Black Friday is the biggest retail event of the year, the moment where all ecommerce operations must be at their finest and with the highest operational capability ever. After all, shopping websites must cope with the thousands of orders they’re expecting to receive not only on that particular Friday, but throughout the entire so-called Cyber Week.
For 2021, expectations are that customers will again prefer online shopping over going to physical stores, indicating that the revenue from digital operations will continue to grow this year, especially during holiday season: in the US only, Americans spent 22% more online in 2020, and the 5 days that encompass Black Friday and Cyber Monday accounted for 18% of total online sales of the whole year.
All that to say that, here at VTEX, we understand the importance of having a strong ecommerce platform that can not only handle traffic, transactions and all that comes with the holiday shopping season, but also bring even bigger Black Friday results thanks to its capabilities.
Below, we present the main VTEX Commerce Platform functionalities that play an essential role in Black Friday weekend operations and will push results even higher.
In order to grow and scale your business — the end goal for all retailers — it is firstly mandatory to have a reliable platform that can support your operations on a daily basis and in which you can trust. Without checking this box, there’s no way scalability can be achieved.
This is why our capabilities focus not only on leveraging your sales, but on ensuring reliability and making your managing process easier and smoother. We know this is special not only on Black Friday and Cyber Monday or other big retail events, but every day.
Retailers can easily orchestrate orders through our Order Management System (OMS). It is possible to manage, modify, cancel, split, replace and even aggregate orders from any channel, besides communicating to customers with a few clicks if there’s any change in their orders. Order returns, which can be a pain in events such as Black Friday, is also easy: companies can process refunds and credits from any channel. All with a few clicks and keeping in touch with customers all along.
A specific feature of our OMS that is very suitable for the holiday shopping season is the Alert System, which notifies the company about fastest- and top-selling products and allows them to manage inventory and promotions, if any, to avoid stockout.
Omnichannel easily eliminates the friction between digital and physical channels and, instead, creates a harmony between the two, with brick-and-mortar stores supporting the ecommerce operation and vice-versa.
This is why not only for Black Friday, but on a daily basis, an omnichannel operation is a must-have, especially considering that customers are looking for a smooth shopping experience from retailers. Our OMS focuses on delivering the best omnichannel experience to both retailers and customers by connecting all stores to the digital operation and allowing companies to offer pick-up in-store, ship-from-store, scheduled delivery and other fulfilment methods and functionalities.
This allows companies to have a global overview of inventory, ensuring item availability to avoid stockout, optimizing fulfilment throughout the network and guaranteeing SLA accuracy.
An OMS like ours gives visibility over the complete network and allows retailers to make better business decisions, both in terms of operations and customer satisfaction. This is what an ecommerce channel should, ever more so during Black Friday, aim towards.
Black Friday is all about promotions and offering good deals to the end-customer, and retailers must count on a functionality that allows a quick set-up of these. The VTEX Promotions engine allows companies to offer different types of promotions, such as coupons or gifts, progressive discounts, personalized rules (i.e. when discounts are applicable for specific locations, above a certain cart value or for a few products only) and shipping promotions, to name a few.
The ideal strategy is to have your promotions planned quite early before Black Friday, which can also be done in this module by scheduling them all for the actual day. As easy as they are created, they can also be deactivated, as urgently as the season demands from retailers.
Last, but not least, our Promotions module also allows tracking of the ones put in place to evaluate their performance. Thinking of repeating a Black Friday 2020 strategy? Check whether it is worth it by analyzing all data points.
Our Sales Performance Dashboard centralizes all data, from every sales channel (and seller, in case you operate as a marketplace), giving customer insights derived from numerous sales metrics. You can either analyze from a broader vision to identify best-performing products, promotions and categories or adopt a micro approach by filtering and grouping capabilities to create customized views.
It is imperative to look back at your main Black Friday sales, actions and strategies to understand where you got things right and where you got things wrong. With our Sales Performance Dashboard you can have a complete report and grow your business with the insights gathered.
Losing customers by the time they’re at the checkout can be common during Black Friday and it is generally a retailer’s nightmare. This is why the checkout step must be frictionless and seamless, without many steps and blanks to be filled.
The VTEX SmartCheckoutTM gives you just that formula with a password-free and one-click checkout. As safe as it can be, it saves customers up to 50% of time during this step, since there’s no need to create a user or password to complete the purchase — with basic personal information, such as email address, VTEX can validate the customer’s identity and even remember items that were in an abandoned cart, a functionality titled persistent cart.
It also has the PCI DSS certification, which allows us to securely save the customer’s card information; at the checkout, only the verification code will be requested. Check how one of VTEX customers, Al’s Sporting Goods, succeeded in Black Friday with this functionality.
Convenience and flexibility are key when it comes to shopping during Black Friday. This is why offering different payment options to customers can be a way of avoiding cart abandonment.
At VTEX, we have more than 100 global payment providers that can be easily integrated to our API-first, PCI-certified platform. Even one-of-a-kind payment methods, like Pix and boleto in Brazil, are available, not to mention Buy Now Pay Later with Klarna or e-wallets the likes of Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay.
Moreover, the VTEX SmartCheckoutTM supports payments with two cards, which can be beneficial in a moment where people are caught in the shopping frenzy. Bottomline, giving customers what they are looking for — convenience, flexibility, options — is a must during the holiday shopping season!
Black Friday may be a tough and challenging affair for retailers, but it should not be. This is why it is fundamental to count on a provider who can offer you the technology and structure you need for the holiday season, as well as showcase success stories and expertise. As the Enterprise Digital Commerce Platform, VTEX can help you boost sales with the confidence to plan, execute and scale your strategies in a secure and reliable way.
The CCX Company, in collaboration with VTEX Commerce Cloud, expresses gratitude for having had the opportunity to enhance its understanding of the advantages, trends, and other elements addressed in the current topic. This article was jointly developed and is brought to you by the VTEX Commerce Cloud team.
