Last straight before Black Friday. Is your online store ready for the increased traffic? [checklist]

Preparing a sales strategy during Black Friday, as well as during the entire sales period, requires careful and often months-long planning. The largest online stores begin preparations even a year in advance. A key element in successfully increasing sales is not only advance planning, but also attention to detail and careful attention to every aspect of your own eCommerce. Can you do extra a few days before Black Friday to make sure your online store can withstand the increased traffic?

It's worth conducting a mini audit to make sure all areas of your store are working properly. As part of this article, we've prepared a short checklist of aspects you should pay special attention to before you start selling. Find out what you can do to make sure your store meets all the points on the list!

Black Friday 2023 in eCommerce - what can you expect?

ZEvery year, more and more Polish consumers are taking advantage of Black Friday promotions. SalesForce's latest report titled: "Shopping Index Q3" shows that an overwhelming majority of shoppers delayed online shopping in Q3 2023 in anticipation of seasonal promotions and the chance to save. Not surprisingly, online store owners are outdoing themselves in offering a variety of promotions that now last much longer (the promotional period includes not only Black Friday, but also Cyber Monday or Black Week). The profitability of investing in Black Friday activities is also confirmed by the latest statistics, according to which:

• In 2023, consumers will spend up to $10 billion globally during Black Friday (Statista).
• In 2022, nearly 70% of consumers chose to shop online during Black Friday (Drive Research).
• An estimated 196.7 million shoppers made purchases (online and offline) during Black Friday in 2022 (Demandsage).

Without a doubt, it can be concluded that Black Friday in 2023 will bring a further increase in the popularity of shopping during this period. For consumers, it is a great opportunity to purchase products at lower prices, and for online store owners - an opportunity to increase sales and attract new customers.

What's worth paying attention to just before Black Friday?

Have you planned your sales strategy during Black Friday? Do you already know what you will offer your customers as part of the promotion? Are you expecting increased profits during this period? To guarantee the success of all your assumptions, we've assembled a comprehensive checklist to ensure your online store aligns perfectly with your Black Friday preparations.

Don't leave the launch of promotions for the last moment

Launching a promotion just before Black Friday (for example, on the same day) may seem like a spectacular move that will attract a mass of customers. However, such a move carries the risk of sudden malfunctions, errors and, consequently, the failure of your promotional strategy.

A good practice would be to launch the promotion a few hours earlier (e.g. at night). What will you gain by doing so? By doing so, you will not only make sure that the tab with discounts or other stipulated discounts is working properly, but also ensure that your site is displayed correctly in search results. You need to keep in mind that the algorithms of the most popular search engines need time to analyze, collect and index information about the site. This will ensure that customers, when searching for bargains on the Internet, will have the opportunity to find your store and not come across a blank page.

In conclusion, by avoiding the so-called "0 o'clock" when launching promotions, you will achieve a smoother and more effective transition to Black Friday.

Remember to schedule mailings to regular customers

When conducting promotional activities before and during the sale period, you are certainly operating in multiple channels. Chances are that you are informing customers about upcoming promotions not only on the store's website, but also on social media or through newsletters. Here you also should pay attention to whether all published content has been polished and verified with the real state.

SARE Group's 2022 report showed that communicating with customers through mailing is one of the most effective ways to reach loyal customers and encourage them to buy. According to its results - as many as 90% of users sign up for newsletters when shopping online. In order to take advantage of the power of this communication channel, it is worth both betting on creating engaging content (e.g., presenting personalised proposals) and preparing technically for this type of campaign. What should you pay special attention to?

Before you send out a mass mailing with information about a promotion, be sure to conduct tests. Sprawdź m.in., czy linki prowadzą do odpowiednich produktów i ofert oraz czy grafiki poprawnie wyświetlają się na różnych urządzeniach i przeglądarkach. Najważniejszym krokiem będzie jednak zaplanowanie odpowiedniego czasu na wysyłanie maili. W tym przypadku warto zrobić to dopiero wtedy, gdy zyskasz pewność, że wszystko działa bez zakłóceń.

Make sure your servers can handle the extra load

Servers are an essential tool, responsible for the smooth and fast operation of an online store. On Black Friday and surrounding days, website traffic can increase significantly, which usually puts additional load on the platform. For this reason, before launching a promotion, inform your hosting provider about the planned increase in load. This will allow him to adjust his resources and increase the smooth operation of the server. Most often, this involves such actions as:

• increasing computing power,
• content caching (to reduce the load on the main server),
• optimizing server configuration.

With these measures, you will avoid server performance degradation and the site will run smoothly even during heavy traffic. Such cooperation will prevent crashes and slowdowns of the site.

Give software house a chance to examine code

With increased traffic, even small errors can cause bigger problems in the smooth operation of the platform. For this reason, it's worth making sure that the platform can handle a heavier-than-usual load on the technical side. If you are working with a software house, it is worth notifying them of your plans to introduce promotions. This will allow you to make sure ahead of time that the store is ready to handle a lot of customers without reducing its performance.

Using tools such as Sentry allows you to track the performance of the platform in real time. This makes it possible to make minor adjustments to prepare the e-store for a busy promotional period. Technical fixes can contribute, among other things, to faster page loading and translate into a better customer experience. In addition, through these measures it is also possible to identify potential security vulnerabilities.

Check that the most important elements of the store are working properly

Careful testing and monitoring of key elements of your store is the next step you should take before Black Friday. By doing so, you will ensure a seamless shopping experience for your customers. What areas are worth paying special attention to?

Make sure product search and filtering works properly, so customers can find what they want quickly. Also, test the entire shopping process, from adding products to the shopping cart, to selecting delivery and payment options, to the final order confirmation. To do this, you can use tools such as HotJar, which allows you to monitor customer behaviour on the site. Regularly examining your site's performance is an investment that will pay off in the form of satisfied customers and increased revenue during this important sales period.

Gather support to monitor errors and failures

Black Friday is a time when every second counts, and every failure or technical error can mean a loss of customers and revenue. That's why it's so important to ensure that you have error monitoring support and guarantee a quick and effective response to failures. To this end, consider extending your SLA (Service Level Agreement) in partnership with a trusted software house.

An SLA defines standards for maintenance and support, including response times to failure reports or the availability of support during specific hours. Properly outlined terms of cooperation and an experienced technical team are invaluable assets during the Black Friday period. With such support, you will guarantee your platform, among other things:

• real-time monitoring - the technical team can monitor the performance of the site and servers 24/7.
• rapid response - in the event of a failure or technical problem, the technical team is able to instantly identify the source of the problem and take corrective action. This means that site unavailability time is minimised.
• backup plan - as part of your SLA, you can develop a contingency plan that includes what steps will be taken in case of problems. This plan should include information about who is responsible for specific actions, what procedures will be initiated, and what resources will be involved in fixing the problem.

Is your eCommerce ready for Black Friday?

Black Friday, followed by Cyber Monday and, increasingly, Cyber Week - late November and early December is the time when your online store can generate significantly more profits and gain a circle of trusted customers in the process. Are you ready for this time? If you managed to tick off all the points on the list, you can probably breathe a sigh of relief and look forward to the start of the promotion. If not - this is your last chance to prepare and avoid the stress of technical problems. You are worried about the risk of code errors, lack of SLA care or underdeveloped purchase path - we will be happy to help you eliminate these problems. Write to us!