Black Friday Going Digital
The biggest sales event of the year is finally here. Black Friday. That is if you’re in the United States as many of our clients are, in the UK however this is a relatively new craze, only being introduced in 2010 by online giant Amazon. And they knew exactly what they were doing when they introduced Black Friday to the UK – last year (2018) they were named the biggest Black Friday winners.
Below is an image that shows UK Black Friday Online sales over the last 5 years. With the online UK sales rising year on year it presents more of an opportunity for US sellers to expand into a new market and advertise to an ever-growing number of buyers looking to grab a deal.
This coupled with a statistic we shared on our social media pages earlier in the week that proposed the idea that a 30% discount or higher is typically significant enough to get someone to commit to purchasing.
If you’ve been paying attention to Amazon this year, which as many of you are E-Commerce Sellers, I’m sure you have – the sales have actually been live and being claimed for a full week already. Starting last Friday, November 22nd and running up until Sunday the 1st. Not before continuing the following day on BF’s online retail counterpart ‘Cyber Monday’ which falls on December 2nd this year. An interesting statistic to note is that Physical Retail prices during Black Friday are down 22% year on year with the majority of the sales happening online resulting in Cyber Monday losing some popularity as its own standout event and more recently with Black Friday taking more of a precedent on e-commerce shops, it now just offers an extension to the existing deals and discounts through the weekend and onto the Monday as well as offering some fresh sales to target those who couldn’t find anything for them on the Friday.
One main reason for the move to digital buying could be due to the many shoppers choosing to avoid the in-store stampede for a more relaxed online shopping experience. Coupled with the ease of modern-day smartphone and tablet ordering there’s really no reason to leave the comfort of your home facing the hoards of frenzied buyers when you can get your order the next day with several clicks of a button. Something of note to back this was the statistic 34.5% of all online sales were done via smartphone this Black Friday.
The whole BF/CM sale period can be the perfect way of ramping up your sales in the lead up to Christmas. This increased velocity in the weeks before the busiest sales time of the year will mean the discounted products will have higher organic search rankings on Amazon’s algorithms to put you in good stead ready for Christmas. We’ll touch more on this sales velocity on an upcoming blog you should be sure to look out for!
If you’ve missed your chance to make the most of the Black Friday/Cyber Monday Sales this year both for you and your business don’t fret. There’s still Boxing Day and January sales soon to come and who says you need to rely on these to create promotions that help drive sales, gain new customers and increase your products search rankings.