Black Friday, which falls on the last Friday of November, marks the beginning of the holiday season and the tradition of gift-giving, but is not limited to that. On this day, consumers actively seek out discounts and special offers, leading to a rapid increase in trading volume and a high potential for revenue.

Sales are increasing not only in Poland, but also worldwide. It is worth analyzing the sales growth on Black Friday in different countries as compared to regular shopping days.

Black Friday used to be a day of crowded malls, long lines, and bargain hunters. However, as online sales have evolved, Black Friday has taken on a new meaning. Now, shoppers can buy goods and services from the comfort of their own homes and at affordable prices. For e-commerce companies, this means that Black Friday has become more important than ever.

To stand out from the competition and win customer loyalty, it is crucial to offer competitive deals presented in an interesting way. It is worth staying up-to-date with the latest trends and challenges for the hottest shopping season and preparing a strategy that will increase sales, build your brand's position, and attract repeat customers. If you want to learn how to do this, take a look at this article.

The popularity of Black Friday

According to a study conducted by Admitad and Tpay, Poles exceeded the sales predictions during the Black Friday 2022. The research results showed that there was a 15% increase in sales compared to the previous year, and a 23% increase in clicks on sales sites, indicating that e-commerce businesses can expect good returns in the future. Black Friday has become an established part of the shopping culture of Polish consumers, as other statistics also revealed:

• Orders increased by 37%.
• The sales increase was 118% in comparison to other days of the month.
• The fashion and accessories industry saw the highest increase with 193%.
• Home Appliances/Electronics saw a 112% increase.
• The health and beauty category saw a 54% increase.
• High efficiency has been achieved by:
  - Cashback services, which accounted for 30.3% of orders,
  - affiliate websites - 14.4%,
  - and coupons - 9%.
• Contextual advertising revenues and social media revenues increased by 8% and 8.2%.

Latest research and trends

Raport Strategy& on Polish consumer behavior in 2022 [„Skromniej a mniej, czyli życie polskiego konsumenta. Transformacja konsumentów w Polsce – 2022"] A recent report by Strategy& on Polish consumer behavior has highlighted significant changes in purchasing habits. Comparing current studies with those conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 shows that consumer behavior has shifted. The report reveals that:

• The biggest increase in spending was on food, health, personal care, clothing, and footwear.
• The frequency of purchasing among Poles decreased in all categories.
• 61% of Poles pay special attention to prices when choosing a store, compared to 80% in 2020 who considered product quality more important.
• Research from 2022 shows an increase in the importance of promotions when making a purchase.

With this data, Black Friday has become an even more important event for online retailers. They see it as a unique opportunity to increase profits and build brand awareness.

Many ecommerce businesses are turning to popular technology trends to capture customers' attention and provide them with the best possible shopping experience. Following them can be critical to improving sales results during the biggest shopping event of the year. Some of these trends include:

• Virtual fitting rooms, which use augmented reality to allow customers to virtually try on products and see how they will look in real life.
• Customer service and chatbot automation, which offers personalized service through chatbots that tailor recommendations to individual preferences. Chatbots are available 24/7, providing instant answers and speeding up the buying process.
• Personalization of recommendations and offers, which analyzes customer behavior and needs to match relevant offers to a specific customer. This also involves adjusting product prices in real time to provide customers with the best possible deals.

In addition to using popular technology trends, offering significant discounts is another way that sellers can attract the attention of e-commerce shoppers. One of the most frequently used strategies is offering favorable discount codes, which give customers a sense of great savings when making a purchase. Product sets have also become an integral part of Black Friday deals, as well as free shipping, which saves customers time and money. It is worth noting that mid-December is the annual.

Free Shipping Day, which promotes online shopping and falls on December 14 this year. These strategies aim to make Black Friday shopping more appealing and leave customers feeling satisfied with their transactions on that day.

Logistics issues

Inventory and delivery management

Managing inventory and distribution during Black Friday is a challenging task that requires proper preparation.

To achieve this, it is essential to analyze data from previous years to identify the most popular products during Black Friday.

From this analysis, forecasts can be made, which are critical to adjust supply levels. It is also important to focus on optimizing warehouse space, collaborating with suppliers, and monitoring inventory.

Organizing your storage space enables you to quickly find and release products. Regular communication with suppliers helps confirm the timeliness of deliveries, and using warehouse management systems allows you to monitor current inventory levels in real-time, making it easier for employees to locate specific products quickly.

Learn more about how the WMS platform can help you efficiently manage your warehouse.

