September 10, 2023 • 24 mins
In the recent episode of The Digital Discovery Podcast, we delved into the intricacies of Black Friday for retailers, highlighting its potential as both an opportunity and a challenge. Key to navigating this retail maze is thorough preparation, ensuring businesses can shape trends and convert casual browsers into dedicated customers.
Notice: Before making any decisions regarding your ecommerce strategy, we strongly recommend you conduct your own in-depth research and seek expert advice.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
The information and opinions presented in this podcast are solely those of the
(00:03):
content producer and do not reflect the views or opinions of any other entity.
While we strive to provide valuable insights and experiences, we urge you,
our audience to do your own research and seek professional advice before making
any decisions regarding your e-commerce strategy.
Okay.
(00:27):
So welcome back to another episode of the digital discovery podcast.
Uh, today we're going to be touching on black Friday.
It's looming large and just around the corner.
Christmas is going to be here before we know it.
So, uh, I just wanted to touch on the 10 most important things to any successful
campaign, uh, coming from an experience and doing many black Friday events.
(00:50):
In fact, in my previous life, we had one of the biggest black Friday events ever.
It was absolutely phenomenal.
The same time we learned a serious lesson and, uh, I want to share that with you
today, but, but before we do that, I just wanted to, uh, say thank you for everybody
for the comments of my first solo podcast, which was number six.
(01:11):
Uh, I was a little nervous, but overall I thought it was a pretty good podcast.
You look back after doing these things and, you know, as I get better at doing
this, I am forever grateful for those people who are coming back and
listening to the podcast.
All right.
So tip number one, inventory and supply chain management.
Now this is the most important of them all.
(01:32):
If you don't have it, you can't sell it.
Uh, unless you're doing drop ship and you've got that stock, uh, allocated to you.
I would say that you want to make sure that you're having a good look at your
inventory and you don't want any nasty surprises.
Okay.
You would be surprised how many things in the past I've seen go on sale.
The, the retail is just out of stock and they're just continue taking orders
(01:54):
because they can't take it off their website.
All right.
Uh, so I would say it's not just about the quantity of the stock that you have,
but also the quality of the stock I've experienced again in the past where
there's plenty of items on the shelf, but, uh, five out of the six or seven items.
Uh, really poor quality, whether it's, uh, you know, damaged boxes or whatever.
(02:15):
So I would say your core items, you just want to get your warehouse managers and
things to run their eyes over the stock that is going on the black Friday sales
and make sure when they leave your warehouse, they're going to be in good
condition because the last thing you want is customers to have be upset because
the present that they've bought for Auntie Pam is no good.
(02:36):
The box is damaged.
All right.
So make sure it's a simple thing.
And this is why I'm a big advocate of e-commerce always being
close to the warehouse.
Okay.
If your e-commerce operations is away from your warehouse,
you're in a huge disadvantage.
Okay.
I don't care what you say.
I've been in business for a long time.
Uh, you've got to be where your stock is if you're in e-commerce, because
(02:57):
there's nothing better than just walking down and seeing the fruits of your labor
where you, you, you put on a great event and you just seeing more and more people
coming in and packing shipping orders.
It just lifts the team, but it also simple things like making sure that your
stock is in a good quality as it's going out.
Um, if you don't have those QA processes in place from a warehousing perspective,
(03:19):
then just go out and have a look.
All right.
Anyway, I think regular communication with your supplies and that's really
important and your buying team to make you, to make sure that there's no last
minute changes because that's usually what hurts because you'll build up a lot
of demands on a particular or hype around the mystique of what's going on sale.
(03:39):
All right.
It could be category level, but then all of a sudden you, you're out of stock or
they're out of stock or there's something and you've built and you've got
nothing to replace it with.
Uh, it's detrimental obviously.
And these things are fundamental to a promotion and I know it makes sense, but
often the communication between the e-commerce department, marketing,
and the buying team and the warehouse is a little bit disjointed.
(04:02):
And sometimes, uh, the stock doesn't arrive in time, uh, and it's, you know,
two weeks away, but you still, they still want to go ahead with the promotion,
which is fine.
You just got to make sure that that gets communicated with the customer when
they're purchasing.
Otherwise you're going to end up with a flood of inquiries.
Now moving on is number two is optimizing the site for surges in traffic.
(04:22):
Now you don't have to worry too much.
I think if you've got a Shopify, big commerce, or a retail, you can
use a, um, a hosted solution that you'll, that you're, um, utilizing for your
e-commerce, um, and you're only expecting maybe a slight increase in traffic.
But if you've got some pretty hot deals out there and you've got loss leaders,
I would still send an email, get it in writing to say, guys, we're going to
(04:47):
have a big event.
Uh, have we got everything sorted?
Is our website going to handle it?
And just make sure you've got it all, all your bases covered.
Okay.
Be surprised people said to me, oh, but I'm on Shopify.
It doesn't really matter.
No, it does.
Um, make sure that you just email them.
Ask about the load testing.
Say, Hey guys, um, have we done any, done any load testing this year?
(05:08):
Don't assume because last year you were okay that this year is going to be okay as
well, you would have had a heap of releases since then there'd be more features.
