Black Friday and Cyber Monday are long-anticipated days for retail lovers in the US, the UK and other countries all over the world.
Black Friday is the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the United States and around the world. Many stores offer highly promoted sales on Black Friday and open very early to queues of people. Black Friday has routinely been the busiest shopping day of the year since at least 2005. For the last couple of years, we’ve seen a shift in people shopping in person to the majority of people shopping online on Black Friday as well as Cyber Monday, due to Lockdown restrictions and social distancing not really going hand-in-hand with the normal busyness of Black Friday. This year, I’m sure many people will prefer to get their ‘deal’ in person. As with all sales there is only ever a limited number of discounted items and they’re far easier to grab in a store (or so people think) then up against the million or so refreshing the page on Amazon. So, if you’re selling B2B and you have enough of a profit margin to support a Black-Friday like sale then don’t let the Black Friday and Cyber event pass you without a chance. Make sure you have a Black Friday Strategy for the sales, marketing and strategy which means. Make sure your online store is ready. Make sure your customers know you’re going to have deals. Should you become a Viral Black Friday deal then make sure you can deliver on the products you sell (Make sure your logistics are up to scratch and your stock levels accurate).
Cyber Monday is a marketing term for e-Commerce transactions on the Monday after Thanksgiving in the US, and has now made its way over the UK and other countries around the world. It was created by retailers to encourage people to shop online, and after the past year, with COVID-19, has been more popular than ever. The Cyber Monday on November 30, 2020 was the biggest online shopping day in U.S. history with a total of $10.7 billion in online spending and the UK totalling at £9.2 billion for both Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Over the past year, while shops have been shut, e-Commerce sites have been both the only source of shopping for customers and the only way businesses have been able to sell these goods. E-commerce’s share of global retail trade rose from 14% in 2019 to about 17% in 2020. There are many benefits of e-Commerce websites, but with every new phase of e-Commerce, the customer expectations on the experience they receive raises the bar on how a site needs to look and perform, which gives businesses the chance to reach their full potential, constantly better themselves, stand out from the crowd, and ultimately sell more products! E-Commerce is 24/7 selling, which increases your customer reach to an endless amount, whereby also increasing conversion rates. You have so much control and knowledge of your business by going e-Commerce, as everything you need to know is in one place, like monthly insights and payment. The secure payments, raise the value and trust of your products, resulting in repeat business from loyal customers. Additionally, there are low overheads, no need for big or elaborate premises, and in some cases, they can drop-ship which can reduce the need for big stock holdings tying up much needed business capital.
At Dexterous Designs we are experts in creating responsive, high-quality e-Commerce websites. We can implement WooCommerce, Magento 2, Shopify and OpenCart, which will help you to create a successful e-Commerce shop. From a website development point of view, the project and the planning consider a lot of additional features for both the store owner, and the visitor. Our websites offer your users an appealing welcome and they encourage visitors to engage with the content, not only through static pages, but through browsing a catalogue of products and categories. Your users can browse, compare prices, and look at the available options and attributes (size, colour etc.) and factor in many things before hopefully adding to their cart and completing their purchase. Other user-centric features that Dexterous will be able to apply to your e-Commerce website include: a product search facility, excellent quality and multiple product images, visible shipping options and costs, terms and conditions and return policy, an opportunity to leave a product review, be able to contact you easily, and much more! As an e-Commerce store manager there will be more to look at and manage in the ‘back-end’ of the website. You will be able to place items on sale easily, manage inventory if you need to, easily place items back in stock or out of stock. Retrieval of customer details is also important, processing orders and notifying the customer of the delivery process etc. (order status). You will also want to manage product reviews.
For more information on Black Friday, Cyber Monday and e-Commerce sites, please get in touch with us today!