5 easy Steps to Prepare your eCommerce Store for Black Friday 2015
November 18, 2015With the air outside getting cooler and christmas ornaments beginning to appear on store shelves, the holidays are just around the corner. But before the month of November comes to a full close, many retailers are frantically preparing for the upcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales.
Though most prominent in the United States, where the sale originates from, recent years have seen shoppers from the UK and other European countries also getting the chance to experience the ubiquitous door-crasher deals of Black Friday. Thought to have been introduced online in 2010 by Amazon, Black Friday is quickly being adopted by retailers all over the world.
This year, Black Friday in the UK is expected to be the biggest one yet, and is predicted to be Britain’s first £1 billion shopping day. Both online and brick and mortar retailers in the UK are planning special promotions to help consumers get a head start their holiday shopping. Although one of the original UK Black Friday leaders, ASDA, surprised everyone this year with their recent announcement that they will not be participating in the sale, many other retailers have preparations underway to delight shoppers with amazing deals. For example, Amazon has confirmed they have been preparing for months to ensure that their warehouse in Dunfermline is well prepared for Black Friday deals.As an eCommerce retailer, Black Friday is a great opportunity to help consumers complete their holiday gift lists. So how can you prepare for this big day? We propose 5 simple steps to ensure a smooth Black Friday sale:
- Clearly plan your offerings
Be sure to set aside some time to carefully choose the products you offer, schedule release dates and set sales prices. This way, when the whirlwind of promotions and discounts starts, you can adapt your strategy according to your plans, rather than improvising at the last minute.

- Add products online early
- Confirm that your website can handle more traffic
So your marketing campaign is flawless and have the best deals deals in town...However, with the increased traffic on your site from deal-hunting holiday shoppers, problems may start to appear. To deliver a great customer experience, be sure to check that your website infrastructure can withstand larger amounts of traffic. It’s also a good idea to verify that there won’t be any obstacles at the time of payment (this often leads to abandoned shopping carts) and that your customer service team is prepared with all the necessary tools to do their job. The less obstacles your customer will face in their shopping process, the better!

- Make sure that you will have enough stock
- Price flagship products competitively
It’s important to be priced competitively in your flagship products. And if you promise to be the cheapest, verify that you really are. For today’s consumer, especially the online buyer, price is a major deciding factor when making purchases. In this day and age, it is therefore crucial to have tools for automatically monitoring the competition. By tracking the prices of your online competitors in real time, you can be sure that you will always have a consistent market position.
By thinking about these five simple things early on, you can minimize stress and maximize returns in the upcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales!
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