You want to make sure that, uh, you've got a ticked box from that IT department
to say, yes, we've low tested it, we can get to 20,000, 30,000 concurrent users.
No problems.
(05:29):
Whatever the number might be, just pick a number, whatever your benchmark is
plus plus, and then say, okay, well, great.
Thanks very much.
And tick that box, but just make sure you do.
You can't just assume.
So if you need, uh, I'm more than happy to help.
In fact, I know some brilliant minds when it comes to scalability.
I understand the, the, the nuances around how to make it a website scale, but more
(05:52):
importantly, I've got the contacts to be able to help you guys out there in retail land.
So tip number three, moving on.
Um, so the marketing promotion strategies, all right.
So make deals like irresistible, you know, and sort of unforgettable.
I would say show them early, but don't drop them early would be my tip.
Early insights are really, really good, but if you drop them early, you, your
(06:15):
promotions can run out of steam real quickly and then you become sort of
irrelevant during the last periods of the event.
Now there is always an uptick in conversions towards the end of a promotion
because those products that have a longer purchasing consideration phase.
Um, so there's discovery consideration conversion.
(06:36):
That's the way I like to, I mean, there's millions of ways you can look at the final,
but that's the way I kind of look at it.
That consideration phase, if I'm buying a set of, for example, $2,000 speakers
for my podcast studio, um, then I'm going to take a little bit more time.
And if I can't listen to them, then just going out and buying them because
(06:57):
they're on a, on a price product price point.
Okay.
So that uptick you get towards the end is really important.
Now, if your competition is dropping more promotions during that time, or they're
doing it in a, at a chronologically, they've organized their promotions better.
What you'll find is you'll find that you will lose, start to lose traffic and you
(07:20):
won't get a stronger uptick and basically people just get lost, lost Lucy's as I
tend to refer to them as, um, you know, they, they, they'll bounce off your site.
They'll go somewhere else and they get lost in their promotions.
They end up not buying anything and then you lose the sale.
Okay.
So it's really, really important to keep people engaged.
(07:40):
The moment you do a early look, uh, sneak peek and then an early look
to your database, for example, your email database, it's really important
to make sure that you've got enough and you're generating enough buzz, uh,
throughout the lifetime of your promotion chronologically to keep people interested,
keeping your click rates up on your emails, making sure that your site
(08:03):
is refreshed every day.
And I think a lot of, uh, e-commerce guys tend to focus too much on the
carousel on the homepage.
And this is speaking from experience, uh, a lot of the times, and you'll
notice yourself, you hit the homepage on a, on a promotion and you
actually scroll straight away.
So you actually miss the promotion.
You see it, but your brain doesn't have enough time to register it.
(08:26):
Okay.
If you have a look at your attention mapping and your scroll mapping on
something like hot jar or optimisely, if you're 10 or 11 promotions into a
carousel, no one's going to sit there and wait for a thing to spin.
Now it's not helpful.
Okay.
Especially on a mobile, people need to know that they can swipe on a mobile
very, very quickly, um, or they can click on a desktop and go through the
(08:50):
promotions quickly.
All right.
But it's overstated.
Now, if you look at, um, sites like Argos in the UK, uh, Walmart in the
U S uh, AO.com UK, a lot of these sites tend to stack the promotions and take
up the whole homepage, which is fun.
But that leads me to my next topic.
Number four, which is optimisation on mobile devices.
(09:13):
And for my audience out there that's listening, and I know you guys get
frustrated with this, but the scaling of these promotions, uh, that are meant
and have been designed for desktop, uh, the don't take into consideration
mobile phones is so frustrating because you can't even read them.
And all you end up seeing is all of this big red stuff and some more
(09:36):
writing and a small image, and you can't read the terms and conditions.
You can't see the product properly.
You really can't even see the creative properly.
Um, my tip is make sure the landing page that you're building is built mobile
first, so it's got to be responsive.
It's got to be fast.
It's got to be scrollable, tappable, swipeable.
(09:59):
It's got to be all of these elements.
Okay.
They're super important for the success of your product.
Okay. They're super important for the success of your promotion
and do not underestimate.
Now I would say you can use something like Google Lighthouse and have a look
at your optimisation scores, but there's nothing better than users.
Okay.
Get a bunch of people together from another team in your business and, and
(10:21):
that haven't seen the promotion before and get them to, to jump onto a
pre-release site and get them to critique it.
Right.
And, and look at your recordings, your session recordings and have a look
and see where there, there might be some click rage going on.
There might be some, uh, boredom scrolling really quickly across your
(10:41):
promotions.
They're not really seeing anything that's engaging.
Use that information, use that data and try and improve the way, uh, your
promotions interact with that person.
I would also to say you probably don't have enough time, but your checkout
process on mobile and your payment process on mobile needs to be looked at.
(11:01):
And I would say, don't go too crazy about it.
I would say it's the mum test for me.
I would always say, give it to mum.
If she can check out on it, then you're fine.
Okay.
If not have a look at those little issues that she might be experiencing.
And it could be very, very simple things.
And I would say, look for simple tweaks.
And an easy one for me is your payment processor.
(11:23):
Okay.
Now, if you don't have a simple dropdown with the month number and the month, I
would say change that straight away.
Okay.
