Do you ever rush into a shopping mall at the end of November or December? Scrambled with the others to be the one who brings out the desired goods at a discount. In recent years there are annual events to boost commercial sales by giving promos and discounts. These events are used to encourage customers to buy more goods. They would buy more than they need because the prices are cut down as much cheaper as they can afford. For example, in Black Friday or Christmas sale, there will probably be hundreds or even thousands of people flooded the mall or retail stores just for buying discount items.
These annual events could attract customers to the store up to 50% higher than the average day for several years. As Black Friday history began in the 1960s in the United States, people are coming into commercial stores to watch navy-army football the day after thanksgiving. In the 1980s, commercial stores and business players looked at this as a future market to gain more sales and profit. This marketing strategy could last until this day, thanks to consumerism behavior that is ingrained in society. Shopping sprees at the end of the year becomes a new culture that shapes the business course.
Black Friday and End Year sale are settled as the biggest record sale on the commercial and retail market. Its record is going higher each year, as offline store sales are hitting more than 50% higher every year. Unless for this year alone, the sales are drastically rising higher online. Amid the Coronavirus pandemic and strict lockdown policies affected offline sales, they decreased to 52% than the previous year. According to USA Today, the online sales on 2020 Black Friday break the $9 Billion in revenue. It was 22% higher than the previous year, which just peaked at $7,4 Billion. In China, Massive retailer Alibaba could surpass the online record sales in China’s Single Day Bonanza shopping spree at $75 Billion. It proves that online shopping can boost the profit of businesses who play along in these recent years.
Website role in the online sales event
During these online sales events, the website played an important role in representing the product and businesses behind the curtain. As the online sales rise higher than offline sales, it proves that the customers are spending more on their gadget screen than coming by themself to the store. Several values can improve the website you provide to meet the demand for online sales and avoid undesired problems during the event. You don’t want to lose customers during these strategic times.
Factors that affect the website value on online sales
Trustworthy
The thing that matters the most about selling products online on your website is the customer’s trust. No matter what you’re selling, if the customers didn’t trust your product or business, there will be no conversion made. Start to build customer trust toward your business by showing them the product quality you provide. When customers buy things from a store, they will look at the product and feel it in their hands to prove what they are looking for. If the product had any defect or didn’t meet their expectation, they will leave it. It also works in online shopping. Customers will judge and find out your product’s eligibility based on what you provide on the website. Try to provide an eligible product photo and information so the customers can believe that your products are worth buy. Bring the real product photos, the right description of the product, and other customer’s testimonials to convince them.
Website Appearance (Enjoyment, Attractiveness)
The website appearance not only provides eligibility for the products you sell. It also holds the key to attract customers to visit the website itself. It would be best to make the website attractive enough so the customers wouldn’t be bored to explore more. This attractiveness could increase website engagement. It means more conversions could be done as many as customers visited the website. It can be an improvement in the Interface design so it can appeal to more visitors. While providing an immersive appearance at the interface design, you can also improve the website’s flow so the customers will enjoy their exploration throughout the times. User Experience also holds a crucial aspect of an online sales event. Make sure that your flow is simplified as the customers would be easier to navigate within the website.
Information Design
Besides the website interface and experience that matters to convince the customers, the website’s information also holds the key to support engagement and sales. Creating a stunning website design will not instantly make it recognizable. You also need to mind about the information you provide along with the products. Know about your customers; choose the right approach to persuade them to buy your products. For instance, learn about customer psychological aspects. In the marketing field, there are several strategies to enhance sales by playing with customer psychology.
- Wording
Choose the right wording for different kinds of customers. One wording phrase may attract some customers, but the rest isn’t. If you deliver a product with slang or trendy phrases, older customers wouldn’t understand it. Pick the one that suits their demographic factors. By picking the right wording for a product description, It will deliver the messages and meanings correctly. - Trick the numbers
To increase sales and conversion rate from customers, you can play with their visual and perception. For pricing, try to make the price lower by one digit. A product may cost $5 per item. But you can change the price label on it to $4,99. Customers **may consider the price is lower because they would see it as $4 and ignore the nine behind. They will pay $5 because the value of the product is still the same. The customer perspective will drive them to buy more products consciously, but with a different view. - Duration
Time can also drive product sales by giving the right amount of discount event duration. It is tricky, but we can make the customers think twice before they left our website page. If you put a sale in just two days, it will emerge the customers’ urgencies thinking. They would choose between taking the chance to get the products on sale or just leaving it. The urgency can drive them not to miss that opportunity. This was a plus point to applied within your marketing strategy.
- Information design — — — — — — —
- Visual design — — — — — — — Online Trust — — — — — Purchase Intention/Perceived risk
- Navigation design — — — — — — —
What to Improve
Customer trust and security:
As we already described above, improving the customer trust toward our products and business is a must. To ensure that your product and business are eligible enough from the customer’s perspective, you need to improve several website aspects. Enhance the customers’ experience to feel more secure in making transactions within your website by providing them with a secure payment method. It can be a partnership with trusted banks and finance providers. Or it can be an encrypted transaction between the customers and sellers. Make the user accounts on the website to be more secure with a solid password or Two-factor verification. To ensure your customer satisfaction, you can provide customer services such as Helpdesk, chatbot, FAQ page, and store policies.
Payments, Customer Accounts, Customer Service, Helpdesk, FAQ, Store Policies.
User Interface Design, Make it frictionless.
We can improve the interface design to enhance website performance during the sale event. Nobody wants to be baffled by the complexity of a website interface during a rush hour sale. To ease customers interacting with your website, you need to do these things and implement them in your design.
Distraction Pop-up, Hierarchy
To ease customers interacting with the website you provide, you need to minimize distraction throughout the interface design. Try to make your interface design hierarchy simplified enough so the customers didn’t confuse. Re-arrange your design hierarchy to be more user-friendly enough. To avoid customer confusion, you also need to mind the pop-up that floats around the main screen. These pop-ups may contain ads and any other third parties notification that can distract customers. Many of them would be upset while seeing too many unnecessary pop-ups blocked their sight toward the website screen.
Relatability Filter & Queries, Quick View
The other thing that is necessary to improve the interface design is the relatability of the products you provide. You can make the consumers feel more relatable with the product they want to find by filtering their search. Put a product filter function on the search bar. They could be easier to explore based on specific products. It may improve the sales rate while at the online sale event. It could decrease their time and made a shortcut way to the desired products.
Simplified CTA ( Shopping Cart )
Do you want to make a higher conversion rate? Try to make the CTA or Call To Action button as simple as a blinking eye. CTA is considered a powerful tool at the website to drive consumers to do interactions within. A shopping cart button is a common CTA form for customers to convert or buy a product. If you can make that button more simple and easier to reach, customers would be eager to interact as soon as they are interested in the products.
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Contributor : Abdul Hamid
