Be prepared for the sales season

Here are some online sales you may want to add to your calendar:

• Click Frenzy: an online shopping experience that works with businesses to promote all the best deals and exclusive offers. Customers can browse through deals and once they’re ready to make a purchase they will be linked through to the business website to complete purchases. The main online shopping event is at the end of October.
• Black Friday: it is the biggest sale shopping day in the United States (the day after Thanksgiving). In the last few years, Australian businesses have also started to do sales on Black Friday. This year it will be on Friday, 24 November.
• Small Business Saturday: on the Saturday between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it’s a day to encourage people to shop from small businesses. This year it will be on Saturday, 25 November.
• Cyber Monday: falling on the Monday after Black Friday, Cyber Monday is an annual one-day online shopping event. This year it’s on Monday, 27 November.
• Boxing Day: for years the Boxing Day sale was the biggest Australian sale of the year, starting on the day after Christmas. This year it will be on Tuesday, 26 December.

1. Add a click-and-collect option to your online shop to help save you and your customers the cost of shipping.
2. Check your bandwidth can handle an increase in traffic to your website on sale days.
3. Adapt your sale to what customers a looking for at the time, for example:
   • In pre-Christmas sales customers are thinking about gifts for the holiday season. You may want to add gift ideas or provide the option for gift wrapping.
   • In post-Christmas you may want to sell your holiday season stock, so consider a higher discount.
4. Review your analytics to help promote what your customers have been purchasing recently.
5. Mix it up for each sale event, you could do different discounts or deals for different sale days.
6. If you want to take part in the online sales, but don’t want to damage your profit margin you could consider other options, such as:
   • free or cheaper shipping if the customer spends a specific amount
   • extended returns
   • quantity discounts (example: buy 3, get 10% off)
   • gift with purchase.
7. Promote your sale on social media and through your newsletter and consider:
   • using related sale hashtags to widen your reach
   • offer exclusive sales or early bird deals to your followers and subscribers
   • run a competition or ask your followers to post in exchange to win a prize.
8. Consider adding the option to send reminder emails to customers who may have abandoned their online shopping cart.