On a mobile, if you have to pop up a keyboard to then punch in the number on
a numeric keypad, and you don't initiate a numeric keypad on a mobile, that's a
simple change that you can initiate and you'll improve your conversions.
(11:44):
It's simple.
So streamline your mobile processing, make sure that it's mobile friendly.
And use social logins as much as you can.
These are things you could probably get done before your Black Friday sales.
Okay.
If you need some advice on your mobile checkout, reach out to me.
I'm more than happy to have a chat with you about how to improve your website
(12:06):
coming into Black Friday.
15 minute call could even save you a lot of headache and make you millions more
just by having a simple conversation with me.
Okay.
So reach out, do that.
Now, tip number five is customer service readiness.
Okay.
And supporting customers during Black Friday.
(12:28):
It's both an art and a science.
Okay.
This is the way I like to define it.
Right.
The science behind it.
And we'll talk about that first.
Things like chat bots, technology.
I would say keep it simple, stupid.
Right.
What you want, if you, if you haven't delved into chat bots, you can't
delved into chat bots and you're thinking about putting chat bots in for Christmas.
(12:52):
I would say, unless you have nothing else to do with your time and that's your
number one focus, that's fine.
But if you've got issues, more important issues like the previous mentioned,
um, I would say focus on them.
Don't put chat bots in and scale you humans.
Like, uh, Mark Andreessen said, um, software is eating the world.
(13:15):
Uh, and we know AI and everything is so amazing.
I would say don't buy into it right now.
What you want to do is you want to scale your humans.
It's quicker to train, um, people than it is to train a chat bot.
People tend to know they're talking to a chat bot and it actually frustrates
them sometimes even more if it's not executed.
So great idea, poor execution.
(13:36):
Execution is everything.
All right.
So make sure that you, um, that you get more humans and you're starting
to plan that rostering now.
Okay.
Because if you're on strict budgets and you need to start cutting back now,
uh, in store, for example, don't do it at the most busiest time of year.
Train your team on the top five things that were issues last year.
(13:58):
Look at your, uh, your in-bounds last year, emails, chats.
What did you get the most of?
Which ones took the most time to address?
Nine times out of 10, it's emails take the longest and it's normally,
where is my order?
It takes time.
Okay.
You can completely automate that, but again, you don't have time.
There's only a few months to black Friday.
(14:19):
Quickest way to do this is to make sure you're training your staff for your
customer service team around your emails, how to respond, get some canned
responses, fill in the blanks and make it simple for your chat.
I would make sure that you hire people who can type.
Oh my God.
I don't know how many times I've gone into call centers and I've seen people
(14:40):
responding to customers and they can't even type.
And I know this sounds simple, but these are, uh, you know, a simple tips.
The next thing is go back on your past black Friday disasters and make sure that
your staff can handle the situation.
Okay.
A lot of the times this situation can be highly stressful.
(15:02):
If you've got people in there that are going to turn to water every time someone
yells at them or whatever, and I know that you're going to be in a situation
where you're not going to be able to handle the situation, you're going to be
in a situation where you're not going to be able to handle the situation.
So I would make sure that you're not going to be able to handle the situation.
And I know for businesses that are just starting out, it could be mom and dad
handling chats and so on, and then try and hire some friends, prepare them.
(15:26):
Just say, Hey, you know, like last year we had a bit of a stuff up, whatever.
And we had some upset customers.
This is what we encountered.
Just be prepared for it.
Okay.
Don't throw them in the deep end straight away without any heads up.
And I've seen it.
Okay.
So moving on to a seamless checkout experience.
Now, abandoned carts in my, in my previous life, a lot of the times, what I found
(15:49):
happened was people were trying to gamify the abandoned cart emails.
Okay.
What they were trying to do was put items into the cart at a lower, lower than
usual price, and then wait for a free delivery coupon or a promotion or whatever.
And what the way I addressed that was you make it clear the promotional price
that's shown on that email for the abandoned cart can't be used in conjunction
(16:12):
with any other other offer.
And that helps you close the sale.
Now that boosts conversions massively because people aren't going to sit and
wait, that's the best way I found to close the sale.
The other thing is making sure you're doing your best around the abandoned cart emails.
Now we spoke to Matt from Barilliance.
(16:34):
Now I would say I highly recommend you reach out to him or your provider for
for, for recommendations and just go through it and make sure the timing is right.
And by that, I mean, you would be surprised how many abandoned cart emails you get
the first one.
(16:55):
Okay.
That goes in the trash, but the second one doesn't come for like a week after and your
promotion's finished.
Okay.
A lot of the times you have to change the timing on your promotions and your abandoned
cart emails to drop in line with when your promotions are going to end.
All right.
If you don't do that, you're going to miss your conversion window.
(17:15):
Okay.
The tipping point in which a customer then goes from considering you as a
retailer to then buying.
Remember we, I spoke about that in my previous podcast, number six, go back
and have a look, a listen.
Okay.
So super important.
All right.
The next one is retention.
(17:35):
You're going to get a huge amount of, of, of visits to your site.
Now, a lot of the times the business doesn't understand that those customers
that visit your site are actually what I would consider like inventory.
All right.
For your marketing team.
And by that, I mean, it's like, there are a huge now.
