By: Aaron Orendorff
The tide has turned on traditional retail …
Black Friday — a term originally coined in the 1950s to mark the advent of Christmas shopping when retailers went from “in the red” to “in the black” — has become synonymous with doorbusters, cheap TVs, and stampede-videos posted to YouTube.
According to the National Retail Federation, more people opted to skip the madness and did their Black Friday shopping online than in-store in 2016. Considering this shift in consumer behavior, and the epic rate at which stores are shutting down, at first glance, it seems we’ve reached a tipping point.
But make no mistake, offline shopping isn’t going anywhere. People are still going to stand outside and wait in line for great deals. It’s what we do while we wait, and who we’re willing to wait for that represents the biggest shift in how we shop.
Retailers who understand this and participate in these Black Friday ecommerce trends early aren’t just chasing after the next new thing, they’re preparing for the future of ecommerce and tackling omni-channel in a way that’s easier to digest.
After thorough research, we’ve identified these five Black Friday ecommerce trends that will put you ahead this year.
1. Mobile Shopping Can No Longer Be an Afterthought for Holiday Ecommerce
For the first time ever, 53% of all orders on last year’s Thanksgiving Day came from mobile devices.
According to Mobify, this trend is set to continue, with mobile revenue overtaking desktop just in time for Black Friday 2017. It went on to predict that mobile will reach 70% of ecommerce traffic by the end of 2018.
But mobile checkout rates are still trailing computers by 13%.
According to Stripe, “Mobile websites don't convert well: while mobile devices represent 60% of browsing traffic, they only account for 15% of purchasing.”
So how can you boost mobile revenue?
Start with improving navigation, website speed, and offering one-click purchases, according to Fluent’s 2017 Devices and Demographics report:
Mobify suggests that “retailers who take advantage of these – ASAP – will be among the retailers that see mobile revenue surpass desktop before Black Friday 2017.”
Improve Your Website’s Navigation
The little things can add up and make a big difference. For example, Print Globe increased conversions by 18.5% simply by improving their website navigation design.
Start with your sitemap and menu layout. Andy Crestodina, strategic director of Orbit Media, recommends you, “Limit the number of menu items to seven.”
But most ecommerce sites have a lot more than seven pages. So what happens next?
They put a drop-down menu on your drop-down menu.
The problem with this approach is that drop-down menus are almost always annoying and studies show that drop-down menus “encourage visitors to skip important pages.”
Crestodina explains that “Visitors move their eyes much faster than they move their mouse. When they move their mouse to a menu item, they’ve likely already decided to click… and then you gave them more options. It’s a hiccup in the mind of the visitor.”
However, some other studies show that ‘mega-drop-down menus’ perform favorably. The annoying moment of finding more options is worth it since the number of options given helps the user find exactly what they’re looking for.
Of course, with the limited amount of space on mobile devices, this can be incredibly difficult to do well. Which is why the standard in responsive design is now the ‘hamburger’ icon:
If you have a lot of menu items, it’s important to group them into drop-down categories, so the user doesn’t need to scan information irrelevant to their search. Amazon has turned their mega-drop-down menu into a page of its own, with a clear hierarchy of information:
Be sure to highlight site search, too. Waterfilters.net managed to increase conversions by 11% just by adding Google Site Search to their website. Notice how Amazon highlights the search bar on every page of their site in their last example.
Increase Your Site Speed
Consumers want it yesterday.
A study by Radware discovered that “a two-second delay in load time during a transaction resulted in abandonment rates of up to 87%. This is significantly higher than the baseline abandonment rate of 67%.”
We’ve written extensively on how to improve ecommerce site performance and page speed, as well as suggested diagnostic tools. Be sure to pay particular attention to your checkout process where load time is critical:
1. Use Google Tag Manager
2. Consider measuring and improving your time to interact (TTI) speed
3. Optimize your images
4. Use fast and reliable hosting servers
Offer One-Screen Checkouts for Impulse Purchases
UIE found impulse purchases represent almost 40% of all the money spent on ecommerce.
You can boost impulse purchases by reducing the amount of effort it takes to buy something. ‘One-click’ purchasing allows customers to buy items with a single click, with the required payment information having been entered previously by the customer. You can enable one-click purchases using:
1. Shopify Pay
2. Apple Pay
3. Android Pay
4. PayPal
Ideally, you’ll want to set up all four of these payment services, as customers may already have an account with one of them.
2. Pop-Up Shops Provide Three-Dimensional Black-Friday Ecommerce Experiences
In preparation for this coming holiday season, it might be time to step away from your screen. There’s a world out there.
Tom McGee, president and CEO of ICSC, said, “The convergence of physical and digital continues to be important as consumers have come to expect an integrated experience allowing them to buy products through a variety of channels.”
What does this mean for you? Pop-up shops.
McGee continues, “The survey data proves that omnichannel retailers are the real winners this season.” Google recognized this early on when they created Google Local Inventory Ads to show online shoppers product availability in nearby stores.
In their post-holiday shopping survey, the ICSC found that 61% of people who bought items online to pick up in-store, bought another item in-person when they came to pick it up.
You can also attract new customers. Katherine Hill, Director of Offline at BaubleBar, said in an interview with Retail TouchPoints, “We see about half of the people who walk into our pop-up shops have never heard of our brand before … It’s a very strong customer acquisition channel for us.”
But why are pop-up shops so appealing to consumers?
In a poll by PopUp Republic (as reported by VMSD), 61% of people said the top reason to visit a pop-up store was to “find seasonal products.” Other key reasons were to find new and unique products, to shop locally, and to benefit from great prices.
And then there’s the fear of missing out. “The great thing about pop-ups that we find all across the board,” said Jeremy Baras in Shopify’s Ultimate Guide to Pop-Up Shops, “is that they have this ‘fear of missing out’ quality to them.”
Roughly a third of Shopify’s merchants also sell in the physical world, a pop-up shop, a permanent store or at a group venue. Join them and exploit this growing trend during Black Friday.
Read More: https://www.shopify.com/enterprise/black-friday-ecommerce-trends
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