How to Prepare for Black Friday 2023 in the online store?

Retailers are always working to increase sales. Autumn is not a holiday season, so Black Friday is a good way to boost sales.
To maximize your store's revenue on Black Friday 2023, prepare for it in advance.

When is Black Friday 2023 in Ukraine?

Black Friday is the last Friday of November, 11/24/2023, starting at midnight.
However, this day is already becoming a tradition in Ukraine for offline and online stores, so people are looking for the best deals and discounts earlier and earlier. Therefore, sales can be started long before the official date.

Each entrepreneur decides when to start the sales and how many days they will last and indicates this information on their website page or in the information about the promotion.

What do people buy on Black Friday?

Experience of 2022: the most popular items during the sales were power banks, batteries, warm clothes, winter tactical shoes, military clothing, kitchen utensils, flashlights, and electronics. There was a consistently high demand for household appliances, household goods, and clothing. This year, life has returned to a more routine, so we can expect an increase in interest in toys, bags, shoes and other everyday items.

But regardless of your product segment, Black Friday boosts sales in any case.

How to prepare an online store for Black Friday?

Create an assortment

Analyze what has sold best in the past years in your store and from competitors and what new products you can offer to customers. Go to Rozetka or Prom, sort products by popularity, number of reviews - these are your locomotive products. Create a suitable assortment. Include both products that are already well known to your customers and new products.

Check stock levels before the sale

Customers become very disappointed when a promotional item is out of stock. They feel cheated, and it damages the store's image more than the absence of the promotion at all. So take care of the availability of all the goods for which you plan to discount in advance. It is especially important to check the state of the warehouse in advance if you do not use an accounting program, because without automation, this process takes a lot of time and effort.

If you have the Torgsoft accounting software, just start the process of re-accounting the store's assortment in it. Let the program check the quantity of goods in the warehouse and by point, shortages and accounting errors: re-sorting, unreceived batches, unaccounted for shortages or write-offs, etc.
Torgsoft synchronizes information between all your accounting centers: warehouse, online store, your stores on the Rozetka and Prom marketplaces, and provides always up-to-date information about the availability of goods on the website of your stores.

Make a deal with suppliers

To make discounted goods profitable, you need to discuss a price reduction with the supplier. Try to do this in advance. If the purchase price is favorable, it will bring good income to both parties: the supplier will receive a larger order, and your business will get more sales.

Organize the delivery and arrival of goods

If you have a large warehouse, you can order the goods in advance, but it is better to organize fast delivery before the holiday and agree on additional purchases if sales exceed expectations.
Prepare your employees, organize the processing and dispatch of orders in time.

Warn employees about what to expect:

• what schedule is planned for each of them for the week of sales, especially if there will be additional shifts, working hours
• tell them who is responsible for what and with whom they work in the team - who will take orders on the website, call customers back, who will pack the parcels and take them to the post office,
• what discounts are planned, when, and under what conditions,
• discuss possible force majeure circumstances,
• motivate employees - tell them what kind of reward awaits them and under what criteria.

Keep in mind that there will be a rush in the offices of transportation companies these days, too. To avoid long lines at the post office and delays in shipments, print and stick labels with details on your parcels yourself, for example, for Nova Poshta. The accounting program Torgsoft has a synchronization with Nova Poshta and Ukrposhta for this purpose. The program will print out all the necessary data for shipment, including generating a TTN number, and you just need to bring the parcels to the post office.

Don't forget to buy enough packaging materials: boxes, adhesive tape, ribbon for stick-on labels.

Check the website performance

✔️ It is important to make sure that the website pages load quickly and orders are received by managers on time for processing. You can use overload protection services, such as Cloudflare.

✔️ Set all the promotional prices in advance and activate the promotions at the right time. To ensure that everything works in time, you can set up a promotion in Torgsoft and the program will activate it at the right time and set discounted prices on the website.

✔️ Check if the product descriptions, photos, prices, payment, shipping, and return terms are up to date.

Take care of connection

The issue of internet and power outages is still a painful one. Take care of the maximum opportunity for a stable Internet connection for your office or store to process orders on time:

✔️ Power can be provided by generators, batteries, or several charged laptops, tablets, mobile phones and turn them on one by one in case of a power outage.

