How to make a success of Black Friday? The e-commerce checklist

Don't underestimate the importance of pre-Black Friday communication. Start planning your marketing strategy and promotions as soon as possible. This will enable you to set up solid, well thought-out campaigns.

E-consumers don't hesitate to leave a site if it's too slow. In a competitive environment for Back Friday, you don't want your site's performance to penalize you. Do what's necessary upstream: check page loading speed, optimize images and make sure the checkout process is smooth. A fast, intuitive site guarantees a positive customer experience, and that's crucial in a sales operation.

Make sure your website is ready to handle a significant increase in traffic. Server overload can occur during Black Friday. Upgrade your IT infrastructure to support increased traffic. Check that you have enough bandwidth to cope with an increase in visitors. By choosing a 360 e-commerce web agency like Soledis, you can benefit from hosting scalability to prevent these load peaks.

The success of Black Friday lies in product availability. Anticipate demand by analyzing trends from previous years and using demand forecasting tools. Make sure your stock is adequate to meet the influx of orders. L'web agency e-commerce Soledis can connect your e-commerce site to your ERP to guarantee real-time tracking of your inventory.

A responsive design site is essential, as consumers spend more time on mobile than on computer. Make sure the payment process is simple and secure. Offer a variety of payment options to satisfy all types of customers. Your e-commerce web agency will certainly have recommendations for payment methods suited to your target market.

Shopping cart completion is one of the most critical moments in the online purchasing process. Around a quarter of visitors leave the site after starting the purchasing process, as soon as they reach the checkout page. To minimize this abandonment rate, it's essential to remind visitors of the discounts on offer. Clearly display special Black Friday discounts next to the checkout form, so that customers have a clear and immediate view of the financial benefits they're about to receive. This boosts their confidence and encourages them to complete their purchase with complete peace of mind.

Checklist n°2: Focus on multi-channel marketing actions

Use a combination of online advertising, email marketing and social network marketing to reach a wide audience.

Promote your offers by highlighting them on your home page and creating dedicated landing pages. Your home page often represents the first contact with many buyers, so it's crucial that it serves as a portal to your landing pages.

Landing pages dedicated to your events need to be punchy and clear. Leave no doubt as to what's on offer and what the benefits are.

Maintain the same page from year to year, modifying only its content while keeping the URL. If you create a new landing page every year to boost sales, your SEO will start from scratch, reducing your chances of appearing at the top of search results when consumers search for similar products. This is the kind of SEO consulting that your e-commerce web agency should be able to provide.

Launch your Google Ads campaigns at least two months before the event. The earlier you launch your campaigns, the faster you'll be able to create audiences, making it easier to segment and optimize your campaigns.

To maximize the impact of Black Friday advertising campaigns, there are several possible strategies. Firstly, keep your prospects' attention by regularly using remarketing, which reminds your visitors of attractive offers they have viewed.

In addition, limit your ads Google Ads to high-intent keywords such as "buy [product name]" or "best offer on [product name]". This ensures that your ads reach customers who are ready to make a purchase.

Also create a Black Friday-specific campaign by grouping together your strategic products, those that perform best in terms of sales and margins. This will highlight your most attractive offers.

Finally, use promotional extensions by selecting your event when creating the extension. This will allow your promotional offers to be directly visible in search results, attracting the attention of potential customers.

Introducing a countdown timer on your e-commerce site in the run-up to Black Friday creates a sense of urgency among visitors. By displaying the time remaining before the start of special offers, you encourage customers to make purchasing decisions more quickly.

The countdown also creates a sense of scarcity. It's a powerful tool for boosting visitor engagement and increasing conversions.

You can add countdowns to the following elements: Product pages, categories, homepage, website banner, emails or social networks. Soledis e-commerce web agency has the technical and webmarketing skills to help you make the most of these modules.

Take full advantage of the benefits of bots during Black Friday by getting in touch with your customers via messaging apps on social networks: Instagram or Facebook Messenger. Messenger bots now enable e-tailers to offer exclusive deals to a targeted audience on social networks, based on their past buying behaviors and interests.

Email marketing remains one of the most effective channels for promoting your offers, and a powerful tool for maximizing sales and customer engagement during Black Friday. The e-commerce web agency Soledis is a partner of Brevo, Shopimind and Klaviyo and can recommend the solution best suited to your needs.

Here are just a few of the benefits of email marketing:

• Precise targeting You can segment your subscriber lists according to their past purchasing behavior.
• Creating anticipation By sending teaser or preview emails before Black Friday, you build anticipation among your subscribers, arousing their interest and preparing them to make purchases.
• Offer personalization You can personalize your e-mails with the customer's first name, for example. This creates a sense of complicity.
• Performance monitoring You can track the open rates, click-through rates and conversion rates of your email campaigns, enabling you to evaluate the effectiveness of your offers and make adjustments if necessary.
• Customer loyalty By sending special offers to your loyal customers, you reinforce their sense of belonging and appreciation, which can lead to repeat purchases.
• Re-engaging inactive people You can use email marketing to target inactive customers and encourage them to return to your site to take advantage of Black Friday offers.

Using social networks during Black Friday is of major interest to e-tailers. Thanks to their interactive nature, social networks enable you to engage customers directly, answer their questions and generate interest around your products and services. What's more, features such as Stories, Lives and hashtags create real-time momentum, generating urgency and excitement among your audience.

It's a powerful tool that can greatly contribute to the success of your Black Friday campaign. Be careful, however, not to overuse promotions that could reflect negatively on your brand and your company.