Magento 2 stores doing online Black Friday!

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Do you remember these days when a crowd of shoppers flew into stores on Black Friday like a hurricane, and swept everything off the shelves that had a discount? It was the endorphins and excitement of Black Friday. It was like a game, the name of which might be "Who will grab the best offer first?". Many funny and unpleasant stories became part of every year's Black Friday tradition.

Next year, we hope customers will play a hunting game for the best discounts in the real 3D world again, but today’s Black Friday 2020 is the almost fully online event. This year, due to the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions concerning social distance, discounts "games" will move to online stores.

The opportunity to sell more goods than usual, update the arsenal of goods, create offers, find new customers ,and more benefits are waiting for your online store just in the case if everything is properly prepared.

Are you sure your online store on Magento 2 is ready for Black Friday?

Let's see.

In the article Top-5 Magento 2 modules doing Black Friday as a Pro, we talked about the most useful modules that will be dedicated helpers at the time of discounts. We recommend you to read it thoroughly if you want to implement your marketing strategies to increase profits.

Below you’ll find a checklist of non-obvious tips for preparing your store for THE BIG SALE. We hope new ideas inspire you and Black Friday 2020 will be the most successful of all previous times for you.

  1. Inviting the customers in advance to your Black Friday Party

    2. Black Friday event is perfect for preparing beforehand because it doesn't come up suddenly. You always know that it's coming on Friday after Thanksgiving Day in America. That's why you have time to prepare your online store thoroughly and think about the steps of preparation beforehand. One of the first tasks we advise you is to think about sending follow up emails.

    Make contact with your regular customers approximately a month before the sales. Tell them about the discounts you plan to make and about the sale groups of products. Create a system of bonuses and inform them about the rules of its use in these emails. If you have a blog, write a few articles about some of your products, advise on holiday dishes, costumes, home decoration, etc., or tell exciting stories about Black Friday. In the letter, put a link to the blog and voila! You are already closer to your customer, prepared for the holiday and helped him to make his mind about the wanted purchase. Of course, such a step as a pleasant and informational message customers will remember.

    Don't worry about where to get the time and effort to send a large number of messages. We already solved this problem for you and offered to take advantage of our modules. Email to Customers module for Magento 2 will help send emails to as many users as you need right from the customer grid, customer view or from order grid. You can easily send letters to both registered and guest customers and notify them about upcoming discounts. You can even filter a specific group of customers and send your messages to any group you want. We also offer you the Email Preview module for Magento 2, which can help create the perfect email. You'll be able to test the message appearance yourself before sending it to customers.

    A large number of messages at once can cause them to fall into the spam folder, or your mail provider has a limit on the number of sendings. That's why we took care of this detail also. SMTP module for Magento 2 increases the chance for your emails to reach the customers.

    In the article Types of e-Commerce buyers, we have considered the most common types of purchases, including planned ones. People who like to plan their expenses will be pleased to know that the product they want to get will be at a discount or at a reasonable offer on Black Friday in your store. With your letter, you'll make an invitation for them to buy it. In most cases, if the buyer is interested, he'll make a mark in the calendar about your offer. It would be best if you made everything you can to make customer's expressions blown away by festive designs or bright banners of your Magento 2 store. Make everything to make the buyer stay as long as possible, observing your goods and offers. That is a chance to sell more.

  2. Final check test before the Big Sale

    3. Make sure that your Magento 2 store is ready for an influx of more customers than usual in advance. Pitfalls can wait during operation of the site and from the field of the load.

    It will be very annoying if a breakdown or bug shows up just during a sale. Such stories are real. You can read about it here: Halloween scary stories: Businesses fail. Test all the essential functions again. If your site has recently been modified or expanded, pay special attention to the functionality related to the areas of these changes.

  3. Accelerating mobile version of the web store

    4. The Mobile version of your store can bring a lot of profit if you improve it often by striving for maximum convenience and speed. Everyone likes to shop as smoothly as possible. What we can advise now is to pay attention to the rate of the store. Progressive web app offers vast opportunities for your store due to many factors and mainly due to smooth running ability even with an unstable connection.

    Approximately a third of internet users use their mobile or tablets to search and order products. Mageside designed the Accelerated Mobile Pages module for Magento 2 to fasten the mobile pages. According to Google, AMP pages load in less than one second and use ten times less data than the same pages without AMP.

    Improving the download speed of the site and your products applies not only to the discount period. If you were waiting for a sign, that's it! It's the right time to improve your mobile versions of the store!

  4. Boosting capacity for order processing

    5. Sales period is the time when the number of purchases increases non-linearly and decreases after ending the period of discounts. Hiring additional workers during such jumps to process and send orders isn’t a rational decision.

    Simultaneously, it's essential to have sufficient resources to timely process orders and not to make the customers wait. We can advise you to pay attention to the Mass Order Processing module for Magento 2. Even in the online store's regular operation, it's able to optimize the work and save your managers' time by changing order statuses, sending invoices, submitting shipments, and adding tracking numbers just in a few clicks. Especially in the sharp jump in the number of different orders, the module for Magento 2 will be an indispensable assistant for many years.

  5. Offering goods with and without discount

    6. Buyers don't stay long in a tricky store, for example, which offers a fair price only for a product whose size isn't popular or sets only a 3% discount. It would also be a bad idea to provide a discount on a second identical product only after paying the full price of the first one. For example, if we’re talking about an expensive coffee machine.

    Be generous with offers and discounts, and don't sell a shiny wrapper if the candy is tasteless. Black Friday makes it possible to attract old and new customers to the store and they can feel fake.

    However, what to do with satisfied customers after their profitable purchase is up to you. Discounts and offers are excellent attractors, but no one said it's necessary to sell all goods at favorable prices. Use the Smart Related Products module to pay attention to the high quality and cool products you have in stock! The types of buyers are different, and some will inevitably tend to impulsive, spontaneous purchases. This module will help you to unobtrusively demonstrate products that will interest the buyer so much that he'll buy it even without a discount. This Magento 2 extension provides the "Add to Cart" button that allows your customer to purchase the products right on the related products block.

  6. Replenishing the database with new customers

    7. Another tricky moment that can be forgotten in the bustle of preparation is the new buyers. If you did everything right and your sales go up on the day of discounts, don't forget to think about what will happen after its ending. New buyers may be too emotional on this day and not very attentive. Some of them may even forget which online store they visited and where they ordered goods. Because most likely they have visited many stores. You have two options, to think about how to surprise or impress the buyer to make him "remember" your store. Or use our Subscribe to Newsletters at the Checkout module because it's the perfect solution for you to make the buyers quickly share their email to you. Later, you can use the new database to get to know new customers better.

We hope that by using our tips in advance you will attract customers and increase sales during Black Friday 2020! In addition, you will be ready for a large influx of orders and will be able to satisfy store visitors in their needs!

Your Mageside Team!