Ah, Black Friday. A highly exciting day for shoppers. A far more stressful event for retailers and eCommerce businesses. Tis the season for higher levels of activity in online marketing, seasonal offers and online shopping. So, is this year any different, and what do we think is going to happen?
At Webselect, we have been reflecting on the preparations this year for Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) and the Christmas ramp up for online sales and ecommerce. But how will the current economic crisis impact arguably the most important period in a retailer’s calendar? It is certainly a challenging time. High inflation, the Bank of England forecasting a deep recession, fuel prices, risk of seasonal epidemic… the list goes on. We are all aware of the issues, many out of our control, but what can we do about this?
First of all, we can stay focused, positive and realistic. It’s not all bad news, even before the pandemic years, online sales were trending up, with more people shopping online than in-stores. A whopping 142.2 million shopped online, vs 124 million in-store according to the National Retail Federation.
What happened last year?
Last year’s results were disappointing for retailers, and Black Friday itself dropped by -14.3% in 2021, which was measured year-on-year against an incredibly hard-to-top 2020 at +38% ( IMRG Capgemini digital dashboard). With the high street opening, retailers struggled to see the same revenue in 2021 as in 2020. So, taking a look at the results from the previous year may shed some light on how Black Friday 2022 could pan out.
Black Friday 2021 can best be summarised with these key points:
- Sales campaigns moved earlier into the month of November
- Revenue dropped ~14% YoY overall; (although 2020 was a huge increase)
- Traffic dropped away, meaning there was competition for customers to even browse retailers’ sites in the first place
- Increase in ‘buy now pay later’ services and decrease in use of debit/credit card spend
The view of 2022 Q4 eCommerce:
- Peak Season is starting earlier and lasting longer. It seems the urgent rush for a 24 hour period of mad discounts has evolved, with longer periods of discounts starting earlier in November becoming more the norm. This is proving to be the case with many of our clients, and is evident from data collected for a number of years from IMRG. The benefits of extending the discount period over Black Friday/Cyber Monday is that this becomes easier for retailers to manage in terms of stock, shipping and utilising tools for nudge direct marketing. It also helps to manage shoppers’ expectations of discounts and stock levels.
- Reduction in discounts. During Cyber Week, the global average discount rate fell from *26% in 2020 to 24% in 2021. This trend is expected to continue in 2022.
- Change in payment options. For the first time, the share of online orders placed via credit card has declined. Customers instead opted for convenience, using financing tools like buy now, pay later (BNPL), with purchases made via BNPL increasing by *29%.
- Social commerce is becoming a hot topic the world over. Studies show that the US social commerce market skyrocketed by almost *38% to $26.77 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach $80 billion annually by 2025. Globally, 97% of Gen Z consumers use social media as their top source of shopping inspiration. We have looked into this further ourselves recently and wrote about it here.
There are several threats/opportunities posed to online retail sales in Q4 2022, with issues such as traffic being distracted by the World Cup; the cost of living crisis forcing consumers to spend less; strikes and impact to deliveries and postal system; and generally poor market performance so far this year. However, stay positive. If your brand is strong, you have well-targeted marketing and media campaigns that are backed up with a consistently performing, excellent ecommerce experience that is frictionless, a broad range of payment options and tools and is easy to navigate, you can help yourself.
Converting your traffic is where you can focus and have control in a world of issues out of your control. Once a user lands on your site, it’s for you to then lose. A consistently solid shopping experience is the last and most important step in the chain.
Often at Webselect we see clients come to us with sites that have been bloated with lots of ‘quick fix’ plug-ins and integrations, many are generic and are full of redundant code you don’t need and the effect is a slower and underperforming site. In addition, not having a video and Image management strategy impacts performance, a poor check out experience, and not being optimised for mobile (yes this is something we still encounter) can also impact your site. A good platform should have these 3rd party services as standard.
At this point in the year, we are waiting to see how this pre-Christmas period plays out, and have our fingers are crossed for everyone in the online retail space. We will be doing all we can to support our clients and guide them through this busy period. However, taking stock quickly and then planning early in Q1 2023 to spend appropriately on the things that matter, execute and sustain for next year will see the difference between thriving and surviving.
This year we pushed ourselves to put our name forward for some awards, officially so we could discover which areas we needed to improve on, but also because everyone likes winning awards.
Through this process we entered an award to see how our team fared when in competition with others, not expecting too much. We were pleasantly surprised by the results of getting a Silver award for the ‘Best eCommerce Team 2022’!
The biggest bonus with winning this award is that we’re now allowed to call ourselves an “Award Winning eCommerce Team”.
Team engagement and interaction plays a big part of our ethos of Respect, Inspiration and Integrity.
We are committed to our team, and building a close community with each other, so it’s really lovely that this has been recognised externally too.
Here at Webselect Ltd we have been reflecting on the topics picked up in discussions when attending the ecom expo in London last month.
Amongst other topics, the online shopping expectations of ‘Generation Z’ is a thing, a big thing… Not being part of this generation myself (I’m Gen X – AKA old) I thought we should get the opinion of someone in this age group who works for us…. This is their take:
What and who are Generation Z?
Generation Z are the generation born between 1997 – 2012 (Santora, 2022). This generation will have a significant impact on eCommerce and will form the vast majority of customers online. Our combined purchasing power was more than £130 Billion last year (Santora, 2022).