Pure average visits to your product pages five a day.
(17:59):
And all of a sudden during the black Friday deals, you get 500 a day.
You have now essentially got 495 more people per day that are coming to your
product pages, and that is essentially remarketing inventory that you can use.
Make sure that you have enough budget in a retention strategy and a remarketing
(18:21):
strategy so you can get those people who miss out on those promotions to come back.
Make sure you have a strategy, a post sales strategy to the lead up to Christmas
to make sure that you can capitalize on that initial wave of traffic.
If you go in to, to your weekend, your next week, I should say after the
(18:43):
weekend of black Friday, you're going out with something so lame, you're going to
miss the opportunity that all of that pre-spent marketing dollars has to offer.
Okay.
Those customers still primed.
They're still prepped.
They still want to buy from you.
Have a look at the data during the black Friday, look at it and say, okay, what,
(19:05):
what sold, what didn't sell, then also have a look at what sold and how much
you've got left of that and potentially who missed out.
So for example, if you've got an item that was out of stock during black
Friday, but you know, it's going to drop before Christmas, put it back on
sale would be my advice.
I know it makes sense, but if you miss that opportunity, they could just
(19:25):
going to go somewhere else say to those people who were coming to a particular
product that missed out, if you've missed out, don't worry, we're going to have
more coming in in the next few weeks.
So stay tuned.
That's really that simple.
Now, a lot of times it's simpler said than done, but if you're able to do
(19:45):
that, that is absolutely what you want to be able to do.
Um, so have it prepped, have it ready.
If you know, you've got a, I don't know, pick it up a TV.
That's a super offer.
It's never been before seen price, but you've got one that's a hundred bucks
more and you've got a heap of stock coming in the following week.
Well, then put that up in lights and say, Hey guys, you missed out on this.
(20:07):
But by the way, did you know we've got this and we're going to offer you free
delivery or we're going to offer you some carrot that's going to get you
to come back to the site.
Now moving on to number eight.
Now I mentioned this kind of already, but your UX, your user experience, if
you haven't done a SWOT analysis on your user experience, then do one and do it
now, okay, because first impressions, um, they matter.
(20:33):
It's huge.
If you don't make a good first impression, especially when your traffic is
booming, you're potentially burning bridges with those customers.
And remember with e-commerce, you're only one click away from your competitor.
Okay.
One click.
So if I'm shopping on Harvey Norman, I'm one click from JB.
(20:53):
All right.
That's the way you've got to look at it.
That's the context that we're going to look at.
So make sure you do, um, you do that user testing, make sure that you, as I
said at the start, make sure your promotions, um, resonate well, simplifies
things down to the lowest common denominator.
And I think Elon Musk says the, the sign of a bad engineer is an engineer that
(21:13):
optimized something that shouldn't exist.
This is the exact approach I take.
And the simpler you make things, if it's a leap step in the experience, it's
going to seem like it's just happening.
It's just amazing.
Right.
That's what you, that's what you want to aim for because everybody tends to
(21:34):
follow the Amazons of the world or when it comes to range and checkout and
recommendations and yes, they're amazing, but, um, it's not always your target
audience and, and you, and your core should be your core focus.
If you have any questions and you want to reach out to me, feel free.
I can give you a hand when it comes to the user experience.
(21:57):
Uh, tip number nine is collaborating with partners.
Okay. And by that, I mean, talk to your suppliers, make sure that all of your
links for your, the products that you tend that you're intending to sell
land in the right place.
You'd be surprised when you go to a retailer's website, um, uh, sorry, a
(22:22):
manufacturer's website and it says click here to buy or to find a retailer in
your area and it doesn't work.
And last of all, tip number 10 is the post Friday analysis.
And off the last one is exactly what I was just mentioning.
Uh, number nine, but number 10 yet, you've got to make sure that you look
(22:43):
at your data from last, um, last year in particular, what happened at the end of
the promotion, how long did you sustain your additional traffic for how, and
how long could you add a promotion for at the end of your sales event to keep
people interested, have a look at your return to conversion numbers.
(23:04):
And I'll let you show you how many people returned to a convert and or revisit.
Okay.
And if you'll revisit number is really high and, but your conversion
number is really low.
It means you're not refreshing your site enough.
You need to have more new promotions happening every day because they're
coming back and they want to see something new because they're not
(23:24):
refreshing their site enough.
But if your return conversions is really high, you want to reduce the
amount of times you change your site because there's nothing more frustrating
than coming back to a website to buy something and that, you know, the
particular retailer has run out of session storage, show your carts been cleared.
Um, and you have to start again.
(23:45):
All right.
They don't have an abandoned cart email or whatever, and you just,
it's just super frustrating.
Okay.
So what you want to do is you want to kind of keep things as simple as possible and
as relevant as possible by reducing the amount of changes you make during
a promotional period.
So if it's two or three weeks, okay.
Analytics should update within a few hours of these events.
So make sure you look at those return to conversion numbers and, uh, have a
(24:07):
look at your post Friday from last year and try and make things, um, as relevant
as possible during your promotion period.
All right.
So that's enough from me.
I think that's the 10 top tips for black Friday.
Such a treasure trove of insights in their black Friday.