Dropshipping as an alternative

Dropshipping is an interesting alternative for entrepreneurs who want to run their business without the need to keep products in stock. It is a business model where an online store does not have to store products in its own warehouse or take care of shipping. The products are stored by the supplier, who ships orders to customers on behalf of the store.

Dropshipping has become increasingly popular over the past few years due to factors such as:

• low initial capital,
• no need for manging a warehouse,
• a wide range of products,
• scalability reduced risk of excess inventory,
• easy access to global markets,
• no problems with return processing low risk associated with failed products.

However, dropshipping has its own challenges, including low profit margins on products, lack of control over delivery and product quality, and fierce competition. Successful dropshipping depends on conducting thorough market analysis, selecting the right suppliers, and developing the most effective marketing strategy.

Marketplace platforms are increasingly becoming influential players in the global market. They provide tools to help sell products in foreign markets, enabling sellers to reach customers from all over the world without the need for a physical store or an online store in another country. Marketplaces also offer access to platforms such as Amazon or eBay, which can significantly increase sales and brand awareness.

Nonetheless, the competition in the global e-commerce market is high, which forces sellers to develop a careful marketing strategy. When considering selling through foreign marketplaces, it is also necessary to adapt laws and regulations to suit the buying culture of a given country.

Despite these challenges, marketplaces are a great tool for sellers looking to expand into new markets or those who base their activities on the local market.They provide access to a wide range of potential customers, leading to significant revenue growth and the opportunity to build a global brand.

Learn more about the potential of sales platform.

Marketing and promotion

Marketing tools such as email marketing, PPC (pay-per-click) advertising and social media, can significantly increase the effectiveness of the Black Friday marketing strategy.

E-mail marketing

Planning an email campaign requires thoughtfulness and careful consideration of the promotions and offers that you want to encourage customers to buy from your store. When targeting customers, think carefully about who you want to sell your products to, and create an appropriate list of recipients based on those assumptions.

This is where segmenting your mailing list can significantly increase the likelihood of conversion. By tailoring the content of your message to the preferences and needs of individual groups of customers, you can increase your chances of success.

Once you have reviewed your audience, consider a compelling title and relevant content. Keep in mind that during this time, people's inboxes are flooded with offers and newsletters from various sellers. Therefore, your message needs to stand out. Once the recipient has opened your email with an appealing title, you should continue to keep them interested with clear and compelling content.

It is also a good idea to add links to specific products and promotions to increase your chances of selling.

PPC ads

The key to PPC ad efficiency and optimization is precise targeting. In order to reach potential customers who are interested in your products, you must have the right target audiences and relevant keywords in mind.

Additionally, it is crucial to monitor metrics such as conversion rate and click-through rate (CTR). To avoid excessive costs, set the optimal budget for PPC ads in advance and try not to exceed it – a properly optimized campaign will certainly bring satisfactory results.

Social media

When planning a social media campaign, create a calendar of content that you will publish on social platforms throughout the promotion period. A well-planned campaign includes fixed dates, specific publication times, interesting content, and attractive graphics.

Hashtags are an important element of promoting on social media. Choose a few that best reflect the nature of your products and promotions. Additionally, use popular hashtags related to the event – this will increase the visibility of your posts to an audience interested in shopping during Black Friday.

It is also important to remember the significance of social media activity, such as responding to customer questions and comments quickly and efficiently. This builds trust in the brand and the feeling that customers will always get the right support.

Good marketing practices

Preparing for Black Friday is critical for an e-commerce business. Therefore, take actions that will attract customers' attention and increase sales as much as possible. Here are some tips:

• Choose the most popular items from your shop that have been in high demand,
• Carefully plan out your discounts,
• Start preparations about a month before Black Friday, including creating graphics and ad content and verifying them in ad systems such as Google and Facebook Ads,
• Start the Google Ads promotion about a month before Black Friday and, in the case of Facebook Ads, about two weeks before the event,
• Stay on top of market trends and thoroughly analyze the activities of your competitors,
• Consider the introduction of mobile payments,
• Extend the promotion period to a few days or weeks, promoting different products each day,
• Creative and aesthetic advertising creations that stand out from the competition,
• Ensure an intuitive shopping path, limiting the appearance of elements that may discourage customers such as the need to register, advertisements, and hidden fees.

Website optimization

Many examples on the internet show that even the largest stores have experienced platform crashes during Black Friday or efficiency problems with their websites.

This can be one of the worst things that can happen when running an online campaign. If one customer acquisition source is not available, there are always other communication channels.

However, if the store itself is not working, the situation can be really unfortunate. To avoid such incidents, it is important to optimize your website in advance.

