Black Friday is one of the biggest days of the year in the retail calendar. Consumers take this as an opportunity to bag themselves some serious bargains, even waiting in huge queues and battling with other shoppers to get the goods. With shoppers eager to get a good price, especially in the run up to Christmas, retailers take advantage of the attention by slashing their prices and offering one-time only deals.
With the e-commerce industry booming, Black Friday also presented a great opportunity for businesses to extend their deals to their online stores, with some even offering special deals throughout the month of November, not just on Black Friday itself.
But if you’re hoping to make the most of this huge retail event, you need to let your customers know you’re taking part. The best way to do this is with a Black Friday landing page on your e-commerce site. To help you get this right, we’ve pulled together eight of your top tips for designing the perfect Black Friday landing page, so you can boost your sales this year!
Make it bold
Your landing page is designed to grab the consumer’s attention, so it needs to stand out. As such, you’ll want to create a Black Friday banner that is bold and to the point. At this stage, be sure to let your customers know what’s on offer. For example, add a clear statement such as ‘Buy One Get One Free’ or ‘Up to 50% off’. Use a big, bold font that is easy to read but stands out. You might wish to include the colour black in your banner (after all, it’s Black Friday) so use a brighter colour (or two) that contrasts with this making it more attention-grabbing.
But don’t go over the top
That being said, you don’t want to go overboard and cram your banner full of text, images and different colours. This can be very overwhelming or could distract from your actual message. It’s important that you put some careful thought into the design of your page and banner to keep it simple and effective.
Keep your pages and messaging simple
On a similar note, you need to keep your messaging simple across your landing page. As mentioned above, carefully display the deals you have on offer and let customers know how long they have to enjoy these deals. It might be the case that you’re only running your sale on Black Friday and that’s OK, just be sure to let visitors know.
As for the rest of your page, try to keep text to a minimum and keep it short and sweet where necessary. If you cram the page full of different text boxes, banners and images, again, it can become overwhelming and confusing. In order to get your message across as quickly and effectively as possible, keep both your page and your messages simple.
Create a sense of urgency
We’ve briefly touched on letting customers know how long they have to enjoy your offers, but it also pays to use persuasive language and your banners to create a sense of urgency and exclusivity. This can help to encourage consumers to make a purchase. By including phrases such as ‘limited time offer’ and ‘for one day only’ you can push them to act quickly and make the most of your offers.
Keep your banners above the fold
On Black Friday it’s likely that consumers will be hopping from site to site to try and find the best bargains, so you want to make the experience as easy as possible for them. Keeping your Black Friday banner above the fold captures their attention as soon as they get to your site and allows them to clickthrough and get to where they want to be as quickly as possible. Doing this also increases the chance of a ‘window’ shopper or passing visitor making a quick sale even if they hadn’t originally intended to.
Make sure you add CTAs
It’s also important that you include a call to action (CTA) or two across your landing page. You need to make it as easy as possible for the consumer to make a purchase and this is done through CTAs. You could have buttons or links that take consumers directly to where they need to be. For example, a button that says ‘buy now’ or ‘shop the range’. Or if you really want to make it simple and personalise the experience a bit more, you could include a button that says ‘I want it’.
CTAs like this make the customer experience as simple and enjoyable as possible, rather than having to spend ages (OK, minutes but on the internet that can feel like a lifetime) navigating their way through your site. This increases your chances of making a sale.
Make sure it’s quick to load and responsive
One of the most important parts of a perfect landing page after the design is the loading time. If your pages takes more than a few seconds to load then you could lose out on sales. Yep, you read that right! Today’s consumers are impatient and if a page takes more than a few seconds to load they may abandon it. In fact, on average, pages that took longer than five-seconds to load saw a bounce rate of 38% or higher.
You also need to make sure your landing page is optimised for mobile as millions of people now shop through their smart devices.
Include your key selling points
Lastly, Black Friday can be one of the most competitive days of the year for retailers and so you need to give consumers a reason to choose your over your main competitors. So to do this, the perfect landing page must let them know why your store/products are so great – even if it’s because on this occasion you’re offering a bigger discount than other stores in your niche.
One of the best ways to do this and to ensure a sleek design is to use bullet points outlining a few of your key selling points. This can quickly let customers know why they need to take advantage of your sale and make a purchase there and then.
Written by Caroline Perry, Blog Editor at Irish Parcels. Find the best shipping option for your business with their courier comparison tool.