✔️ Internet - it is better to have access to more than one provider. Among the accounting programs, Torgsoft Hybrid minimizes the effects of Internet interruptions - it continues to keep records regardless of the availability of an Internet connection and, after the connection is restored, synchronizes information in warehouses, in the online store, and in all connected accounting centers.

Plan your promotions

• Divide your goods into categories, for example, "for men", "for women", "more expensive - cheaper goods", "children's goods". You can also make promotions by category, for example: "Discounts on men's clothing", "15% discounts for teenage girls aged 11-15", "Discounts on sportswear", etc.
• Offer individual discounts to regular customers.
• Combine seasonal goods with non-seasonal, marketable goods with illiquid ones, make super sales of items from previous seasons and add them to sets of new products.
• Be honest - don't artificially raise prices before a promotion and offer fake discounts. People may notice such manipulation and feel cheated, while some customers even look for such stores on purpose, and instead of increasing sales, you may get a damaged reputation. So, it's better to make promotions for products that you can really discount, so that it's beneficial for both the store and customers.
• Inform customers in time and advertise the store

Ideas for discounts

Discount game: click "Get it now" and get 30% off if you manage to buy in the next 30 minutes; lottery for customers; additional 10% off for customers who order goods from five different categories, etc.

Day-by-day discounts: a small discount for a few days before and after the holiday, and a price crash on Black Friday; the biggest discount is on Black Friday and the percentage of discounts drops every day until the end of November. The last option encourages people to buy faster, because the sooner they buy the product, the better price they get.

Classic offers: discounts for the second and third item on the receipt, a gift with purchase, three for the price of two, discounts from a certain amount, the more you buy, the bigger the discount.

Advertising

• Mass mailing to the customer base via e-mail, SMS, Viber. 1 SMS should be no longer than 160 Latin characters. Mass mailing can be automated.
• Contextual and KMS advertising for the store on Google.
• Facebook, and Instagram. Targeting specialists set up such ads, but if you plan to advertise only for the period of the promotion, you can advertise your store yourself. The main thing in advertising for Facebook and Instagram is high-quality images in 16:9, 1:1, and 9:16 format for stories.
• Stories on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. There are several types of stories for promotion: live streaming in real time, short Stories or reels on Instagram lasting from 5 to 60 seconds, videos Shorts on YouTube.
• Posting information about the store on Black Friday sales websites, for example, blackfridays.com.ua, black-friday.com.ua. Please note, that such placements are usually paid.

How to create a discount holiday atmosphere?

Due to the absence of visible crowds of customers in online stores, it is a bit more difficult to organize the Black Friday atmosphere with massive excitement than offline. But it is possible.

• Decorate your website with festive colors and holiday attributes, such as balloons, glitter, etc.
• Set a timer on your website: "Black Friday is coming up..."

• Make the purchase fun and exciting - simple games on the site such as "Find 5 black cats hidden in the header and get mega discount", or simply play a gift drawing among customers.
• Create a stir - the first 100 customers will receive a souvenir, a discount, or a coupon for the next purchase.
• Introduce the element of "sweeping" goods from the store shelves - you can show on the site the number of customers who view this product in real time, or the ratio of goods in the cart / left in stock.

How to launch promotions in an online store?

1. Do not make too complicated rules for promotions. Let shopping be fun and simple, and discounts have simple and clear terms and conditions.

2. Place advertising banners on the site with a description of the promotions.

3. Clearly indicate the price of the product, you can indicate the old price crossed out and the new one next to it so that customers do not have to calculate the cost themselves.
4. Make authorization for purchases as minimal as possible - phone number and name.

What if Black Friday is coming up and you don't have a store yet? How to open an online store quickly?

You still have time to create your own online store from scratch before Black Friday. There are special constructors for creating online stores. Not all of them require professional skills and knowledge of programming or design. For example, using the Torgsoft Online Market designer, you can quickly create your own online store without any special knowledge on your own. Also, Torgsoft specialists can set up your online store in 1 day: from product cards and SEO to synchronization with business services and connecting an accounting program.