It’s never too early to get ready for Cyber Monday when you’re in business. The annual technology sales event following the US Thanksgiving weekend has become an international phenomenon.
Why bother?
Cyber Monday is bigger than Black Friday, it’s also bigger than Boxing Day in the UK and outperforms the Click Frenzy sales event in Australia. Your business doesn’t even have to be in tech, there are loads of ways to tap into the “Cyber” element of the name, it makes for a great marketing hook.
$7 billion was spent online on Cyber Monday in 2017. So to get a slice of that pie, you’ll need to be prepared. Not only that, but smartphones and tablets accounted for 40% of online sales, so unless you’re already selling to mobile users, you definitely need to make sure you do this year.
The date of Cyber Monday
Put the date in your diary or online calendar:
- 2018 – November 26th
- 2019 – December 2nd
- 2020 – November 30th
Planning ahead
If you’re planning to introduce new product lines for the holiday season, or to add special promotions, now is the time to start planning the changes to your website.
Do you want to use coupon codes or a site-wide discount? Will you want to time those offers? Will the new product lines have a special category or landing page? Will you need to make changes to shipping or order processing for the big sales weekend? Will the warehouse be operating differently?
Testing
Try setting up new products and landing pages on your website in a test environment and see how they look, test how they function (are they fast on GT Metrix & Pingdom, or is that giant Turkey gif just using up all the resources?).
Next, introduce your staff into the mix and see how things function when a test transaction is processed. Do the discounts and promotions make sense? Do they interact with the tax and shipping settings as desired?
Try buying your own products on a tablet and a smartphone. Can you see the correct elements in the right order? Does it load fast?
Look at your Google Analytics, New Relic or similar service. How many resources does your website use when handling a few test purchases?
Getting ready – the holidays checklist
Based on your tests, you might want:
- some advice on the different coupon code or discounting options available for your website software.
- to optimize those special holidays graphics or videos for the web.
- to upgrade your hosting or to find a host that can allow a temporary upgrade.
- to organise some staff training.
Get someone else to do it
If you’d like help getting your business website ready for the holiday season, or another large sales event such as a TV promotion, get in touch with Silicon Dales today or book a consultation online.