5 Ways to Prepare Your Business for the Holiday Shopping Season

Every consumer knows this is the time when companies are offering huge discounts, so people are genuinely ready to spend money 🛍😍. Especially given when Christmas is so close, Black Friday is the starting point of the holiday shopping season. Just think about this: Despite a year-long lockdown, Black Friday 2020 online shopping in the US surged 22% to record $9 billion. Over the past few years, Black Friday has also been rapidly growing in Europe: Compared to October, Black Friday generated +165% sales in 2020 🚀.

Just imagine how great it'll be this year. I personally can't wait to spend my hard-earned cash 😉. So… people are ready to spend money, is your webshop prepared to make these sales?

Here’re 5 ways to prepare your business for the upcoming holiday e-commerce sales 🙌

1. Turn slow-moving stock into cash

It’s a little-known fact that Black Friday is an excellent time to merchandise and push products that people aren’t buying as much as customers are in the I-want-to-buy mood. That way, nothing goes to waste, and you don't lose your investment. You can get rid of old products, converting the slow-moving and excess inventory into cash 💰!

You can start with rebranding, which is a great strategy to re-introduce those products. After throwing in a discount price, you can utilize Clerk’s Merchandising functionalities to enhance the visibility of selected items by placing them across your site - on specific search results, category pages, the homepage, and more. Then, you can just lean back and watch those products fly off those virtual shelves on a day that everyone is looking for a bargain no matter what it is 😉.

2. Draw customers into your webshop with popular products

While this is the perfect opportunity to promote the slow-selling products, you’ve got to match that with popular products. Why is that so?

Those popular products that are usually on the higher end of the price spectrum, the ones that are really coveted, in-demand and bestsellers 🤩. So you can use them to draw Black Friday shoppers into your e-commerce store. Also, if you risk not pushing them, you might miss out on a pot of gold.

How to do it? As we suggested before, start with early communication 📧! Weeks before Black Friday, you can hook and engage potential buyers by sending them emails and newsletters. Use Clerk’s automated emails to let customers know that your webshop will participate in the Black Friday promotion, and there’ll be special offers on popular products 😍.

Automating your email marketing with Clerk can save precious time during a hectic period like Black Friday and free you to focus on other important tasks. Furthermore, personalizing your emails with Clerk’s 1:1 product recommendations can considerably improve conversions by making customers feel special and valued.

3. Everything doesn’t have to be at its lowest price ever

This one is an insider tip from us after being in the e-commerce industry for over 10 years 💡.

We all know that the beauty of Black Friday is that it offers consumers amazing deals to save money in the midst of a holiday season that is so costly. It pays off to keep up with competitors to maintain your customer base.

But if you are a small e-commerce business, you cannot afford to have all products at the lowest price ever. And in fact, NO company does that. If you have a smaller webshop, you can have a smaller Black Friday range with a selection of key merchandise. Just make sure it’s products people actually want to buy, and they're placed at obvious spots in your webshop.

4. Throw in recommendations at regular prices

As tip #3 pointed out, some products in your webshop will remain at regular price. But it doesn’t mean that they have no chance of getting sold on Black Friday 😎.

I know everyone is looking for a bargain. But in the same way brick and mortar stores do with their sales, you can add great regular-priced items to the mix through recommendations. I mean, if you are able to sell new collections, why not?

With Clerk’s personalization engine, you can automatically show customers the products they're most likely to buy by using artificial intelligence (AI) to instantly match products and individual customers. Here's an example of how Clerk's AI-powered product recommendations can look like on your product pages:

Here, by implementing cross-selling & upselling tactics, Clerk allows you to instantly increase conversion rates, average order value, and basket sizes 🛒

5. Create an extended shopping festival

Black Friday doesn't end on Friday. Instead, it's the beginning of the holiday shopping season, followed by Cyber Monday and Christmas 🎄🛍. Business Insider named Cyber Monday as "the online-focused sibling to Black Friday" and advised that it should bring equally great discounts and sales straight to consumers.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are melting together more and more. Together, they are becoming the biggest online shopping days of the year, and everybody is crazy about it. So make sure to integrate Cyber Monday into your Black Friday strategy.

Work these simple but effective tips into your Black Friday strategy this year. Then, you'll be well on your way to boosting your conversion rates, increasing sales, and growing your customer base. Talk to one of our specialists today to learn more about how Clerk can help skyrocket your holiday sales 🚀.