Black Friday 2019 for Ecommerce

Black Friday 2019 presents some hard issues for numerous retailers. This post covers a couple of the difficulties, plus 5 prospective approaches for e-commerce business.

Black Friday itself is almost a week later on than it remained in 2018. In 2018 it was on the 23rd of November. In 2019, it’s on the 29th –– basically a week later on –– generally as late in the month as it gets.

The positive of that is that for sites offering to consumers, a couple of more of your potential consumers will have had their paycheque by the 29th than they would have last year on the 23rd.

There are a few possible negatives. Those negatives apply similarly to you as to your rivals, and for that reason, there are likewise possible chances if you think things through thoroughly.

Year-on-Year Troubles

If you report on year-on-year numbers, it’s likely November will be a difficult month. That originates from 3 factors:

Firstly: The ‘week vs in 2015’ numbers for week 47 (18th-24th November) will be extremely unusual. In useful terms that’s meaningless, but if your company runs on weekly numbers, it triggers headaches both for forecasting and in terms of addressing concerns about why numbers are up/ down.

Second Of All: The Sunday after Black Friday, and Cyber Monday itself (which is often a larger day than the Friday) both fall in December. Again, that does not imply so much almost, however, it implies that November looks ‘bad’ vs 2018, and any regular monthly forecasts require to be adjusted a lot.

Finally: For some sellers, having a little more time in between Black Friday and Christmas is a genuine blessing. They move older products early with a heavy discount rate, getting rid of old stock and accepting the margin decrease on them, and after that have a 4 week run into Christmas itself pushing prices back up a little, and concentrating on more recent merchandise. This year, that doesn’t truly take place. Cyber Monday is December second, leaving just 3 weeks till the Christmas shipment cutoff.

Competitive Pressure

With Black Friday being a week later on, this creates a ‘ghost’ Black Friday on November 22nd. Consumers’ expectations have developed to the extent they hunt for deals in mid-November almost by habit. It’s highly likely that some sellers will seek to match that demand, pushing discount rates much previously this year as an outcome.

If you’re a company in a market with 2 or 3 main rivals, it’s therefore tempting to complete directly with that yourself: Every order from a rival is essentially a ‘lost’ sale for your company. Every customer who switches obligation theoretically costs you cash to win back.

Deal Fatigue

If deals do get here early, and the discount rate duration extends right the method from the ‘ghost’ cyber week of the 18th November right the way through to the conventional post-Christmas sale period, it develops an environment where merchants can quickly fall into simply tossing away margin for the entirety of their peak season.

Combined with that, if prospective consumers see deals everywhere, the result of all this discounting is watered down to the extent that it essentially seems like sellers have to throw away big offers to be among customers’ considered stores.

This can be beneficial for deal-hunting consumers but harms the sustainability of the stores they enjoy.

Prospective Methods to Black Friday 2019

There are generally unlimited possible approaches to the Black Friday duration. Here are simply 5 you may think about or may wish to use to evaluate what your competitors are doing:

1. Opt-Out Completely

This is a surprisingly common technique. If your rivals are all handing out their revenue margin over a duration, you might conclude that offering ‘weak’ deals are a pointless token vs their much more powerful deals. If that holds true, your options end up being: a) Go as heavily as your rivals, and discard all earnings yourself over the period –– sacrificing it for customer acquisition and retention that will hopefully settle in loyalty, or b) Opt-out completely, choose to safeguard what margin you can over the duration, and accept that your gross sales revenue will just be lower if customers do head to your competition over the duration.

The supermarket ASDA (part of Walmart) famously had riots as a result of their Black Friday sales in the past, and in subsequent years have chosen to opt-out entirely. Instead, they provided targeted seasonal offers across the entire duration, beginning early November.

2. The Charity Technique

An alternative method is to –– rather of providing money away to your consumers in the kind of discount rates –– provide something to charity, or to positive causes, over the duration rather. In theory, the advantages of that are:

• Your consumers are still attracted to buy from you, as they want to belong to positive investment in good causes as much or more than they are self-centered in saving money.
• It’s altruistically positive, great for personnel inspiration, great for the world at big.
• Clients feel more favorable about your brand, and choose to patronize you both over the duration and in the future, knowing that you are a brand that puts positivity ahead of easy income chasing.
• Life’s short –– why not take the opportunities you can to merely do something good.

As one example among numerous: Patagonia acquired a substantial quantity of coverage a couple of years earlier by donating “100% of sales” on Black Friday to grassroots organizations.

3. Hold Firm

The ‘default’ method: Deal with Black Friday as you have done in the past. Do not head out early just since it falls later on, this year. Assume that some rivals will do just that, which you may lose a bit, however, it’s not worth diving down early.

If you do this, a ‘risk mitigation’ technique might be to interact what your Black Friday deals will be, or simply advise consumers that they’re turning up but Black Friday is later. That in itself brings some risk –– consumers might then just wait & & prevent purchases they would have otherwise made in the added to the duration. A method to in turn mitigate that might be to communicate that to your ‘non-core’ clients (ie, those who are not likely to purchase from you besides special occasions/ durations where you trigger them), however, prevent interacting forthcoming offers to core customers, in case it puts them off purchasing till later.

4. Go Early Go Frequently

Another method is to accept the fact that there’s a chance to press out discounts before Black Friday. Take benefit of the ‘ghost’ Cyber Week the week before, and

If you prepare to do that, it’s likely important to ‘step’ your discounts, or run a series of promotions over the period. Pushing all deals simultaneously so early may indicate that your core consumers have already seen whatever you have to offer by the time the ‘real’ Black Friday occurs.

5. Deal Cherries to Choose

Essentially a variant of the ‘go early’ technique: Rather than pushing out ultra heavy deals a week or more prior to Black Friday, take out a series of heading deals that bring clients to your site, or motivate them to purchase, but leave the majority of items ‘off sale’ until later.

That has the twin benefits of supplying ‘offers’ to communicate at a time when customers are actively trying to find offers, and of securing margin overall, and perhaps encouraging a blended purchase of ‘offer’ products and ‘full price’ products so that every order at least offers some profit.

Summary

• Black Friday is laaaaate in 2019.
• That throws up a series of issues.
• The majority of those problems apply equally throughout the marketplace, and therefore they also bring opportunity.
• Analyzing this from your specific customer set, item set, and monetary goals are most likely to be among the essential consider your overall performance this peak period.