It can be an absolute gold mine with the right preparation.
(24:28):
I'd like to thank again, everybody who's been listening over the course of the
last month or so this podcast has been running and I wish all of you guys are
a lucrative black Friday until next time.
Bye for now.
The information and opinions presented in this podcast are solely those of the
(00:03):
content producer and do not reflect the views or opinions of any other entity.
While we strive to provide valuable insights and experiences, we urge you,
our audience to do your own research and seek professional advice before making
any decisions regarding your e-commerce strategy.
Okay.
(00:27):
So welcome back to another episode of the digital discovery podcast.
Uh, today we're going to be touching on black Friday.
It's looming large and just around the corner.
Christmas is going to be here before we know it.
So, uh, I just wanted to touch on the 10 most important things to any successful
campaign, uh, coming from an experience and doing many black Friday events.
(00:50):
In fact, in my previous life, we had one of the biggest black Friday events ever.
It was absolutely phenomenal.
The same time we learned a serious lesson and, uh, I want to share that with you
today, but, but before we do that, I just wanted to, uh, say thank you for everybody
for the comments of my first solo podcast, which was number six.
(01:11):
Uh, I was a little nervous, but overall I thought it was a pretty good podcast.
You look back after doing these things and, you know, as I get better at doing
this, I am forever grateful for those people who are coming back and
listening to the podcast.
All right.
So tip number one, inventory and supply chain management.
Now this is the most important of them all.
(01:32):
If you don't have it, you can't sell it.
Uh, unless you're doing drop ship and you've got that stock, uh, allocated to you.
I would say that you want to make sure that you're having a good look at your
inventory and you don't want any nasty surprises.
Okay.
You would be surprised how many things in the past I've seen go on sale.
The, the retail is just out of stock and they're just continue taking orders
(01:54):
because they can't take it off their website.
All right.
Uh, so I would say it's not just about the quantity of the stock that you have,
but also the quality of the stock I've experienced again in the past where
there's plenty of items on the shelf, but, uh, five out of the six or seven items.
Uh, really poor quality, whether it's, uh, you know, damaged boxes or whatever.
(02:15):
So I would say your core items, you just want to get your warehouse managers and
things to run their eyes over the stock that is going on the black Friday sales
and make sure when they leave your warehouse, they're going to be in good
condition because the last thing you want is customers to have be upset because
the present that they've bought for Auntie Pam is no good.
(02:36):
The box is damaged.
All right.
So make sure it's a simple thing.
And this is why I'm a big advocate of e-commerce always being
close to the warehouse.
Okay.
If your e-commerce operations is away from your warehouse,
you're in a huge disadvantage.
Okay.
I don't care what you say.
I've been in business for a long time.
Uh, you've got to be where your stock is if you're in e-commerce, because
(02:57):
there's nothing better than just walking down and seeing the fruits of your labor
where you, you, you put on a great event and you just seeing more and more people
coming in and packing shipping orders.
It just lifts the team, but it also simple things like making sure that your
stock is in a good quality as it's going out.
Um, if you don't have those QA processes in place from a warehousing perspective,
(03:19):
then just go out and have a look.
All right.
Anyway, I think regular communication with your supplies and that's really
important and your buying team to make you, to make sure that there's no last
minute changes because that's usually what hurts because you'll build up a lot
of demands on a particular or hype around the mystique of what's going on sale.
(03:39):
All right.
It could be category level, but then all of a sudden you, you're out of stock or
they're out of stock or there's something and you've built and you've got
nothing to replace it with.
Uh, it's detrimental obviously.
And these things are fundamental to a promotion and I know it makes sense, but
often the communication between the e-commerce department, marketing,
and the buying team and the warehouse is a little bit disjointed.
(04:02):
And sometimes, uh, the stock doesn't arrive in time, uh, and it's, you know,
two weeks away, but you still, they still want to go ahead with the promotion,
which is fine.
You just got to make sure that that gets communicated with the customer when
they're purchasing.
Otherwise you're going to end up with a flood of inquiries.
Now moving on is number two is optimizing the site for surges in traffic.
(04:22):
Now you don't have to worry too much.
I think if you've got a Shopify, big commerce, or a retail, you can
use a, um, a hosted solution that you'll, that you're, um, utilizing for your
e-commerce, um, and you're only expecting maybe a slight increase in traffic.
But if you've got some pretty hot deals out there and you've got loss leaders,
I would still send an email, get it in writing to say, guys, we're going to
(04:47):
have a big event.
Uh, have we got everything sorted?
Is our website going to handle it?
And just make sure you've got it all, all your bases covered.
Okay.
Be surprised people said to me, oh, but I'm on Shopify.
It doesn't really matter.
No, it does.
Um, make sure that you just email them.
Ask about the load testing.
Say, Hey guys, um, have we done any, done any load testing this year?
(05:08):
Don't assume because last year you were okay that this year is going to be okay as
well, you would have had a heap of releases since then there'd be more features.
You want to make sure that, uh, you've got a ticked box from that IT department
to say, yes, we've low tested it, we can get to 20,000, 30,000 concurrent users.
No problems.
(05:29):
Whatever the number might be, just pick a number, whatever your benchmark is
plus plus, and then say, okay, well, great.
