Simple eCommerce Optimizations to Prep Your Site for Black Friday and Cyber Monday
by Indaba
We are entering the most important eCommerce season of the year. To get your online store ready, we’ve compiled a list of simple changes you can make now to optimize your site.
This is not the time for a site overhaul! Small tweaks can have a real impact on shopper engagement and buying behavior. Making these changes will increase your online revenue this holiday season.
1. Clear Sales Price
Black Friday is all about deals, and you will likely be offering some special deals on your site. Sales price display is important. The more information you can provide the better, as long as it is easy to digest and encourages the customer along the purchase path. Here are a few items to consider:
- Suggested Retail Price Strikethrough: Be sure the suggested retail price is shown clearly. This creates a number that shoppers will use as an anchor to estimate savings.
- Percentage Off / Dollar Amount: In addition to showing the original price, it is beneficial to clearly mark the percentage or dollar amount that is saved. Studies suggest highlighting dollar savings for products over $100 and % savings for products under $100.
- Limited Offer: Clearly state when the promotion ends, and consider using a countdown timer if the offer is ending soon. Here are some examples
- Number 9: Don’t be afraid to end your prices with $9, as long as the regular and sale prices are clearly called out. One study by MIT and University of Chicago showed that the number 9, when included with a discounted price, outperforms lower price points (for example, “Was $50, now only $39!” outperformed “Was $50, now only $35!”)
2. Free Shipping / Free Gift / Dollar Value Discount
Providing an incentive to add more to the cart increases Average Order Value. This can be achieved in the backend by adding store rules or an extension that applies discount rules to the cart. However, on the front end customers need to know:
- Discounts and incentives exist: Clear banners and Calls to Action advertise available discounts. These are important site-wide as well as on product detail pages. Image overlays and flags such as “Buy 2, get a free gift” remind customers of your promotions on a product by product level.
- How close they are to achieving a discount: Cart notifications let customers know how much more they need to purchase to achieve a certain discount. “Add $9 to your order to receive free shipping!” messages in the cart encourage additional purchases. To get more proactive, display recommended items that will help them get to the discount.
- Clear messaging once a discount has been achieved: Be sure to let your customers know once they have received a discount with clear messages on the cart. Calling out free items in the cart is a great way to improve the customer experience. Extensions like the Amasty Free Gift module (Magento) allow you to add this kind of functionality seamlessly.
3. Automated Abandoned Cart Emails
An important reframe is to remember that an abandoned cart is not an automatic lost conversion. According to Adobe, 75% of customers who abandon their carts do so with the intention to buy. Shoppers load up a cart and set it aside to (hopefully) complete the purchase later, after research, facebooking or a coupon code search.
The trick is to follow up quickly – preferably in 1 hour. This means collecting the customer email early in the checkout process whenever possible. Emails sent within 3 hours result in a 40% open rate and 20% click rate according to Listrak.
In addition to a purchase reminder, consider adding a coupon code, cart specifics or engaging images and copy to the abandoned cart email. Here are some creative examples of abandoned cart emails that work.
4. Testing: Performance, Plugin & Security Checks
There are an abundance of tests available to check the health and security of your site. To handle traffic spikes associated with the shopping holidays, it is important to optimize your site before the traffic hits!
PageSpeed Insights by Google is a great place to start. A quick test will provide you with a score from 1-100 for both mobile and desktop performance. A priority list of items to work on along with instructions on how to fix provides a checklist to start knocking out tasks. Fixing these items will improve your site speed and your google ranking.
To see how your site performs when a lot of users are on the site at the same time, try Loader.io. The free account lets you run a load test for one minute with 1000 concurrent users.
Real time test monitoring provides response time, bandwidth and other important data. If you find issues with load response, contact your hosting provider to troubleshoot the issues.
Web security is more important than ever. To scan for vulnerabilities on your site, sign up for a free trial with Detectify. This service provides a comprehensive list of any potential security issues on your site, along with severity levels and descriptive reporting. In addition to running a security check, make sure all plugins, modules and patches are updated to the latest versions.
5. Video
Incorporating video has been proven to increase conversions and shopper confidence. Embedding video on your site is easy, and provides another way for shoppers to interact with your site.
You don’t need a big professional production. Think small – short customer videos provide confidence and social proof. Using these on the product level can have the biggest impact.
We’ve seen sites have success incorporating unboxing videos onto product detail pages, or running a contest to get a slew of quick video reviews.
6. BONUS: Start Advertising ‘Coming Soon’ deals Now!
Remember the countdown timer? Start letting customers know what deals are coming this week! Incorporating a banner with ‘Coming Soon’ deals will start prepping your current customers for the big day. Most site revenue comes from returning customers, so be sure to let them know big deals are on the way. Sending a special loyal customer discount code, offering 2X rewards or other incentives will help your best customers feel special and spend more during the holiday season.
Addressing any of these items will impact your bottom line and improve the customer experience on your site. Incremental changes add up, and anything you can do to optimize your site for the holidays will bring positive results. If you would like more information, or need help optimizing, we’re here to help!
