As the year progresses, every e-commerce retailer has a single date circled in red on the calendar: Black Friday. Known for pushing even the most organised online stores to their limits, Black Friday offers both an opportunity and a challenge. Magento, being one of the most robust e-commerce platforms out there, gives you the flexibility and features to survive this shopping frenzy—if you’re well-prepared.
In this article, we will cover the top 5 tips that will help your Magento store not only survive but thrive this Black Friday.
1. Test Your Web Server for Traffic Surges
Your server is like the foundation of a building: robust and stable until an unforeseen situation—like a traffic surge—shakes it to its core. Black Friday is one such event where traffic spikes are not only expected but also inevitable.
With this in mind, it’s crucial to test the server’s capabilities in handling increased traffic. Load testing tools like Apache JMeter or LoadImpact can simulate different scenarios to gauge your server’s performance.
Immediate Actions:
- Run a series of stress tests to emulate high traffic.
- Implement a full page caching tool such as Varnish to reduce the load put on your server.
- Consult with your hosting provider on how you can implement a scalable hosting solution that scales depending on the needs of your website.
2. Optimise Your Websites Page Speed Performance
It’s proven that your websites performance is linked directly to your conversion rate. Put simply, the faster your website performs the more revenue it will generate. During a peak shopping season like BFCM, ensuring that your website passes Core Web Vitals is a sure way to increase revenue.
Immediate Actions:
- Run your website through a speed analysis tool such as Page Speed Insights, RUM Vision or GTMetrix.
- Using the data from these tools lease with your development agency on how to implement the suggested changes.
- Have the changes implemented well ahead of BFCM.
- Run the reports again to ensure the changes have had a positive affect.
3. Ensure You Have an Effective Retention Strategy
Customer retention is as important as customer acquisition. While bringing in new customers is crucial for Black Friday, you must ensure that you have an effective customer retention strategy in place to keep them coming back for more. This is where marketing tools such as Klaviyo can be immensely helpful. Klaviyo offers pre-built automations that can be customised to fit your Magento store’s specific needs.
Immediate Actions:
- Use Klaviyo to send targeted emails, highlighting your Black Friday offers to existing customers.
- Implement abandoned cart sequences to salvage lost sales.
- Use behavioral triggers based on past purchase history for personalised recommendations.
- Ask customers to subscribe to your newsletter at checkout and in promo popups across the website.
- Implement an effective welcome series flow to introduce your brand and best selling products to new subscribers.
4. Optimise the Relevancy of Your Search Results
With hundreds or even thousands of products listed, your search function must work flawlessly and provide highly relevant results to customers. It is proven that customers who use the search feature on your website are more likely to convert.
Using search tools such as Klevu can completely automate this process for you using machine learning. The Klevu service can integrate with your Magento website to offer highly relevant search results. When the clock is ticking, and customers are in a rush to find their desired products, Klevu ensures they find what they’re looking for—fast.
If Klevu is outside your budget, then look at free tools such as Elasticsuite which can offer more relevant search results than the out of the box Magento search feature.
Immediate Actions:
- Implement a 3rd party search service or extension to increase the relevancy of your websites search results.
- Include popular Black Friday search queries in your search dropdown to suggest what customers may want to search for based on search history from all of your customers..
- Use search analytics to identify what popular search terms are returning 0 results and implement changes accordingly.
5. Organise Your Upcoming Sales and Plan Ahead
A well-thought-out plan is your best friend during the hectic Black Friday season. From inventory management to marketing campaigns, everything needs to be meticulously planned.
Immediate Actions:
- Use Magento’s native promotional settings like widgets and CMS blocks to position marketing callouts across your site in prominent locations.
- Create all of the required assets and apply this to your staging site months before and seek sign off from relevant stakeholders within your business.
- Create a content calendar to schedule all social media posts, emails, and advertisements.
- Test all promotional codes and offers to ensure they work seamlessly.
Summary
By focusing on these five aspects—server capability, website performance, customer retention, search relevance and planning ahead —you can be better prepared for the Black Friday shopping season. With Magento as your ecommerce platform and tools like Klaviyo and Klevu in your arsenal, you have every reason to look forward to record-breaking sales numbers. So, put these tips into action and gear up for a successful Black Friday!
Need a hand in doing so? As a specialist Magento agency we know exactly how to get the best out of your ecommerce platform. Get in touch with us today and lets start the conversation!