Thanks very much.
And tick that box, but just make sure you do.
You can't just assume.
So if you need, uh, I'm more than happy to help.
In fact, I know some brilliant minds when it comes to scalability.
I understand the, the, the nuances around how to make it a website scale, but more
(05:52):
importantly, I've got the contacts to be able to help you guys out there in retail land.
So tip number three, moving on.
Um, so the marketing promotion strategies, all right.
So make deals like irresistible, you know, and sort of unforgettable.
I would say show them early, but don't drop them early would be my tip.
Early insights are really, really good, but if you drop them early, you, your
(06:15):
promotions can run out of steam real quickly and then you become sort of
irrelevant during the last periods of the event.
Now there is always an uptick in conversions towards the end of a promotion
because those products that have a longer purchasing consideration phase.
Um, so there's discovery consideration conversion.
(06:36):
That's the way I like to, I mean, there's millions of ways you can look at the final,
but that's the way I kind of look at it.
That consideration phase, if I'm buying a set of, for example, $2,000 speakers
for my podcast studio, um, then I'm going to take a little bit more time.
And if I can't listen to them, then just going out and buying them because
(06:57):
they're on a, on a price product price point.
Okay.
So that uptick you get towards the end is really important.
Now, if your competition is dropping more promotions during that time, or they're
doing it in a, at a chronologically, they've organized their promotions better.
What you'll find is you'll find that you will lose, start to lose traffic and you
(07:20):
won't get a stronger uptick and basically people just get lost, lost Lucy's as I
tend to refer to them as, um, you know, they, they, they'll bounce off your site.
They'll go somewhere else and they get lost in their promotions.
They end up not buying anything and then you lose the sale.
Okay.
So it's really, really important to keep people engaged.
(07:40):
The moment you do a early look, uh, sneak peek and then an early look
to your database, for example, your email database, it's really important
to make sure that you've got enough and you're generating enough buzz, uh,
throughout the lifetime of your promotion chronologically to keep people interested,
keeping your click rates up on your emails, making sure that your site
(08:03):
is refreshed every day.
And I think a lot of, uh, e-commerce guys tend to focus too much on the
carousel on the homepage.
And this is speaking from experience, uh, a lot of the times, and you'll
notice yourself, you hit the homepage on a, on a promotion and you
actually scroll straight away.
So you actually miss the promotion.
You see it, but your brain doesn't have enough time to register it.
(08:26):
Okay.
If you have a look at your attention mapping and your scroll mapping on
something like hot jar or optimisely, if you're 10 or 11 promotions into a
carousel, no one's going to sit there and wait for a thing to spin.
Now it's not helpful.
Okay.
Especially on a mobile, people need to know that they can swipe on a mobile
very, very quickly, um, or they can click on a desktop and go through the
(08:50):
promotions quickly.
All right.
But it's overstated.
Now, if you look at, um, sites like Argos in the UK, uh, Walmart in the
U S uh, AO.com UK, a lot of these sites tend to stack the promotions and take
up the whole homepage, which is fun.
But that leads me to my next topic.
Number four, which is optimisation on mobile devices.
(09:13):
And for my audience out there that's listening, and I know you guys get
frustrated with this, but the scaling of these promotions, uh, that are meant
and have been designed for desktop, uh, the don't take into consideration
mobile phones is so frustrating because you can't even read them.
And all you end up seeing is all of this big red stuff and some more
(09:36):
writing and a small image, and you can't read the terms and conditions.
You can't see the product properly.
You really can't even see the creative properly.
Um, my tip is make sure the landing page that you're building is built mobile
first, so it's got to be responsive.
It's got to be fast.
It's got to be scrollable, tappable, swipeable.
(09:59):
It's got to be all of these elements.
Okay.
They're super important for the success of your product.
Okay. They're super important for the success of your promotion
and do not underestimate.
Now I would say you can use something like Google Lighthouse and have a look
at your optimisation scores, but there's nothing better than users.
Okay.
Get a bunch of people together from another team in your business and, and
(10:21):
that haven't seen the promotion before and get them to, to jump onto a
pre-release site and get them to critique it.
Right.
And, and look at your recordings, your session recordings and have a look
and see where there, there might be some click rage going on.
There might be some, uh, boredom scrolling really quickly across your
(10:41):
promotions.
They're not really seeing anything that's engaging.
Use that information, use that data and try and improve the way, uh, your
promotions interact with that person.
I would also to say you probably don't have enough time, but your checkout
process on mobile and your payment process on mobile needs to be looked at.
(11:01):
And I would say, don't go too crazy about it.
I would say it's the mum test for me.
I would always say, give it to mum.
If she can check out on it, then you're fine.
Okay.
If not have a look at those little issues that she might be experiencing.
And it could be very, very simple things.
And I would say, look for simple tweaks.
And an easy one for me is your payment processor.
(11:23):
Okay.
Now, if you don't have a simple dropdown with the month number and the month, I
would say change that straight away.
Okay.
On a mobile, if you have to pop up a keyboard to then punch in the number on
a numeric keypad, and you don't initiate a numeric keypad on a mobile, that's a
simple change that you can initiate and you'll improve your conversions.
(11:44):
It's simple.
