Get your online store ready for Black Friday

“Shopping season” is upon us. It’s the time of year when big sales events like Click Frenzy, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are fast approaching. For your online store, it’s time to do some spring cleaning to get primed and ready to maximise your selling opportunities.

Click Frenzy enables you to advertise online with them so potential shoppers can find your store. They have several advertising options for different budgets, ranging from self-service to premium advertising with support from the Click Frenzy sales team.

For Black Friday and Cyber Monday there isn’t a specific Australian site, but you can get the word out via email, digital advertising and your social channels. Make sure you use a Black Friday hashtag like #blackfriday #cybermonday or #blackfridaysale to maximise your exposure.

To manage the expected increased traffic and keep your store running smoothly through your eCommerce sale, take a look at our list of the top nine things you can do to make your sale go off without a hitch.

1. Check your website capabilities

During huge sales events your website will experience higher traffic than usual. This is great for your business so long as your servers can handle the increase. To ensure your website won’t crash, and you don’t miss out on sales check your web developer has things ready on their end. If you don’t have a developer take a look at your hosting platform’s capabilities to see how many requests it can process per second.

2. Increase your stock

Doing a thorough stocktake means you know exactly what you can sell, how much, and for what kind of discount. This avoids disappointing customers and putting extra pressure on your employees. Make sure you’ve got enough stock to cover you for after the sale too, so your business can go back to operations as usual smoothly and quickly.

3. Test system connections

Make sure your inventory system is connected to your selling platform and working properly. There’s nothing worse than thinking you have everything ready to go, only to find out at the crucial moment that your online store has issues connecting with your inventory system. This ensures you don’t fall into the trap of selling stock you don’t have on hand.

4. Prepare your delivery system

Confirm your delivery system can handle an increase in orders. It’s frustrating for customers if you promise a certain delivery timeframe, only to find out you can’t deliver when expected. Starshipit is an integrated shipping and tracking software that works with some of the most popular shopping carts, like BigCommerce and WooCommerce. It also comes with lots of other integrations that will enable you to streamline your entire fulfillment process and works with carriers like DHL, Australia Post and Startrack.

5. Make payments effortless

Your customers want fast and frictionless payments! Given the time constraints of the sale and the pressure to purchase everything they want as quickly as possible before stock sells out, customers want their payment process to be secure and painless. Eway’s online payment gateway integrates with many popular shopping carts to provide a seamless payment experience. Eway’s online payments are quick and easy to set up with low rates and fixed transaction fees.

6. Optimise your website for mobile

These days, it’s considered best practice to think mobile-first when it comes to your website.

Besides having a responsive layout for mobile devices, keep your special offers front-and-centre on your website and promote them your customer base through email or social promotions. Keep text short and sweet, and let your images speak for themselves to increase click-through.

7. Reassure your customers your website is safe

A survey conducted by Global Sign found that 84% of customers will abandon a purchase if they don’t think the website they are on is safe. Let your customers know their private information is secure by displaying security symbols (like the Eway site seal) on your website.

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8. Protect your store from fraud

In all the rush and craziness that comes with a big sale, it’s hard to monitor all transactions coming through to check for fraud. Cybercriminals take advantage of sale events to launch card skimming attacks and other scams.

Equip sure your payment system with real time anti-fraud protection so you can focus your attention elsewhere, and feel confident that you’re protected. Eway’s anti-fraud protection blocks potential risky transactions and sends you email alerts when it detects suspicious transactions.

9. Have a backup plan

It’s always worth having a contingency plan (or two!) for if something goes wrong. With a back-up plan at the ready, you can spring into action rather than getting frazzled. For example, if you think you might sell out of an item, have another offer prepared to take its place. You could consider discounts on shipping, further reduced prices, or two-for-one deals.

Now you’ve got your list, it’s time to put it in action so you’re ready for big sale events. If you need help with your online payment needs, contact one of our payment experts on 1800 662 483 or enquire here.