As Black Friday and Cyber Monday grow in popularity and become increasingly lucrative days of the year for online businesses, it’s important to make sure you and your business are prepared to take full advantage.
In the recent 2024 Online Retail Report, 50% of businesses surveyed reported that Black Friday was very important for their business operations, and a peak time for consumer spending, second only to the Christmas holiday season. Peach Payments alone processed over 1.1 million transactions in 2023, totalling R872 million. This is an extremely lucrative time for online businesses, and it’s important that they’re ready to catch the wave.
Local trends and what they tell us
According to the 2024 Online Retail Report, e-commerce is on the rise and ready to reach over 6% of total retail in South Africa by 2025. A higher number of transactions is therefore likely to happen online compared to previous years. Companies that are still on the fence about offering their products or services online as a supplement to their in-store business should seriously consider making the leap.
Over 50% of online purchases happen on mobile devices. It’s therefore critical to ensure that your website is mobile-friendly and loads quickly on mobile devices. This means using lighter code, compressed images, and fewer animations.
In terms of payment methods, card payments and EFTs remain the most popular. However, buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) options, such as those offered by Float, Mobicred, and Payflex are growing in popularity. This is particularly true of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, when customers are eager to take advantage of special deals but might not have the capital upfront. Offering an option like this can help you make more sales. In 2023, the largest payment processed by Peach Payments was over R400 000. With larger transactions like these happening, a BNPL option makes your products and deals more accessible.
Four things you can do to prep for Black Friday and Cyber Monday
Website performance and security
As we’ve mentioned, it’s important to ensure that your overall website performance is optimised across browsers and devices. Also, check whether your website host’s servers are performing optimally and consider additional bandwidth for increased traffic demand.
Remember that, because website security should be top of mind, the cheapest hosting solution is not always the best choice. While definitely recommended, professional website penetration testing can be a costly exercise. At the very least, address any website security concerns well ahead of time with your service provider.
If you are managing your own website, make sure that you have installed updates to your content management system and updated passwords. Double-check that the information on your website is accurate and up-to-date. This should include prices, promotions or discounts your business offers during upcoming sales.
Make sure whatever payment gateway you’re using uses 3D Secure, a very secure protocol to process payments. And check with them if they have staff available to help you determine where you may have gaps.
Marketing
Business owners often do a lot of marketing in the lead-up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but are super busy on the day itself and forget to continue marketing.
Black Friday weekend itself is exactly when consumers are looking for deals, so check that your Google Ads budget, for example, is sufficient to carry you through the weekend. Also, make sure your existing customer base is aware of your specials by sending them updates about exclusive deals. Repeat customers shouldn’t be ignored at this important time – they should in fact be rewarded.
Emergency contacts
Things can and do go wrong on busy shopping days – from websites failing to stock issues to workplace injuries. How you deal with these can have a material impact on the success of your Black Friday weekend.
Keep a curated emergency contact list at hand, preferably posted where everyone can access it. In addition to the more traditional police, security company, ambulance, and fire department numbers, expand the list with contacts you wouldn’t normally include, such as key contacts at your bank, point-of-sale equipment provider, web hosting provider, courier company, and your suppliers.
Don’t forget to check with suppliers beforehand if they have extra stock on hand of popular items. This way, you may be able to continue taking orders once you’ve run out of stock, with only minor shipping delays.
Customer service
E-commerce success depends on effective distribution and delivery logistics, but that’s not the only customer service issue to address. Make sure that you have enough staff on duty over the Black Friday weekend to answer questions and fulfil orders.
From previous years, we know that on Black Friday weekend, South Africans tend to shop first thing in the morning, over lunchtime and just after supper, which aren’t typical office hours. Allocate staff to answer queries and process orders during those times. The rest of the day can then be used to pick, package and dispatch orders.
Also plan for incidentals, such as adequate packaging materials and waybills, to reduce delays.
The customer journey starts with a good browsing experience, progresses through a quick, secure checkout with adequate payment choices, and culminates in timely delivery. Check every part of that journey before Black Friday weekend for the best results.
Peach Payments is a proud National Partner of the NSBC