Bargain hunters and penny-pinchers are already waiting for their chance. "Black Week" starts on November 20, 2023. By November 24 at the latest – on Black Friday – your cash register should be ringing off the hook as an online shop operator. Unless your shop can't cope with the crowds. Then all the preparations for the sale, which were probably very elaborate, would have been completely wasted. To prevent this from happening, we explain how you can make your shop or website fit for Black Friday.
Days like Black Friday can be the busiest of the year – provided the conditions are right. It is therefore important to make attractive offers and prepare the shop accordingly.
Black Friday is a perfect opportunity to use marketing campaigns to attract the attention of potential customers and make your brand known. Depending on how you communicate your promotions, Black Friday can not only attract many new customers, but also entice existing customers, whose trust you already have, to make further purchases. This is usually even more lucrative.
Do you still have "dusty" stocks? Black Friday is a very good opportunity to clear your stock and update it as a result.
Don't just let these opportunities slip away!
During special promotions – if you have done your job right – a lot of visitors come to your online shop within a very short time. In the optimal case, they have a perfect shopping experience here, can carry out all actions smoothly and and leave the site happy after a successful purchase (of as many products as possible).
But what happens if the IT infrastructure on which the shop is based cannot withstand this rush? This can lead to a variety of problems.
If the servers or databases are overloaded, for example, your site may either be unavailable or load very slowly. Nowadays, users know that the next shop is only two clicks away and instead of having the necessary patience, they will order from the competition faster than you can imagine. This means not only a loss of sales for you, but also a lost opportunity for one (or probably many) loyal new customers.
Even if only individual elements of your website no longer fulfil their task properly, this can lead to the abandonment of Black Friday shopping on your website. For example, if the payment does not work properly, the interested customer will not bother to go through the ordering process again. On top of that, there are uncertainties regarding the collection of the money or similar. This is very counterproductive for trust in your company or brand.
If data from other systems is not transferred correctly and there are problems with the availability and price displays, this could end in quite a mess.
Even if the mobile version of the website has errors, there can be numerous problems – be it the functionality of certain pages and elements or simply incorrect information.
Your shop might not only be unstable, but also insecure. How do you notice this? At the latest when a cybercriminal simply shows up in your online shop. Because hackers and criminals also know that you are particularly "vulnerable" on promotion days , i.e. that it "hurts especially" on these days if your shop no longer functions. This means that there is an increased risk of falling victim to such attacks at this time. The consequences can affect not only your website, but also your company and, in the worst case, your customers.
To avoid all this, your shop or website and the IT infrastructure behind it must be sufficiently prepared.
In order for your valued customers and those who are to become customers to find and want to buy all your good offers on the website or in the shop on Black Friday, it is essential first of all that the site is available and functions properly. This may sound obvious, but don't forget that on Black Friday and other promotion days, a lot of people could access the site and place an order at the same time. If your site is not stable enough then, the digital shopping spree could end in a black hole. Neither you nor your website visitors will be happy about this. Users will then be disappointed, frustrated or simply leave. There is a great danger that they will then prefer the offer of the competition. Would you like that?
Despite these risks, the action is worth it! Remember the advantages mentioned above. Besides, you are not only making your shop fit for this one day or this one week! It is a fundamental investment in the security and performance of your online shop!
With a secure website, you avoid data loss and data theft. You not only protect your valuable data, but also the sensitive data of your customers. Compliance with data protection laws also plays an important role - especially if your shop is located in the EU and you want users to trust you in this regard.
Which site do users trust more? A site that is stable and secure, or a site that is sometimes available and then not? Users will only enter their personal data where they feel safe. Because they also know that good security protects them and their data from attacks and misuse.
Furthermore, with a secure website or shop, you protect yourself in the long term from damage to your image and reputation – because once a "data disaster" has happened, potential users will also find out about it if they want to.
Google also rewards secure websites that are always available. Various mechanisms are responsible for this. First and foremost, it is important for you to know: Your site should always be available so that it can be found well on Google on Black Friday and elsewhere. If this is occasionally not possible, the search engine notices this and sends it to the back of the list.
Another advantage: If you have taken all the necessary safety precautions in advance, then it is also possible to react quickly in an actual emergency.
