Black Friday may be just five months away – but now is the time to start preparing

Black Friday – along with other high-profile online shopping events – provides online retailers with a huge opportunity to attract new customers. As Australia Post explains, this is the perfect time to win the hearts and minds of existing customers and maximize sales.

However, many retailers make the mistake of leaving it too late to develop strategies to optimize these opportunities. While research shows that as shoppers save for online sales like Black Friday months in advance – and also look for products, sources and deals as early as October, smart retailers need to be ready much earlier.

For many retailers, long lead times relate to the design, production and transportation of inventory. Therefore, it is important to analyze data from previous online shopping events to help predict optimal inventory for the upcoming holidays. You don’t want customers eagerly purchasing products on your website and then discovering that the products haven’t yet arrived in your warehouse – or even in the country – which means delivery delays.

Secondly, you need to carefully build your marketing and communication strategy before Black Friday. Be prepared to start teasing deals or exclusives at least a month before the event, via email, text or social media – wherever your customers or contacts have opted-in to receiving communications from you. Include a promotional plan on your website showing product and pricing release dates. Consider installing a countdown clock on your website to remind users when the Black Friday sale starts and the Black Friday sale ends.

What online buyers want

As a leading provider of delivery services to online retailers and the country’s premier platform for delivering letters and parcels to consumers, Australia Post has a wealth of information about consumer shopping and shipping preferences. To help you start planning and building your Black Friday strategy, we’re sharing some of that knowledge – and some great shipping tips – with Inside retail readers.

Since October, shoppers have been conducting online research about Black Friday, which has been one of the biggest online sales events on the e-commerce calendar for several years, so much so that shoppers have learned to spend weeks building their lists, saving money and finding online stores where they would like to buy.

During last year’s e-commerce sales season, 7.5 million Australian customers made purchases online. With difficult economic times having an impact on the budgets of many households, it is logical to expect that there will be even more pleasure this year. Research shows that 74 percent of last year’s shoppers saved in advance so they were ready to take advantage of selected deals. Nearly half of Black Friday shoppers start making lists and saving in September. This means that by the time Black Friday arrives, thousands of consumers will already have made money, know what they want and will be ready to spend.

When do major online sales events take place?

One sec Black Friday AND Cyber ​​Monday (collectively called Cyber ​​Weekend or BFCM) taking place in late November may be the most important online retail event for most consumers, kicking off the Christmas shopping season. There are other online sales events throughout the year for which it is equally important to prepare:

The day after payday It takes place twice a year – in March and August – and the exact dates are announced just before each event. Over the past few years, this date has become an important date in the e-commerce sales calendar – last year, over 4 million households decided to participate in the August sale.

Click Frenzy: Singles’ Day is the world’s largest retail shopping day, organized by Chinese customers. All those in the date (11/11) represent single people. Many Australian e-commerce companies are taking advantage of this opportunity to sell through their own website and social channels. Although traditionally a Chinese event, the date is spreading around the world and last year many Australian companies launched offers and promotions for buyers at home and abroad.

Vogue Online Shopping Night (VOSN) is a 36-hour event presenting offers from the fashion, beauty and lifestyle industries. This year’s edition took place in early May.

Strengthen your online sales strategy for savvy bargain hunters

Now that you know how important a sales event is and have decided to build a strategy for it, it’s time to consider what impression you want to make on buyers. A good sales strategy will aim to create a strong impression on new customers and a better-than-ever experience for loyal customers.

Your online sales strategy must be designed with experienced buyers in mind who know exactly what they want from a sale. They expect big deals and fast delivery, they want something on their Christmas list and they know exactly what they want to save on.

Shipping strategies to optimize your online sales event strategy

Providing an excellent delivery experience during sales will help encourage repeat visits from new and existing customers. That’s why it’s important to work with a reliable provider that offers a full suite of services to meet your customers’ needs.

Here are three key delivery expectations for today’s online shoppers.

Next day delivery offer: Shoppers expect deliveries to be faster than ever – and many will switch sellers to ensure faster shipping. Australia Post Metro and Express Post are two ways to provide next day delivery to meet changing demand and give you a competitive advantage.

Allow flexible delivery options: Offering customers the ability to choose where their shipments will be delivered gives them greater control and security over where and when they receive their shipments. This may be in the form of a collection point, post office or post office box.

Make sure you can send to all your customers: Some delivery services don’t deliver to apartment buildings, which means you could miss out on a lot of your custom order if you’re shipping to an inner-city suburb. Moreover, with the number of regional online purchases increasing every year, it is important that your supplier can reach customers in remote locations.