Can Your Ecommerce Network Handle the Black Friday Rush?

Black Friday is the biggest day of the year for many retailers. While Cyber Monday is the official pre-holiday sale day for online stores, Black Friday is an enormously profitable day in ecommerce as well. In 2016, shoppers spent $3.45 billion online on Cyber Monday. But they only spent $110 less than that on their Black Friday ecommerce purchases.

Since both of these days see such remarkable spikes in sales, it’s important your ecommerce network can handle the Black Friday rush.

Black Friday 2017

Run Performance Tests Ahead of Time

Since Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the two days when the most people are going to be shopping online, you have to make sure your site is ready for an influx of traffic before those days. There are several sites out there you can use to test the load speed of your site. If you’re not expecting a ton of traffic to your site, this isn’t as important. However, for ecommerce stores that are anticipating a major rush, load speed is imperative.

Slow load speeds will lead to you losing sales. According to research compiled by Kissmetrics, 25 percent of people will abandon a page after just four seconds of loading. You will quickly get people leaving your page if your site’s load speed isn’t fast enough.

There are a few ways you can improve load speed. First, make sure you remove any unnecessary plugins or lines of code. These will slow down your load speeds. You should also do an enterprise ecommerce platform comparison in order to determine which providers have the best load speeds.

You can’t afford to be losing customers to the competition on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Make Sure Your Site Won’t Experience Down Time

As already stated, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are such short buying periods, you can’t afford for your ecommerce store to be out of commission for any amount of time. It’s essential that your ecommerce platform guarantees almost full uptime. Otherwise, it’s possible that you will see your store going down at the worst possible moment.

Ecommerce transaction

Ensure Your Site Can Be Scaled If Needed

Most ecommerce providers offer several levels of service. Smaller stores will often go with a less expensive option that has limited features. However, small stores sometimes need to act like big ones during the holiday season. This is why you need to go with an ecommerce platform that can quickly scale up your store if you need it. This is important for higher levels of traffic and sales, as some providers cap performance at certain pay levels.

Your Ecommerce Provider Should Be Keen on Security

Shoppers aren’t the only ones who will be showing up on Black Friday. Hackers love the holiday season too. Your ecommerce provider should take cyber security seriously. Your customers’ data can be put at risk if any software or firewalls aren’t up to date. People won’t be happy if a weakness in your site compromises their data. This is a great way to lose loyal customers.

Make Sure You Can Set Firm Sell Limits

If you have a popular item in your store, it’s possible your inventory will sell out on Black Friday or Cyber Monday. You can end up in a sticky situation if your ecommerce platform allows people to continue purchasing this product after you’ve run out. Ensure you can set firm sell limits on all of your products. Even if you don’t expect to sell out, it’s a good idea to set inventory limits just in case you get a sudden burst of sales.

There are definitive differences between the various ecommerce platforms. Make sure your online store uses one that sets it up for Black Friday success.