So streamline your mobile processing, make sure that it's mobile friendly.
And use social logins as much as you can.
These are things you could probably get done before your Black Friday sales.
Okay.
If you need some advice on your mobile checkout, reach out to me.
I'm more than happy to have a chat with you about how to improve your website
(12:06):
coming into Black Friday.
15 minute call could even save you a lot of headache and make you millions more
just by having a simple conversation with me.
Okay.
So reach out, do that.
Now, tip number five is customer service readiness.
Okay.
And supporting customers during Black Friday.
(12:28):
It's both an art and a science.
Okay.
This is the way I like to define it.
Right.
The science behind it.
And we'll talk about that first.
Things like chat bots, technology.
I would say keep it simple, stupid.
Right.
What you want, if you, if you haven't delved into chat bots, you can't
delved into chat bots and you're thinking about putting chat bots in for Christmas.
(12:52):
I would say, unless you have nothing else to do with your time and that's your
number one focus, that's fine.
But if you've got issues, more important issues like the previous mentioned,
um, I would say focus on them.
Don't put chat bots in and scale you humans.
Like, uh, Mark Andreessen said, um, software is eating the world.
(13:15):
Uh, and we know AI and everything is so amazing.
I would say don't buy into it right now.
What you want to do is you want to scale your humans.
It's quicker to train, um, people than it is to train a chat bot.
People tend to know they're talking to a chat bot and it actually frustrates
them sometimes even more if it's not executed.
So great idea, poor execution.
(13:36):
Execution is everything.
All right.
So make sure that you, um, that you get more humans and you're starting
to plan that rostering now.
Okay.
Because if you're on strict budgets and you need to start cutting back now,
uh, in store, for example, don't do it at the most busiest time of year.
Train your team on the top five things that were issues last year.
(13:58):
Look at your, uh, your in-bounds last year, emails, chats.
What did you get the most of?
Which ones took the most time to address?
Nine times out of 10, it's emails take the longest and it's normally,
where is my order?
It takes time.
Okay.
You can completely automate that, but again, you don't have time.
There's only a few months to black Friday.
(14:19):
Quickest way to do this is to make sure you're training your staff for your
customer service team around your emails, how to respond, get some canned
responses, fill in the blanks and make it simple for your chat.
I would make sure that you hire people who can type.
Oh my God.
I don't know how many times I've gone into call centers and I've seen people
(14:40):
responding to customers and they can't even type.
And I know this sounds simple, but these are, uh, you know, a simple tips.
The next thing is go back on your past black Friday disasters and make sure that
your staff can handle the situation.
Okay.
A lot of the times this situation can be highly stressful.
(15:02):
If you've got people in there that are going to turn to water every time someone
yells at them or whatever, and I know that you're going to be in a situation
where you're not going to be able to handle the situation, you're going to be
in a situation where you're not going to be able to handle the situation.
So I would make sure that you're not going to be able to handle the situation.
And I know for businesses that are just starting out, it could be mom and dad
handling chats and so on, and then try and hire some friends, prepare them.
(15:26):
Just say, Hey, you know, like last year we had a bit of a stuff up, whatever.
And we had some upset customers.
This is what we encountered.
Just be prepared for it.
Okay.
Don't throw them in the deep end straight away without any heads up.
And I've seen it.
Okay.
So moving on to a seamless checkout experience.
Now, abandoned carts in my, in my previous life, a lot of the times, what I found
(15:49):
happened was people were trying to gamify the abandoned cart emails.
Okay.
What they were trying to do was put items into the cart at a lower, lower than
usual price, and then wait for a free delivery coupon or a promotion or whatever.
And what the way I addressed that was you make it clear the promotional price
that's shown on that email for the abandoned cart can't be used in conjunction
(16:12):
with any other other offer.
And that helps you close the sale.
Now that boosts conversions massively because people aren't going to sit and
wait, that's the best way I found to close the sale.
The other thing is making sure you're doing your best around the abandoned cart emails.
Now we spoke to Matt from Barilliance.
(16:34):
Now I would say I highly recommend you reach out to him or your provider for
for, for recommendations and just go through it and make sure the timing is right.
And by that, I mean, you would be surprised how many abandoned cart emails you get
the first one.
(16:55):
Okay.
That goes in the trash, but the second one doesn't come for like a week after and your
promotion's finished.
Okay.
A lot of the times you have to change the timing on your promotions and your abandoned
cart emails to drop in line with when your promotions are going to end.
All right.
If you don't do that, you're going to miss your conversion window.
(17:15):
Okay.
The tipping point in which a customer then goes from considering you as a
retailer to then buying.
Remember we, I spoke about that in my previous podcast, number six, go back
and have a look, a listen.
Okay.
So super important.
All right.
The next one is retention.
(17:35):
You're going to get a huge amount of, of, of visits to your site.
Now, a lot of the times the business doesn't understand that those customers
that visit your site are actually what I would consider like inventory.
All right.
For your marketing team.
And by that, I mean, it's like, there are a huge now.
Pure average visits to your product pages five a day.
(17:59):
And all of a sudden during the black Friday deals, you get 500 a day.
You have now essentially got 495 more people per day that are coming to your
product pages, and that is essentially remarketing inventory that you can use.
