Published: 09 Oct 2019

How to Avoid Black Friday Pitfalls?

Last Updated: 30 Dec 2022

• Black Friday Testing
  

Contents 1. What is Black Friday and Cyber Monday? 2. Important facts about Black Friday 3. Best Strategies to avoid Black Friday pitfalls 4. What are the strategies to become successful for e-commerce retailers during the Black Friday sales? 5. Conclusion

What is Black Friday and Cyber Monday?

Black Friday and Cyber Monday represent the two largest online selling days in the year, mapping huge sales around the world. TechCrunch reports Black Friday racks up $5.03B in online sales, and $2B in mobile alone during 2017, while during 2018 the sales hit $6.2B in the US alone, with smartphones accounted for about $2.1B.

These whopping figures keep you surprised. However, it is true that Black Friday & Cyber Monday generates the highest business for retailers. It is essential for businesses to be up and running seamlessly during this peak load time (extended weekend sales).

In the US, Canada, UK, and Europe, online shoppers are quick buyers on Black Friday sales. There is a popular myth around this Black Friday, which states “Black Friday” described how retail stores spent most of the year “in the red” on their balance sheets. Thus, the holiday shopping season, beginning on the Friday after Thanksgiving, put them back into the “black”. Hence, Black Friday.

Some important facts about Black Friday worth a read:

– Tech Radar: Cyber Monday has become more popular than any other online shopping day in the US, Revenue estimates a year ago reached $7.9 billion in the US. It topped every other shopping day ever online, according to Adobe Analytics. Online stores should plan a smooth shopping week for customers. BlackFriday.com predicts that 2019 Black Friday online spending will surpass $12 billion this year. Of the shoppers they surveyed, 61% plan to do most of their holiday shopping online.

Hence, it is inevitable for online stores and e-commerce businesses to work on apps and websites to deliver a smooth shopping experience. Now is the time to get ready and prepare your application for the anticipated crowds and ensure that your application won’t fail on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Best Strategies to avoid Black Friday pitfalls

Under unprecedented high volumes of traffic on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, many e-commerce websites crashed in recent years, causing damage to their brand reputation and incurred immense losses.

1. Check out Speed Optimization and UX Viability:

Primarily it is crucial for e-commerce sites to have optimal page loading speed to ensure the shopper stays for good amount of time browsing their products.

Secondly, all online store apps should have a user interface that provides great User Experience (UX). These two features play a vital role for online shoppers to be engaged. To achieve an optimal loading time, the applications should be Load tested end-to-end. And for a great UX, usability testing should be taken up necessarily.

2. Research upon browsing Trends and Maintain Checklists:

It is essential to perform research on the trends that are most likely to hit the shopper in the sale season and subsequently maintain them with lucrative offers.

Such shopper’s analytics will help in enabling successful closures by online shoppers. Physical and online stores should be well aware of the trends for electronics, apparel, footwear, toys, media, cosmetics or household appliances and try to take complete advantage of data

3. Ensure Security Measures:

All online sites should necessarily use HTTPS to ensure full site-wide encryption. Full HTTPS is a mandate for all shopping (transaction) sites. Secured transactions are utmost required, as online shoppers want to safeguard their critical personal information. Moreover, online transactions should also be encrypted to ensure secure transactions for which Integration testing of the apps must be followed.

 4. Opt for virtual Load Tests:

  A load test should be performed ahead of time to ensure there are no last-minute surprises. To overcome this surge in traffic, appropriate Load testing should be performed to achieve the desired scalability levels so that users remain unaffected. During Black Friday sales, almost all online stores face massive incoming traffic, which has to be monitored ahead of time to make the website and application stable.

5. Check End-to-end Site Performance:

It is also essential to test the entire application end-to-end when once it is ready for the public. This sort of performance testing ensures that the site is working well even when numerous users access it at the same time. In the earlier years, many apps have crashed as they were not scalable enough to handle massive traffic during this holiday season, as apps received more number of end users accessing them across the globe.

6. Ensure to Adopt Web Usability Testing:

Customers wish to navigate and make numerous actions on the application and sometimes, they might not be able to find the correct links. This sort of poor usability deeply affects the users especially on a holiday sale with so many offers on the go. Hence, it is essential to have proper Usability testing in place to ensure users have smooth sailing

7. Perform Mobile testing as a priority:

Customers can reach a website using tablets or desktop computers or mobiles. But, there are many evidences that showcase the mobile usage to be the major medium to reach websites. Since usage of mobile apps effectively helps to increase the online purchases, it is crucial to place the mobile app testing services at the top of the to-do list. Enterprises having e-commerce sites should practice mobile app testing to ensure their application run flawless even under huge traffic.

8. Anticipate your Traffic in Advance:

It is essential for businesses to have a forethought about the probable traffic that might come through mobile apps, desktop or tablets. End-to-end application testing for performance, security, load, usability and accessibility should be performed for all types of apps to ensure a hassle free shopping experience for your online shoppers.

9. Ensure to perform Geolocation Testing:

Traffic can be achieved by people who are using apps across the globe. If the app functions differently for the people using the app from different regions, then it can affect the business and traffic volume. Hence, it is essential to practice geolocation testing by considering a range of IPs that belong to different regions. This will help the app to function similarly for the online-shoppers across the globe.

What are the strategies to become successful for e-commerce retailers during the Black Friday sales?

1. Re-organize your online merchandise:

To grab a huge visitors’ volume, it is essential for merchandise to be clever and creative. They should attract visitors with the best products and top offers. The exclusive offers should always be positioned in a manner that they are visible for the visitor right from the entry into the website. Also, featuring banners and pop-up messages with the best deals will be an effective way to grab the user’s attention and drive sales.

2. Accelerate with Social Media and Paid Campaigns:

 Every step taken by the e-commerce retailers should drive traffic and increase sales. Especially, when there are special occasions, it is crucial for e-commerce retailers to run Google ads and paid social media campaigns to attract traffic. Also, sharing the coupon codes and discount offers on social media will be a powerful medium to drive traffic and increase the scope of business on Black Friday. Another method that can help in increasing sales is by sending offer details with coupon confirmations through emails to all the subscribers. This will effectively help them to land on the website and avail the discount offers.

3. Implement Gift Guides for your targeted audience:

 Sales can be tremendous when the offers meet the visitor’s expectations and requirements. Hence, e-commerce retailers should consider the interest of visitors and implement several gift guides for different audiences. Placing these featured gift ideas within the homepage and running through email campaigns will help them to land on the desired section and shop the required one. This way of presenting the gift ideas on the homepage will simplify the user’s search and benefit to drive more sales during this period.

4. Make sure to Ensure Online Support to Visitors: 

 Apart from the usual shoppers, the visitors during special occasions are a bit confused. So, e-commerce retailers should understand this requirement and provide the required information as and when required. Setting up online support will be an effective way as the visitor will receive the answers to all their queries immediately. Also, the information on free gifts, bonus points, discount offers, and free shipping should be highlighted with featured images so that, these help the visitors to understand and avail the benefits while shopping. In addition to these, the idea of gift cards will also be an effective way to grab the interest of modern users. 

Conclusion:

With the holiday season fast approaching, all e-commerce businesses and online stores should take the utmost care to ensure their sites and applications can hold heavy traffic volumes. They should further ensure secured transactions to their online shoppers. To achieve all this, the applications should be performance-tested, load tested, and usability tested which will help them deliver a seamless shopping experience to their customers