Christmas is the busiest time of the year for retail. In 2018, retail sales in December broke the £50bn mark for the first time while Cyber Monday became the largest shopping day of the year. With little over a month until this year’s Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend, we’re sharing our top tips for winning on the busiest weekend of the year.
What is Cyber Monday
Cyber Monday marks a day of bargain prices and unbeatable sales across the internet. Launched in America in 2005, to tackle that post-Thanksgiving slump, it quickly took off and is now celebrated in countries across the world including, the UK, Canada and France.
When is Cyber Monday
Cyber Monday is always the first Monday following Thanksgiving – making this year’s Cyber Monday fall on Monday 2nd December 2019.
How to take advantage of Cyber Monday
Cyber Monday spells sales – and lots of them. With crowds of online customers ready to tick off their Christmas shopping list, it’s the best day of the year for:
? Making sales
? Moving slow-moving stock
? Increasing brand awareness
? Nabbing some bargains yourself.
But, to win on the busiest shopping day of the year, you need to be prepared for the busiest shopping day of the year. Let’s take a look at how.
Get your store ready
First, you need to ensure your store is ready for Cyber Monday – especially if you’re selling on your own eCommerce platform. Not only must your webstore handle a significant increase in visitors, but it also needs to make a great first impression while it does so.
We recommend the following:
? Using Google PageSpeed Insights to ensure that your website is running quickly enough and, if it’s not, receive tips on how to improve it.
? Checking for and amending any broken links of your webstore, using a tool such as Broken Link Checker.
? Ensuring that your website is mobile-compatible by using AMP and mobile-ready themes.
? Making your store easier to navigate by using Christmas specific categories in your menu – for example: gift for him, gifts under £25 and gifts for the dog.
Get your stock ready
There are two things you don’t want to do on Cyber Monday: sell out or not sell at all. Ensure that your products are ready for the event by considering:
Inventory management software
If you’re multi-channel selling, then inventory management software can help you to keep a handle on the stock flying out of your inventory – enabling you to sell more without the risk of overselling.
Product bundles
Bundles and kits of products can help to increase the customer’s perceived value of an item while helping you to move slow-moving stock or new-to-market items.
Value
Speaking of value, Cyber Monday is synonymous with bargains. Accordingly, you want to ensure that you offer customers something above and beyond your normal offering. Whether that’s lower prices, free gifts, or site-wide discounts.
Get your operations ready
It’s not just your website and inventory that will take a battering during the cyber weekend. With an increase in orders at an already busy time of the year, it’s important to ensure that your operations can handle the influx.
Specifically, you want to pay attention to:
? Listings – can you add, edit, and remove listings quickly enough?
? Order processing – can you download and process multi-channel orders instantly?
? Shipping – can your shipping carrier fulfil an increase in orders within your advertised shipping times?
? Reporting – do you have an easy way to download data from your sales channel(s) and turn it into a report demonstrating your cyber weekend success?
? Accounting – how are you going to send orders to Xero and assign them to the right bank accounts and tracking categories?
Get your customers ready
And finally, you need to get your customers ready for Cyber Monday. Spread the word about the event and sayings that could be made through marketplace advertising, social media campaigns and emails to existing customers. But be quick – a third of the UK have already bought their first Christmas gift!
How multi-channel management software can help
Wondering how you’re going to achieve this all and stay up-to-date with the latest series of the GBBO? Multi-channel management software can relieve you of manual tasks, giving you more time (and money) to dedicate to the other tasks.
For example, with Expandly, you can create listings and push them to multiple sales channel(s) at once. Or schedule your orders to send to Xero on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
To find out more, sign up for a free demo and 7-day trial here, and commit to making this Cyber Monday your best one yet.