‘Tis the season: A Black Friday e-commerce checklist
As shoppers increasingly move online for holiday shopping, retailers must plan in advance with a Black Friday e-commerce checklist.
The 2021 U.S. holiday shopping season generated the highest year over year growth in more than 20 years. However, the last six months have brought a shift in the US economic climate, casting a cloud of uncertainty for retailers.
Brands are preparing for whatever the retail holiday shopping season brings by applying lessons learned and hoping for the best.
Surrounded by so much uncertainty, retailers need to focus on what’s in their control as the 2022 holiday shopping season gets under way:
- Ramping up customer loyalty
- Getting serious about omnichannel
- Boosting supply chain visibility
Holiday shopping 2022: A changing tide
Last year’s historic retail growth of more than 16 percent was driven by a variety of factors. Consumers benefited from a strong job market, increasing wages, and government stimulus, all of which increased discretionary income.
Retailers, in anticipation of supply chain issues, encouraged early shopping with Black Friday promotions unveiled as early as October, pulling demand forward. Retailers then curtailed promotions later in the season to help boost bottom lines. The result was a longer, “flatter” (in terms of sales) holiday shopping season.
Unfortunately, the current economy doesn’t bode well for the 2022 holiday shopping season. Retailers and consumers alike continue to feel the pain of supply chain delays, rising costs, and labor shortages as the country looks to enter a recession. Consumer spending has already slowed down as inflation reaches record highs.
Nearly 9 in 10 (89%) of consumers expect inflation to impact their 2022 holiday shopping — 59% expect the impact to be moderate or significant.
‘Tis the season for building customer loyalty
Ideally, building customer loyalty is an ongoing effort so when the unexpected happens – a shipping delay, for example – customers shrug it off. But it’s especially important for the 2022 holiday shopping season.
Retailers that deprioritized customer loyalty initiatives during the pandemic should focus on ramping them back up. Take another look at your customer rewards program and create a plan for re-engaging customers now and through the holiday season.
Give them a reason to shop early and opportunities to earn rewards that can be used during the traditional holiday shopping season, perhaps when larger promotions are scaled back.
Pay special attention to customer communications. Acknowledge that consumers are shopping early and reward them for doing so – it’s to your benefit, too.
Provide visibility into inventory as well as shipping times and status so that consumers can make educated buying decisions. Better to lose a single sale upfront because you can’t deliver on time then to make the sale, deliver late, and lose the customer for life.
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Omnichannel for the best holiday shopping CX
Retail sales grew across multiple channels last holiday season. Brick-and-mortar retail surpassed e-commerce growth for the first time on record. And yet, e-commerce growth reached double digits, rising to 10.4%. M-commerce accounted for almost 46% of holiday ecommerce sales, as estimated by Insider Intelligence.
Clearly, retailers need to double down on their omnichannel strategy.
Holiday omnichannel: Winning Black Friday and Cyber Monday
Shoppers want flexibility, making an omnichannel holiday strategy critical for retailers to win Black Friday and Cyber Monday this season.
As customers increasingly diversify their shopping habits across multiple channels, it becomes obvious when retailers operate those channels in silos.
Share customer data across channels to provide a consistent experience. If a customer adds an item to their shopping cart on the website, the app should reflect that as well.
Other information such as recent purchases, rewards points, order status, etc., should be available to the customer across every channel.
Heading off supply chain snafus
The past couple years have highlighted the brittle nature of the retail supply chain.
Transforming the supply chain for agility and resilience will take time. Retailers can start now by connecting disparate data systems to obtain end-to-end visibility.
Global holiday supply chain issues could be a real bummer this season
Supply chain woes threaten to spoil the holiday shopping season with higher prices, more out-of-stock items, and delayed shipments.
This visibility, along with predictive analytics, can enable retailers to see potential issues coming down the pipeline before they impact sales and the customer experience during the height of the holiday shopping season. For example, promotions can be directed at channels where inventory is high, and customers can be kept better apprised of product availability.
The steps retailers take now to fortify their supply chain, along with boosting customer loyalty and going omnichannel will have a lasting benefit – not only help retailers weather whatever the 2022 shopping season brings, but also improving customer relationships and profitability for years to come.