Gen-Z’s psyche is similar to those of millennials, but we have different expectations when it comes to service and value for money. Unlike past generations, we have grown up alongside social media. For us, sites and apps such as Facebook and Snapchat are not only used to communicate occasionally with friends and family, they are an integral part of our daily lives and provide a means of expression and inspiration – as a result positive customer sentiment is expected to be collected and integrated into a website, but if the content seems too alike it appears that it could not be genuine.
Gen-Z’s are also highly dedicated to ethics, with almost 1:5 saying that they were swayed by brand ethics when making a purchase decision (Djafarova & Foots, 2022). And some companies that are dedicated to scale and profit, fall completely off their radar. When I was working at a well known UK retail store, if there were known issues or problems with a brand, I noticed my peers wouldn’t go near the brand, even asking for anything but the brand (Positive avoidance). As a result, developing, honing and communicating brand ethical values will be essential for online success with my generation.. This being said, we are also impatient and expectations on delivery are high, we want delivery of products within 3-12 hours (Jules, 2022). So managing these expectations AND performing ethically is a major contradictory challenge
How do we shop?
Guess what? – We no longer use google as a main source of information but we do use social media first and then check google for confirmation. This is a direct result of wanting to ‘buy’ information from people not brands and the same goes with products, if your product has some good genuine publicity on a social media platform then we, Gen-Z’s will interact more with the product (Djafarova & Foots, 2022). Another change that is happening with marketing as a result of social marketing and social Commerce has led to Gen-Z’s attention span dropping from 12 seconds to 1.7 seconds. That’s right, if you don’t get our attention in 1.7 seconds we will move on (Stefanski). Research has shown the best way to reach out and influence Gen-Z is through affiliate programs using ‘trusted’ Influencers to boost products and trust in a brand, this is supported by the desire to connect to like minded individuals who can give true reviews on products – In my experience this is true, if a company tries to sell you something it’s for sales, if someone you like gives you positive feedback it is easier to trust the person.
What interests us when shopping online?
The best way to get a Gen-Zer interested in a product is by giving us information on the product, a demo of its uses – We love a story – why we should invest our time, money and life into the product. This is sometimes more important than the actual price, but still do tell us the price!
When marketing to a Gen-Z, don’t bull*hit us, we are, in the main super smart and aware, the use of ‘buzzwords’ does not work as well as it used to (Kim, 2022), if I was to read – “Our bean juice is the most luxurious bean juice that is made with 100% pure organic beans that have been squeezed into each portion, in a way that will definitely change the way you live your life”,
1. It sounds like every other bean juice on the market .. Boring..
2. Yes, sustainability is good but, it tells me nothing of how your product is better than all the other bean juices, tell me why I should pick your bean juice. We don’t like to be sold to, so give me the genuine reason behind a product. And don’t lie to Gen-Z’s as we have really good common sense (ok maybe not) but we can pick out lies really quickly, and above all, don’t make claims that you can’t back up. If I am interested and do the research behind a product and we have been lied to in any way then we will not buy from you.
We can be loyal
If a Gen-Z buys from you once, more than likely, we will buy from you again – We are often seen as disloyal and having to be coaxed back into a brand by using loyalty programs, but this is not necessarily the case, if we like your company and product then we will most likely come back to you time and time again. If you have a pipeline for your reviews to get onto a social media platform we will want to see as many of the reviews as possible, that is why Amazon’s reviews are everywhere. The funny, the good and the bad are always being posted to constantly make people think about their company – A series of authentic reviews can lead to a 82% conversion rate (Brzezicki, 2022).
So what
Earlier I mentioned about old marketing tactics of using buzz words, they can still be used, but the way that they are used should be changed (Kim, 2022). Instead of free use complimentary, instead of Features use Benefits and instead of Objections use Concerns. Trying to sound too corporate is a surefire way to ensure that Gen-Z’s will leave, but by adding an occasional slag / ‘real’ word into the communication can make it sound a bit more relaxed, as a result this can help you connect with us and allow you to present the sales email as a bit more of a conversation.
By throwing a few slang words into the text allows the flow of a sentence to evolve from a simple sentence to a complex but easy to read;
“This is to show how a simple bit of text could be improved to make use of appealing text and keep the same relaxed style of writing so that it will be more appealing to Gen-Z”
“To show how a bit of text could hit different, I decided to make this text a bit longer but still keeping to short words to make sure that the vibe is right so that it will be more appealing to Gen-Z”
The second sentence uses two slang terms – “hit different” and “vibe”;
Hit different – to give a positive reflection of what is happening or being said. So in the text it is used as “To show how a bit of text could get the point across and inspire”.
Vibe – the atmosphere, for the vibe to be good it is relaxed. For a bad vibe or the vibe being off then the atmosphere is more like a riot, chaotic/aggressive.
These two slang terms could also be used at the same time “The vibe hit different”, this would mean that: “The atmosphere was amazing. I want more of that in the world” – good event. Or. “The atmosphere was horrific. I never want to feel that again” – bad event.
If you are ‘OK Boomer’, (look it up) don’t worry, talk to someone in the generation you want to reach and get their input on the copy you write – Tone and slang on social channels may and probably should, be different to the tone and vocabulary on your website.