Optimization should be a priority throughout the year to handle increased traffic and provide customers with a superior shopping experience. To prepare your website for increased traffic and improve conversions through UX/UI optimization, follow these steps:

• Make sure your website loads quickly. A long waiting time for the page to load can frustrate your potential customers, leading to lost sales. Therefore, the first step in providing a pleasant shopping experience on your website is to optimize it for speed. To achieve this, it's a good idea to ensure your website is hosted on a stable server. You can also consider minimizing unnecessary code and compressing graphics to enhance loading speed.
   
• Optimize your website for mobile. Nowadays, more and more people use their smartphones and tablets to shop online. Therefore, it's important to ensure that your website is responsive and provides a seamless browsing experience across different types of devices. You should test your website on various smartphones and tablets to ensure that the interface is easy to read, and the navigation is straightforward.
   
• Effective navigation. Effective navigation is key to providing a great user experience. It is crucial that customers can easily find their way around your website and locate the products or services they are interested in. By creating a clear and organized menu and categorizing products appropriately, users will be able to quickly find what they are looking for.
   
• Improve website design. An aesthetically pleasing website with attractive graphics and clear fonts can make customers stay on your site longer and encourage them to return for more. Having eye-catching product photos and prominent purchase buttons can also make your site more visually appealing, thereby increasing the chances of customers making a purchase.
   
• Streamline the shopping process. A large number of clicks and fields to fill out not only lengthens the shopping process, but can also lead to shopping cart abandonment. So you need to analyze whether the shopping process in your store is as intuitive and as easy as it can be for the customer. Also, make sure there are no issues with online payments.

By following these steps, you can guarantee fast loading, clear navigation, responsiveness, and an attractive design. This will have a positive impact on conversion and increase sales of your products.

Customer Service

Preparing your customer support team for Black Friday is crucial in ensuring fast and effective service for the expected increased volume of inquiries. It is a good practice to create special training related to customer service for this period, which should include information about the promotions available on that day.

As a part of this training, you should collect the most common questions and problems from customers to develop answers and procedures in advance. Posting these materials on your organization's e-learning platform, if available, can shorten the preparation time for future events of this type.

If you are thinking of implementation an e-learning platform, check out the offer prepared by our team, or contact our experts who will be happy to answer all your questions!

And let's not forget about automating customer service processes. Using chatbots is a great way to quickly respond to customer questions - analyze the most frequently asked questions with your customer service employees and configure chatbots to provide a satisfactory answer and redirect customers to the appropriate product pages.

Analysis and measurement of results

When running a marketing campaign, it is crucial to not only plan and execute it effectively, but also to analyze and measure its results. To ensure you are meeting your goals, you need to track specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and use appropriate tools to analyze the results.

Some of the KPIs worth monitoring include:

• Number of page views
• Sales increase
• Average order value
• Conversion rate
• Cost per conversion
• Ad CTR

Tools used to analyze the results:

• Conversion tracking tools
• Email marketing analysis tools
• Surveys and customer feedback
• Google Analytics
• Google Ads and Facebook Ads Manager

When using the right tools to analyze results and monitor the above KPIs, you can precisely evaluate the effectiveness of your Black Friday campaign. Analyzing the data collected will enable you to make more informed decisions and adjust your marketing strategy accordingly in the future.

To ensure your Black Friday campaign is a success, here is a checklist that summarizes the above elements. Following these steps will certainly help you achieve commercial success on that day.

Conclusions

November is a month that attracts the attention of consumers seeking opportunities and promotions tailored to their needs. Implementing good and thoughtful marketing practices during this time can result in increased website traffic and sales. Statistics show that the shopping cart abandonment rate drops significantly, providing an excellent opportunity to promote complementary products.

During this time, it is worth using all the strategies that will help increase the value of the average shopping cart. Acquiring new contractors during this time is also easier and cheaper. If the offer attracts customers' attention, it can not only lead to transactions but also expand the email database.

Creating email scenarios that confirm purchases, thanking customers for their trust, increasing customer service interactions, and building lasting relationships can help build a base of loyal users. Also, the requests for reviews will become valuable material for the future.

It is worth noting that Black Friday is just one of many opportunities to increase sales in online stores. Cyber Monday, which follows Black Friday, is also popular with customers and generates a significant increase in sales. However, the key to success is to consider a long-term business strategy that extends beyond these two days.

To sum up, Black Friday presents an excellent chance for e-commerce companies, fueled by the evolving shopping habits of consumers who prioritize the convenience of online shopping. Recognizing the significance of this day for ecommerce businesses and adequately preparing the online store can enhance profits, boost brand visibility, and offer a competitive advantage.