In order for a webshop or an offer page to withstand the increased traffic on offer days such as Black Friday and for visitors to reach their destination – your product – easily, you should take these important steps or fulfil these points:
First of all, it is important that you use a server with the capacity that suits your requirements. Are all the technical elements selected and coordinated in such a way that they are also adapted to the rush on popular online shopping days? If your server has too little capacity, it may not function optimally on Black Friday. If the capacities are far too high, it is of course also possible that you will pay an unnecessarily high price for them.
If you do not have enough experience in this area, contact experienced professionals who can provide you with expert information.
Is it possible for you to increase the performance of your server if necessary? This is called scalability of your server or cloud. For example, if you have a large advertising campaign before the campaign day, you should also be prepared for this. A good server or cloud scalability makes this process much easier.
This principle applies to you in two ways! On Black Friday, users come to your website because of the promotion. Of course, you should present your best and most popular (and lucrative for you) offers to them in a clearly visible way.
Such a concept also has another positive effect on your server – namely, if you relieve the load on your server with caching. When content that is frequently called up from your shop remains in a cache, a variety of advantages arise that have an impact on website performance – such as fast loading times, a reduction in server load due to reduced requests and more efficient use of the network connection. These benefits pay off especially on promotion days like Black Friday.
The faster loading time of course pleases the user!
With a load test, you can already ensure that your website can withstand the upcoming traffic before promotion days such as Black Friday. In the course of this test, the site is exposed to a high load and it is analysed how it reacts to this. Can your shop withstand the demands?
It is absolutely important to check the performance of your own site or shop beforehand, in order to be able to act preventively. What is at least as important, however, is monitoring the functionality directly during the campaign days – because if there is a problem or even failure of the site, this should also be recognised and remedied as quickly as possible.
Our system check up shows you whether your online shop is stable enough for the rush of visitors on promotion days!
You will receive a system check free of charge until November 17, 2023 (165 € thereafter). You can find all the information in detail here.
Almost logical, but we emphasise it once at this point: If there are any doubts about the stability of your shop with increased access numbers, do yourself a favour and stock up! Nothing is more annoying than an interesting but unavailable offer – for all sides: Your customers and you, of course!
In order to be prepared for possible failures, it is necessary to create redundancies. This can be done at various levels – be it the servers themselves or the network or the power supply. In any case, a good IT concept is necessary for this. If in doubt, ask an experienced professional!
In critical cases, quick action is also required. It is therefore important to know what you should do in the event of a problem with
your shop, your website or your IT as a whole so that everything can get back to normal as quickly as possible. To ensure that this plan can then be implemented, everyone involved should be fully informed.
The bigger and better known your online shop is, the more likely it is to be exposed to cyber threats. The solution cannot be to miss out on promotions like Black Friday - because you certainly don't want to miss out on the potential sales either. However, if you protect your shop or site from criminals and data leaks with the right measures (e.g. with good DDoS protection) and implement appropriate measures
such as a pentest in advance, you don't have to worry about this.
... and that before the promotion days begin! It is now important to check once again how well orders (incl. payment) and the search for specific products – as well as the complete orientation on your website or in your shop – work. This applies to both the desktop and the mobile version of your shop. Test your Black Friday promotion extensively!
The world is full of offers. If you search the internet for a certain product, you will find it in 1000 variations on 1000 different websites. Why should the potential customer buy from you? Why is your product exactly the right one for him – so that the initially similar-looking alternatives are skipped?
It is an art to guide the user through your page in a clever way so that the purchase of the product (which is also very suitable for him) will be the logical consequence. Design and write your pages in such a way that the user immediately recognises that the product is perfect for him, that you are the perfect supplier for the product and that ordering and other important processes are particularly easy for him.
This applies to you shortly before the action days start - because if something "breaks" now, you would be putting a lot at risk. So: prepare everything in good time and then keep your feet still!
Even afterwards, the work is not completely done. Evaluate visitor numbers – evaluate how well the shop responded to the workload. Was the IT structure stable enough? Were there any problems? Could you have done better? Did your sales pages really sell? The findings should of course flow into the next promotion!
Take advantage of our Black Friday promotion and have your shop or website checked for Black Friday performance! We offer 10 free tests until November 17, 2023!
We wish you success and a stable shop for your Black Friday promotion!