Make sure that you have enough budget in a retention strategy and a remarketing
(18:21):
strategy so you can get those people who miss out on those promotions to come back.
Make sure you have a strategy, a post sales strategy to the lead up to Christmas
to make sure that you can capitalize on that initial wave of traffic.
If you go in to, to your weekend, your next week, I should say after the
(18:43):
weekend of black Friday, you're going out with something so lame, you're going to
miss the opportunity that all of that pre-spent marketing dollars has to offer.
Okay.
Those customers still primed.
They're still prepped.
They still want to buy from you.
Have a look at the data during the black Friday, look at it and say, okay, what,
(19:05):
what sold, what didn't sell, then also have a look at what sold and how much
you've got left of that and potentially who missed out.
So for example, if you've got an item that was out of stock during black
Friday, but you know, it's going to drop before Christmas, put it back on
sale would be my advice.
I know it makes sense, but if you miss that opportunity, they could just
(19:25):
going to go somewhere else say to those people who were coming to a particular
product that missed out, if you've missed out, don't worry, we're going to have
more coming in in the next few weeks.
So stay tuned.
That's really that simple.
Now, a lot of times it's simpler said than done, but if you're able to do
(19:45):
that, that is absolutely what you want to be able to do.
Um, so have it prepped, have it ready.
If you know, you've got a, I don't know, pick it up a TV.
That's a super offer.
It's never been before seen price, but you've got one that's a hundred bucks
more and you've got a heap of stock coming in the following week.
Well, then put that up in lights and say, Hey guys, you missed out on this.
(20:07):
But by the way, did you know we've got this and we're going to offer you free
delivery or we're going to offer you some carrot that's going to get you
to come back to the site.
Now moving on to number eight.
Now I mentioned this kind of already, but your UX, your user experience, if
you haven't done a SWOT analysis on your user experience, then do one and do it
now, okay, because first impressions, um, they matter.
(20:33):
It's huge.
If you don't make a good first impression, especially when your traffic is
booming, you're potentially burning bridges with those customers.
And remember with e-commerce, you're only one click away from your competitor.
Okay.
One click.
So if I'm shopping on Harvey Norman, I'm one click from JB.
(20:53):
All right.
That's the way you've got to look at it.
That's the context that we're going to look at.
So make sure you do, um, you do that user testing, make sure that you, as I
said at the start, make sure your promotions, um, resonate well, simplifies
things down to the lowest common denominator.
And I think Elon Musk says the, the sign of a bad engineer is an engineer that
(21:13):
optimized something that shouldn't exist.
This is the exact approach I take.
And the simpler you make things, if it's a leap step in the experience, it's
going to seem like it's just happening.
It's just amazing.
Right.
That's what you, that's what you want to aim for because everybody tends to
(21:34):
follow the Amazons of the world or when it comes to range and checkout and
recommendations and yes, they're amazing, but, um, it's not always your target
audience and, and you, and your core should be your core focus.
If you have any questions and you want to reach out to me, feel free.
I can give you a hand when it comes to the user experience.
(21:57):
Uh, tip number nine is collaborating with partners.
Okay. And by that, I mean, talk to your suppliers, make sure that all of your
links for your, the products that you tend that you're intending to sell
land in the right place.
You'd be surprised when you go to a retailer's website, um, uh, sorry, a
(22:22):
manufacturer's website and it says click here to buy or to find a retailer in
your area and it doesn't work.
And last of all, tip number 10 is the post Friday analysis.
And off the last one is exactly what I was just mentioning.
Uh, number nine, but number 10 yet, you've got to make sure that you look
(22:43):
at your data from last, um, last year in particular, what happened at the end of
the promotion, how long did you sustain your additional traffic for how, and
how long could you add a promotion for at the end of your sales event to keep
people interested, have a look at your return to conversion numbers.
(23:04):
And I'll let you show you how many people returned to a convert and or revisit.
Okay.
And if you'll revisit number is really high and, but your conversion
number is really low.
It means you're not refreshing your site enough.
You need to have more new promotions happening every day because they're
coming back and they want to see something new because they're not
(23:24):
refreshing their site enough.
But if your return conversions is really high, you want to reduce the
amount of times you change your site because there's nothing more frustrating
than coming back to a website to buy something and that, you know, the
particular retailer has run out of session storage, show your carts been cleared.
Um, and you have to start again.
(23:45):
All right.
They don't have an abandoned cart email or whatever, and you just,
it's just super frustrating.
Okay.
So what you want to do is you want to kind of keep things as simple as possible and
as relevant as possible by reducing the amount of changes you make during
a promotional period.
So if it's two or three weeks, okay.
Analytics should update within a few hours of these events.
So make sure you look at those return to conversion numbers and, uh, have a
(24:07):
look at your post Friday from last year and try and make things, um, as relevant
as possible during your promotion period.
All right.
So that's enough from me.
I think that's the 10 top tips for black Friday.
Such a treasure trove of insights in their black Friday.
It can be an absolute gold mine with the right preparation.
(24:28):
I'd like to thank again, everybody who's been listening over the course of the
last month or so this podcast has been running and I wish all of you guys are
a lucrative black Friday until next time.
Bye for now.
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