November is here and the expectations for the great promotions that take place on Black Friday have already started.
Given the current situation, it is believed that this will be the most digital Black Friday in history, mainly considering the need to control and reduce footfall in physical stores, and closed environments. In other words, there is a potentialfor a big increase (in addition to the already known and expected) of demand in online shopping in this period.
And to guarantee success in this scenario, many e-commerce sites have already started their preparations with some actions to avoid systemic overload, fraud and unavailability.
We have several e-commerce sites in the market and usually in October the preparation process for Black Friday starts. Below, we will outlinesome of these actions so that you can also pay attention and ensure that your service will be working with quality in this period.
Conducting the stress test (overload or performance test) is a preparation of the environment together with numerous loads of information/requisition, simulating this scenario of simultaneous accesses and various sales and product searches in a short period of time.
In this period, it is also necessary to have teams focused and closely monitoring, so it is possible to ensure that the entire system will be available and if any unexpected event takes place, this team can take actions and measures quickly and, consequently, prevent a greater impact.
During all tests, it is necessary to follow up to identify potential improvements and adjustments before Black Friday.
Actions to detect fraud and avoid price increases before Black Friday (avoid the famous “half the double”). With this, it is possible to guarantee a good promotion to consumers and transparency in the commercialization of products.
With this, the team is focused 100% on improvements and fixes during the preparation for Black Friday, besides being able to reduce potential scenarios that may generate errors or change a process.
After the 5 steps on how to prepare for Black Friday, remember:
In addition to all these actions, it is important to note that Black Friday does not only occur on the 4th Friday of the month but covers a large period and it is often invisible to consumers.
Usually, before this period, there is also an increase in the demand for new merchants to sell in these e-commerce sites and with that, before starting a Black Friday, close monitoring is necessary to guarantee quality and stability in this time of increased sales.
After Black Friday, it is important that all merchants who had sales move forward and have agility to deliver the orders, updating their status so that the customer can follow up until receipt.
It is worth remembering that the preparation for this date is also the responsibility of merchants and of extreme commercial importance.
It is necessary to be prepared with physical inventory and with great control and synchronization (both in sales in more than one e-commerce and in omnichannel sales – for example, sales in marketplace, own website and physical store), having as the primary point of attention to ensure that there are no out-of-stocks, consequently leveraging the store’s reputation, ensuring the delivery of purchased products to the end consumer and retaining customers.
After this period of hard work and effort to guarantee a good experience for the customer and also for the merchants, who have a great increase in sales and greater traffic to their product showcase, it becomes the moment to celebrate.
These periods generate great results that must be shared, but they also bring good challenges for the teams and require a great effort from everyone involved, so celebrate the results and dedication with your teams and partners!