Black Friday: Optimize your site and landing page

2020 is a year that will go down in history. While the covid-19 pandemic has plunged most businesses into uncertainty, online commerce is resisting and adapting to new consumer habits. According to a FEVAD study, internet sales actually increased by more than 5% in the 2nd quarter of 2020 compared to 2019. This is an encouraging sign at the most intense time of the year. 

Before the holiday season begins, Black Friday – which takes place on 27th November – is getting more and more attention. Especially since it doesn’t come alone, with Cyber Week taking place the week before Black Friday until the following Monday (the famous Cyber Monday). Basically, the fourth week of November promises to be busy with 8 days of continuous promotions and special offers. But you can’t just wing it if you want to do well on Black Friday. There’s just one thing that matters, and that’s planning. To help you out, here is the first step on our checklist with your website and landing page.

Manage your technique

What’s worse than a site that crashes on Black Friday? To avoid this worst-case scenario, you need to plan now and make sure that your technical infrastructure is strong enough to absorb a sudden increase in visitor numbers. Now’s the time to go through everything with your technical team and your hosting provider. Take this opportunity to check your security options, backups and the protection of your prospects’ and customers’ personal data.

As a precaution, you also need a plan B just in case there are any technical problems or hacking attempts. You’ll sleep more easily with an easy-to-deploy, ready-to-use backup solution.

Be creative

Get your Black Friday marketing campaign ready now with your creative teams. This means you need to ask yourself the right questions:

• Which design should you choose? Which images and visuals should be emphasised? What are your visitors expecting this year? Which themes should be promoted?
• What catchphrases, keywords and speeches will hit the nail on the head? In the current situation, it is important to make sure your communications have a human dimension and that they reassure people as much as possible (easier customer experience, good product availability, simplified purchasing process, customer satisfaction guarantee, etc.).
• Which communication channels should you favour? Will you be active on social networks, and on top of email marketing and influence marketing? Do you have the right resources? Are the teams who facilitate communication and discussions trained? Is the customer experience designed to be omnichannel?

Don’t let anything pass you by

Every landing page must be subjected to a minute quality control process. Test your links, do an SEO analysis, and a thorough spellcheck. You need to aim for excellence, and you still have a few weeks left to prepare yourself for it all. You absolutely must work in a multidisciplinary team to make sure that nothing is overlooked. This means everybody will take a precision look at certain key elements both in terms of substance and form. Also, use a shared document in the cloud or collaborative project management software to compile all the feedback.

Redesign the customer experience

Once a visitor arrives on your website what happens? What do they see? How do they behave? It is important to plan well when you create your website and landing pages. Are your catchphrases punchy enough? How can we get in touch with your brand? Have you tested all the forms? 

You can also turn up the pressure with a countdown timer that introduces a new dynamism into your pages. Last but not least, don’t forget that the competition will be tough and you’ll have to be visible on Google to stand out from the crowd. In addition to online advertising, never underestimate the importance of SEO if you want to stay on top of the most significant keywords with relevant and quality content. There are many levers that impact SEO. Take this opportunity to audit your site (or have it done by a specialised agency). This enables you to test your responsive design so that your offers are displayed on all screen sizes and your loading time is optimised.

Build your offers

Once the container is ready, you have to work on the content, which means your offers, your catalogue and the planning of your promotions. You need to know which star products will be sold at a discount and develop cross-selling and upselling strategies. You can do this by working transversally with marketing, communication, customer services and your CIO. Everyone must be mobilised at the right time. For an event like Black Friday and Cyber Week, your collective strength and the strictness of your planning will be what makes all the difference.

The optimisation of your site and your landing pages is an important step. In fact, this preparatory work gives you a solid foundation for coming up with targeted and effective campaigns to achieve your goals. With a solid, reliable and secure site, your content and offers are guaranteed to go over well! 

Think about performance marketing to optimize your Black Friday campaigns. Contact our experts!