Is your brick-and-mortar or eCommerce store prepared for the onslaught of customers during these three days? The best way to prepare your business for any challenge is by equipping yourself with information. One of the most important component of your Black Friday/Cyber Monday plans may be your credit card processing solution. Is your business ready?
Black Friday is a day that merchants both hate and love as well as a critical part of their financial success. Performing well on the weekend immediately following Thanksgiving can amount to a large proportion of the annual profits for a business.
Black Friday Fast Facts and Tips
Data released by Adobe Analytics last year revealed that Black Friday sales are breaking records every year - with $7.9 billion spent on the following Cyber Monday online shopping after the already massive $6.2 billion spent in stores on for Black Friday 2018. Last year was also the first Cyber Monday on record where over half of visits and purchases came from mobile devices. While these numbers are impressive on their own, they speak even more powerfully when compared to previous years. Growth in sales by dollars for Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday for 2018 were 28%, 23.6%, and 19.7% respectively. Buy Online, Pickup In-Store also increased over the holiday weekend by 50%.
With figures that staggering, it’s no wonder business owners want to cash in on the action. With that in mind, here are some important tips to maximize profits on Black Friday for your business:
According to data from Adobe Analytics, 2018 was a showstopping year for Black Friday Weekend shopping. Cyber Monday sales alone reached past $7.9 billion. This doesn’t just make it one successful business day in one good year; it’s the single largest shopping day in the entirety of United States history. With all that volume, you need to make sure that your processing and your support are up to the task.
Another important element for business owners to consider is whether or not the available product stock on hand will be enough for the Black Friday rush. According to the Adobe Analytics data, 2.4 percent of product page visits saw an out-of-stock message on Cyber Monday, costing those retailers up to $187 million in potential sales.
How do most business owners land the sales on their eCommerce websites for this auspicious weekend? The answer is, it varies. On Cyber Monday, direct website traffic ranked highest for driving revenue at 25.3 percent share of sales (down 1.2 percent YoY), followed by paid search at 25.1 percent (up 7.4 percent YoY), natural search at 18.8 percent (down 2.8 percent) and email at 24.2 percent (up 0.5 percent). Similar to past years, social media continued to have minimal impact on online sales at a 1.1 percent share.
Whether it's through social media posts, enticing deals and doorbuster discounts, or traditional advertising, find an inexpensive way to let potential customers know who you are, what items you'll be selling, and why they should plan to go to your store.
Ensuring that your payment processing solution is good enough to cover Black Friday needs
Are you prepared for this crazy weekend? The answer may lie in the state of your current credit card processing system. Customers who come to your store during this time will either be impressed by how smooth and convenient the payment process is - or disappointed by long lines, error messages, and convoluted system entries. Checkout abandonment is a key challenge for any eCommerce retailer because if you don’t have a smooth payment experience you can lose the customer and the sale.
Satisfied customers, who experience a positive checkout experience, during Black Friday don't just translate into sales next year but also could mean return visits and positive word-of-mouth messages to their friends and family.
We know how critical these times can be for our merchants, that's why REPAY remain committed to maintaining our standard of excellence for our clients through the entire holiday season. Our merchant solutions come ready-made to handle any workload, and we can prove it!
99% Uptime (don't let downtime steal your sales!)
For example, our 99% uptime rate is critical for businesses at all times, but especially during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Don’t miss out on any potential sales due to IT and payment processing downtime, as it can be costly. IHS Markit reported that businesses could be losing around $700 billion every single year due to IT downtime.
How do we ensure our uptime rate? Simple. Our fail-over systems ensure that if one server goes down, the environment is brought up in another server within seconds. In additional, our consistent API responses are a part of the smooth transaction processes that is key to preventing downtime. If your processor is returning responses that means the system is receiving the request but the responses break down, resulting in downtime for merchants.
Support
Another important feature of any payment processing provider is merchant support. This is even more vital during the busy holiday rush.It is important that you carefully evaluate your current processor to determine if they have the right customer service and tech support for your business.
Are you having Cyber Monday sales late into the night? No problem. REPAY has 24/7 live support. If a problem arises for your business at any time of day or night, you would have access to a real human to walk you through getting the help you need.
Having trouble managing your system? The REPAY white glove customer support provides an expert member of our team dedicated to solving your problems.
Flexibility
What if something goes wrong with your terminal, your online portal, or you need to switch processing services overnight? With REPAY, if you have a problem or a question, you have access to top-level engineers who wrote the integration that you’re working on. Our development team can work on your problem and often solve the problem in hours or minutes. The sales rep that signs your account is on standby to answer your questions or escalate your problems through our chain of command. When you process with REPAY, our team of experts is working for you!
Integrated Payments
The final piece to the puzzle is ensuring that your payment solution is integrated within the business systems you already use. After the rush of the weekend, the last thing you and your team will want to do is worry about entering the day’s ticket manually into your system. Eliminating manual entry ensures that your business secures the best rates, saves time and money, and reduces the risk of entry error. Your integrated payments solution should facilitate that with a seamless, easy to use experience.
Avoid having your business come to a standstill during Black Friday with downtime, poor support, or non-integrated solutions. REPAY offers omni-channel payment processing as an alternative to the other payment solutions and provides seamless integration to help you save time and money and experience frictionless payments! With 24/7 Live Support and the ability to take you live in 24 hours...Don't let your current provider keep you from Cyber Monday sales and Black Friday success - let REPAY be your hero!