into Long Term Customers

If this is what you think about your business post-Black Friday period, you are mistaken. In fact, our panel of ecommerce industry experts suggests that now is when the real work begins – taking everything you learned about your site and your clients over the Cyber 5 Weekend and using those lessons to improve and strengthen your business for the next 12 months.

On Tuesday, December 7, we reconvened our expert panel for the second conversation of our two-part webinar Black Friday series. This time around we followed up on our pre-Black Friday poll, asked the same question again, and then compared the results.

Out of Stock Items

Before Black Friday, attendees were primarily concerned about “Out of Stock” items and “Technology Performance.” After Black Friday, the issues shifted slightly. “Out of Stock” items were still on everyone’s mind, But, tech wasn’t the issue, “Shipping” was the issue. When I asked the panelists why the shift, they overwhelmingly responded that recency bias was taking over. “We need to ship those orders!” The most interesting part of this conversation, however, was that merchants really need to be thinking about all these items all year long to make sure that their business is healthy. A merchant shouldn’t only think about shipping once all the orders are in. At that point, it might be too late.

The real payoff of this session, however, were the tips and recommendations from our panelists. How to build for the future and how to turn those new buyers into long-term customers? Here are some of the top suggestions

Focus on and understand the full funnel

Too often we are focused on how many people come to our site or how many people successfully completed their shopping cart. But, the real magic lies in understanding and seeing the full funnel and the transit of a shopper through your site. Building this funnel view will show you where the leaks are in your bucket as well as what successful paths look like.

Keep the creativity flowing

So you have a shipping problem? Or, all of a sudden a product is out of stock? Maybe your site experience was less than desirable for a period of time. There are creative solutions to all these problems, from simple honest communication to special offers to a simple hone call to confront an issue head-on. Put your best creative minds on problems and ways to grow.

Communicate clearly and often

While we touched on this above, communication is incredibly important for your ongoing business. Internally, your entire team needs to understand decisions and actions you are taking. For customers and shoppers, communication can help alleviate a painful situation or add clarity to a common question. Communication is the hallmark of successful companies thought history. The time to drive proactive communication about your 2022 plans is now.

Dashboards, not just for cars anymore

If you aren’t measuring or if you don’t understand what is happening with your key performance indicators, you risk making incorrect decisions or, even worse, not adjusting course before a real problem starts. Yes, lots of driving analogies to make here, but a dashboard is critical. Build your own. Buy a new part of your tech stack, or even write it on a sheet of paper and stick it to the refrigerator. Either way you do it, a dashboard will be your best friend.

Personalize your interactions

People want to spend money with you! Give them reasons to by personalizing their interactions with suggestions form past purchases or recommendations from like customers. Send this info as an email or put it on the page. Regardless, personalization is a strategy to build for the future.

If you are interested in hearing about these points from our panel, simply click and watch the webinar. Plus, we cover a number of other items such as content development and shopper engagement. In the words of our panelist John Thrailkill, “The American consumer is resilient!” We couldn’t agree more.

If you like these takeaways from the webinar and want to hear more, you can listen and watch the entire webinar here.