Black Friday is the official kickstart to the holiday season. Consumers all over the world monitor their favorite websites and brands ahead of the date, anxiously waiting for the best deals. In Brazil, the date was introduced in 2010, exclusively in the e-commerce environment. It reached a total revenue of BRL 3 million and consumers were particularly interested in buying smartphones and TVs.
Over the years, Black Friday has become more and more popular in the country, with last year’s edition having a total revenue of BRL 2.1 billion. This is one of the most anticipated dates for e-commerce merchants. For 2018, a growth of 15% in sales is expected during the Black Friday campaign, with an increase of 6.4% in the number of transactions. Is your store ready to make the most of Black Friday 2018?
6 Tips to Prepare for Black Friday
An important thing to bear in mind when preparing for Black Friday or any other significant date for e-commerce is to always know your consumer, their expectations, wishes, and behavior. Before sharing our tips, let’s have a look at some general statistics about consumers in Brazil when it comes to Black Friday.
• Consumers do their research ahead of the date
• Consumers who choose to buy offline still research online ahead of their purchase
• Black Friday is more popular online than offline
• 78% of buyers return to the store for another purchase after Black Friday
• 37% of consumers do not believe the offers are real deals
With these insights in mind, we have prepared a few tips to help you get your store ready for Black Friday 2018. Check them out:
1. Offer Real Discounts
As over one-third of consumers are skeptical about the offers advertised during the Black Friday campaign, and nearly half start researching for the best deals from one month (26%) to a week (22%) ahead of the date, they will be well informed of prices before and during the campaign.
In Brazil, there is a popular belief that shops use the date to sell for “half of the double”, meaning they deliberately raise their prices on the days leading up to the sales date so that the discounts do not change the original prices. It is worth noting this is not quite as common these days, particularly thanks to websites like Zoom or blackfriday.com.br, where buyers can compare prices before and after the offers to validate the deals. Bear in mind that Brazilian consumers are highly suspicious when it comes to the e-commerce environment and making sure your offers are the real deal is essential to win their trust.
2. Prepare Your Website
Consumers are expecting to enjoy a great shopping experience, even with the additional traffic your store will be receiving. Therefore, it is essential for you to make sure your website in general, including the e-commerce platform, server and payment provider, is ready to deal with the extra traffic.
Impulse buying is the main driver of Black Friday sales and errors when loading a page or during the payment processing can lead to poor conversion rates. The better the experience, the better results you will have. Additionally, make sure to run extensive tests on different devices, browsers, and operating systems. A/B tests before the Black Friday campaign are an excellent way to see what performs better in order to choose the best option.
Furthermore, make your website design match the Black Friday theme so that any visitor knows that you are taking part in the sales deals. A good idea is to have a countdown on your page so that visitors know when the offers will be available.
3. Know Your Buyer
Did you know that 66% of Black Friday buyers have already purchased from the store in the past? This indicates merchants should already have a very good idea of their preferred items and what sells better among their clients. Make sure to track all your customers’ interactions with your store, including results from advertising campaigns and their comments on social media.
This way, you can make sure to know what they want, how they usually shop and how much they tend to spend so that you can define the most effective strategies for your store. In addition, make sure your inventory is prepared for the increased demand as selling more than you what have available to ship can generate more post-sales support and cause delivery delays that can damage your image and ultimately affect your future campaigns, such as Christmas sales.
4. Be Omnichannel
If you have a presence both online and offline, you need to remember that both worlds are becoming more interconnected each day. As part of the customer experience, it is important to create ways to integrate different channels. For instance, a customer buying in-store could potentially finalize the payment in-app and avoid queueing. Alternatively, giving your customer the option to collect, return or exchange an item bought online in a physical store will also improve their experience and increase trust in your brand.
5. Define Digital Marketing Budget and Strategies
In order to maximize your sales and bring more traffic to your website, define great marketing strategies and their KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), such as conversion rate, CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost), ROI (Return on Investment), and average sales value. Set aside a budget for your digital marketing campaigns and optimize them to achieve the best results.
Try different things: social media ads, Google Ads, WhatsApp campaigns (if you have your customers authorization), e-mail marketing, etc. You should also make sure to implement shopping cart recovery actions, such as follow up e-mails for customers who added something to their cart and did not finalize the purchase or remarketing campaigns.
6. Improve Your Payment Conversion Rate
Offering the best deals can only take you so far. The checkout is a crucial point in the customer journey and the overall conversion rate (visit to payment) in Brazilian e-commerce is low. Furthermore, errors during the payment processing can aggravate the situation. Make sure to work with a payment provider that makes it their mission to deliver the best experience to your buyers.
For instance, PagBrasil offers the widest range of local Brazilian payment methods for its merchants, meaning that buyers have more options when choosing how to pay. Additionally, PagBrasil has also created an improved boleto bancário, its Boleto Flash®.
The exclusive payment method is a great way to reach consumers who do not have a bank account or choose not to pay with credit card. It can even be used as a way to recover a purchase after a failed credit card payment. Because Boleto Flash® offers nearly instant payment confirmation, unlike the old boleto bancário, it is also an excellent option to implement ahead of Black Friday and the holiday season. This way you can benefit from greater payment conversion rates driven by impulsive buying, in addition to having more control over your inventory during these dates.
So, are you ready for Black Friday and the holiday season?
