Marijus Plančiūnas reminds that not only is it important to attract visitors to the site before the festive sales period, but also not to scare them away.

November 2023 • 3 min

Marijus Plančiūnas, „Paysera“ generalinis direktorius

M. Plančiūnas: Advice for e-stores on how not to burn out on "Black Friday"

Shopping centres, traditional stores, and e-shops are hanging up signs announcing "Black Friday", even though it is a couple of days away. This day marks the start of the sellers' "Dakar", which is one of the most intense sales seasons. For shops to reap the rewards of half a year's and sometimes a year's work, it is important not only to take care of how to bring visitors to the site before the hot stretch of the season, but also how not to scare them away.

Have enough reserves
"Isn't that self-evident?", you ask. Yes, but when sales soar, stocks can quickly run out. Careful planning is especially important for limited-quantity promotions. These promotions are not entirely suitable for "Black Friday," as buyers will be left unsatisfied if stocks run out too quickly: "I clicked to buy, but the product is already gone? Cheaters".

Allow leasing and "buy now, pay later" (BNPL)
On "Black Friday," e-stores are crowded with both planned shoppers and those visitors who did not plan to buy but were enticed by sales. Facilitate the decision of impulsive buyers to purchase – offer the opportunity to purchase goods through leasing or the so-called "buy now, pay later" (BNPL) method. Buyers will be satisfied, as they will not feel pressure on their budget after making impulsive purchases. As a seller, it does not matter to you how many months the buyer will make payments to the financier – you will have the money for the goods from the financier immediately.

Increased service capabilities
If the customer service department is already bursting at the seams, responding to customer enquiries, you can imagine what will happen when five or ten times more enquiries flood in. Each unanswered call or email can mean one less sale. And if there are 50 or 100 unanswered calls? Because of this, seek help from call centres, although choosing and training consultants can be difficult in the last week before "Black Friday".

A wall against hackers
"Black Friday is sometimes not only a sales holiday, but also an opportunity for online hackers and possibly competitors to try their hand at DDoS attacks. So, to prevent your website from being deliberately hacked, it's a good idea to buy DDoS protection, which will cost much less than the potential losses from a complete halt in holiday trading.

Balancing the flow of buyers
Midnight on 24 November. You've run all your ads at once, sent out a newsletter to thousands of customers, and got your SEO in order. Sales are about to skyrocket and ... instead of rising sales, your website shows "502". Unfortunately, this is not the price of the product in euros, but a Black Friday scenario, which means that the e-shop has become unavailable.

To avoid this, split your marketing efforts into smaller chunks and do them at different times to avoid mass customer interest and possible website paralysis. When preparing for high traffic, make sure your website server is ready and able to cope with the high volume of traffic. Also consider switching to a cloud server, which will automatically adjust resources as needed.