14 things you didn’t know about Black Friday

Dan Croxen-John

What was once an American tradition, Black Friday reached UK shores with a bang last year with millions of shoppers crashing websites and crushing each other in the aisles in a bid to grab the best deals. Last year 72% of shoppers had heard of the term Black Friday and all the signs suggest that this year’s Black Friday could be the busiest and most successful to date.

To get you ready for the newest key date in the retail calendar, here’s 14 things you need to know.

1. Consumers intend to spend – 82% of UK consumers plan to shop on Black Friday, and 62% plan to shop on Cyber Monday (the Monday after Black Friday).
2. Shoppers spend, and they spend big! – UK shoppers spent an estimated £810 million on Black Friday last year – more than double the year before – and this year sales are expected to surpass £1bn.
   
   

   	Black Friday	Cyber Monday	Boxing Day	Total 5-week period
   2014 spending	£810m	£720m	£702m	£4bn
   2015 predictions	£1.07bn	£943m	£856m	£4.9bn

3. The early bird catches the worm – Black Friday’s traffic peaked last year between 7am and 9am. On Cyber Monday, it was a bit later with traffic peaking over lunchtime and during the evening.
   
4. Shoppers are impulsive – Shoppers took an average of 48 seconds to buy these hot, limited-time deals. That compares to 62 seconds for the rest of November.
5. Black Friday is not just an online phenomenon – Even high street shops recorded recording takings on Black Friday itself.
   
6. Don’t forget tablet shoppers – Last year there was a 4:1 ratio between conversion rates on tablets and smartphones.
7. Your checkout needs to be super-quick – Last year only 25% of shoppers made it the end of the checkout and for mobiles it was only 20%, that means up to 80% of revenue is lost in the checkout.
   
8. Set yourself up for an influx of orders – You having a great Black Friday might mean a backlog of orders that cause further problems with the delivery of December orders.
9. Ready your click and collect network – Tesco are expecting two-thirds of those buying Black Friday bargains online to collect from one of their stores.
10. Remember your affiliate channels – 26% of all sales last year were driven by loyalty and cash back sites.
11. Prepare your retargeting campaigns – 17% of conversions last year were attributable to basket abandonment campaigns.
    
12. It pays to watch your competition – You can take advantage of your competitors’ website being down or slow, as AO did with tactical PPC ads mentioning their competitors’ outages.
13. It’s never too early to get ready – Some retailers like Very built their Black Friday landing pages a while ago.
14. It’s not for everyone – Fat Face last year opted out and had their best seasonal period ever – you don’t need to get sucked into the hype.

With little over 3 weeks to go until the big day, we recommend you ready your site for the extra visitors, and orders, you’re likely to receive. For UK customers, Black Friday has arrived and it looks like it’s here to stay.

Conversion Rate Optimisation – or CRO – may seem like a dark art if you’ve never experienced it first-hand. Ecommerce companies who embrace CRO claim to get stellar results and ever increasing online sales.

If you’d like to replicate their achievements, then the first step is to understand the CRO process as a whole. To help with that, we’ve created this infographic which gives an overview of all the key elements involved in successful CRO, designed like the well-known periodic table for chemical elements.

Thanks to Internet Retailing, Econsultancy, Experian, IMRG and contributors to EcomChat for some great stats and research findings

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Posted in: E-commerce

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