It’s most likely you haven’t even begun thinking about turkey and cranberry sauce yet, but perhaps it is time. The most celebrated American holiday, Thanksgiving, is often followed by the most awaited shopping day of the year, Black Friday, and this is a tradition wholeheartedly adopted by the UK market.
Over the last year, consumers have mostly switched to online shopping, and it’s no wonder that Black Friday online sales increased by 22%, up to $9 billion globally. So if you haven’t already started planning for this year’s rush, you need to start strategizing for the epic shopping week, starting on November 22nd and ending with Cyber Monday on November 29th.
So unless you anticipate the Black Friday e-rush well ahead of time, you could face a mass exodus of your site’s visitors who will happily take their credit cards elsewhere 
.
Do you have a Black Friday To-Do list? If your answer is “I’m not sure”, we’ve got a toolkit to get your online store ready:
Tool 1: A nifty calendar
Planning is the keyword this week and having a calendar of promotions will make your online store stand out from the pool of generic discounts. If you regularly send emails with promotions, scale these back so you can make a splash on Black Friday. Be sure to know what kind of deals to run and for how long. You might offer a third off on Black Friday, but cut some things by half on the last day of your sale.
Tool 2: Product widgets for the win
Feature your best-selling products on your website. Use an out of the box eCommerce platform like Stor.co to easily add a product to any webpage so your customers can view and purchase without leaving your site. Need to keep things even more simple? Add a buy button to your site, enabling a seamless purchase flow.
Tool 3: Perfect images
Images are among the first things clients look at, along with product widgets. Because of this, they should always be eye-catching and clearly illustrate what you’re selling. With Stor.co, you can add multiple images for your products, so you can show off your products as best as you can. Bonus item: they are auto-resized to suit your website!
Tool 4: Quick payment options
After you’ve spent time and energy getting people to your product pages, you don’t want to lose them. Make sure your product pages have a clear call to action and provide everything they need. After that’s clear, make sure it’s easy for your customers to pay you – enable the most preferred payment options from PayPal to eWallets and Buy Now Pay Later options.
Tool 5: Manage volume and real-time purchases
Even if you’re not anticipating a massive surge in visitors, get in touch with your hosting company to ensure your website doesn’t go down. Use an eCommerce tool with an easy interface to keep track of all your stock. To make things interesting, you can enable Instant Online Bidding for some products, just like eBay.
Tool 6: Expand your reach
With multiple marketplaces and even social media platforms acting as revenue streams for online sellers, online websites have countless possibilities. Reach out to new audiences using hashtags and influencers, and also use social selling to enable users to buy directly on their preferred social channel. Your Facebook and Instagram channels will generate new sales away from your website if you include shoppable posts.
Tool 7: Don’t let the dust settle
Once you’ve spent money attracting new customers, you don’t want them to disappear. After the shopping week, send out some incentives or follow up with review invitations to provide your customers with a way to engage with you, as well as each other, and encourage sales.
Tool 8: Learn and repeat
You should take stock of what worked and what didn’t work after Black Friday week. Write down your learnings for next year while they’re still fresh in your mind, incorporate similar tactics into other seasonal sales, or simply vow never to do it again if the cons outweigh the pros.
Summing up
Hopefully, you have now gathered some tools that will make your Black Friday week a success. Think about your customers in advance, take a chance, and make it a hit.
