We’ve officially entered the final months of the year which means some of the biggest shopping days for most merchants are fast approaching. The end of the year is traditionally the busiest time in e-commerce – and the most profitable too. Although this year is nothing like we’re used to, there’s good reason to believe that e-commerce sales will peak in Q4/2020 again.
Come 27th November 2020 and we will witness another grand event, Black Friday.
Do you know that Black Friday dates back to the early part of this century when, as the Friday after Thanksgiving, it was considered to herald the start of the Christmas shopping season in the US?
However, within no time at all, Black Friday has been supplemented by Cyber Monday, a second bite of the commercial cherry, when shoppers are again encouraged to shop with carefree abandon – just this time online.
Important dates to remember for the rest of 2020
- Black Friday, 27th of November
- Cyber Monday, 30th of November
- Christmas, 25th of December
Shopify has anticipated that Black Friday & Cyber Monday (BFCM) – traditionally the biggest shopping weekend of the year – will happen predominantly online this year. And their reasons are foolproof. Fears around COVID-19 and subsequent retail closures have shifted consumer spending online and away from brick-and-mortar—a shift we believe will continue well into the holiday season and beyond. As more shoppers rush online to make their BFCM purchases, inventory and shipping constraints will present challenges for retailers of all sizes, but especially for independent businesses.
If you want to make the most of this year’s biggest shopping event, it’s critical that you start planning as early as possible. Despite an atypical climate, BFCM is still a tremendous opportunity for your business to end the year strong, whatever that looks like for you.
The undisputable checklist you need to bear in mind:
# Black Friday: Creative-Style
For the big retailers and e-commerce players, Black Friday and Cyber Monday provide a huge focus in the commercial calendar and, with shoppers turning up at marketplaces like Amazon, ASOS and eBay in unprecedented numbers, there are opportunities for smaller sellers too. The challenge is to make sure that they can compete for shoppers’ attention and make good on their promises. Don’t be mistaken into thinking that Black Friday is all giant TVs, ever-thinner tablets and flashy trainers. Many online retailers start promoting their Black Friday deals early, and it may be a good idea to extend the sales period this year. Instead of Black Friday, you might want to think of Black November or give your customers special offers throughout the holiday season.
For example, these have proven to be great ways to create buzz around Black Friday:
- Special deals, offers and promotions
- Hourly deals
- Countdown timers
- Sales promotions and events on social media
- Coupon codes and bundles
# Optimize Fulfilment
An increase in sales in a short time frame can make it difficult to fulfill and deliver orders to customers as quickly as usual. Many e-commerce merchants find it difficult to maintain the service level their customers are used to. This year, many additional factors cause uncertainty. We have, for example, seen the global restrictions on mobility affect delivery times.
# Key Tasks In Optimizing Fulfilment This Black Friday Include
- Reserving enough stock
- Reserving enough packaging materials
- Organizing warehouse for quicker picking and packing
- Hiring additional fulfilment staff
- Determining criteria for prioritizing and organizing orders
- Communicating to fulfilment and delivery staff
- Sharing the shipping times on your website
# Select Your E-Commerce Sale Or Promotional Products
- Look at what sold well last year and what’s trending this year.
- Check the availability of stock for promotional products.
- Consider using surplus or older stock to offer dramatic discounts or giveaways.
- Make sure your product descriptions are excellent and include holiday season keywords to boost your SEO
# Create Buzz
- Add seasonal design touches to your site.
- Display a count-down to Black Friday or Christmas to build anticipation.
- Create a sense of urgency with wording on promotional material and product pages like ‘Selling fast!’ or ‘Last few in stock.’
- Encourage customers to sign up early for holiday deals, which also helps build your email list.
- Promote your e-commerce app as an opportunity to get easy and early access.
And Finally…
When this year’s Black Friday is all over, don’t forget to take whatever time you need to analyse your store’s performance. We know you’ll be in the thick of the Christmas season by then, but your smart system can give you all the insights your need via accurate sales and stock reports, and putting in the effort now will ensure you’re halfway ready to tackle the planning again next year!
Even with Black Friday right around the corner, there’s still plenty of time. In fact, we can get you up and running in as little as 2 weeks. Want to chat with one of our e-commerce experts about your needs this Black Friday and beyond? Get in touch here.
What are keywords?
SEO keywords are single words or short phrases that represent the search queries that people use in a search engine. Website owners or marketers select keywords and use them to guide content creation and optimize their web pages as part of their SEO strategy.
When you align your content creation and optimization with the words, topics, products and services your target audience is looking for, you have a better chance of showing up in the search results.
One reason keyword optimization is important is that it helps communicate to the search engines what a webpage is about. And that can improve the chances that a search engine will find a webpage relevant for a particular query.
It’s important to note that Google uses many signals to determine if a page is relevant for a query, not just keywords.
What are long-tail keywords?
Long-tail keywords string together three or more words to create a more specific keyword phrase. Searchers perform long-tail queries in the following situations:
- To narrow down what they are looking for as they search for products, services or information. When people are on a buying or knowledge journey, they often start with very broad or general keywords, maybe two-word phrases. As they begin to refine their research, search queries become much more specific and usually longer. So long-tail queries often have a higher conversion rate than the broad terms do.
- When using voice search, for example on a mobile device. Data shows that 48% of consumers are using voice assistants for general web searches. Voice queries tend to be much more conversational because people are speaking and not typing.
In a nutshell, long-tail keywords allow you to target very specific queries during every step of the searcher’s journey.
What You Shouldn’t Do with Keywords
When you’re creating content for the web:
- Don’t use keywords to trick or mislead. One example is keyword stuffing. Another would be trying to use keywords that are off-topic for your page and site. Google does not respond well to keyword abuse. To be rewarded in the search results, your site’s SEO needs to stay within Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
- Don’t target keywords that do not exactly describe the contents of your page.
- Don’t use keywords awkwardly in your content. Keywords should be incorporated into the body text and meta information in a way that is natural and subtle.
Why Are Keywords Important to SEO & Marketing?
Keywords help website owners with the following:
- Identify and speak the language of the target market.
- Create useful content for the target audience.
- Get content in front of the right people at the right time.
- Communicate to Google that a webpage is a match for a query.
- Improve search engine rankings by helping Google understand the webpage content.
- Drive more qualified traffic to appropriate web pages.
- Increase time on site by directing more qualified traffic to web pages.
- Increase conversions by helping consumers find you rather than your competitors.
All of these matter for SEO. To elaborate, keyword research helps you understand how your target market describes your products or services. It also shows you how people ask for more information on your topics when using a search engine.
Armed with these words and phrases, you can come up with ideas for new content. You can also optimize your web pages to match a searcher’s intent and answer a searcher’s questions.
Keyword research and optimization can improve your chances of showing up on page 1 of the search results. In fact, data shows that most title tags on Google’s first page contained keywords that were an exact or partial match of that search query.
Aside from rankings, keyword research has other benefits that can help you better serve your consumer.
For instance, say you’re a bread company researching the keyword phrase “organic bread.” During your research, you find that there is a high search volume for the term “organic bread flour.” Could this be a new product opportunity?
How do you do keyword research?
There’s a lot to keyword research, but here is the process in four basic steps:
- Start with a “brainstorm” list, also known as a “seed” list. Document anything you can think of that would describe your product, service or the information you have to share.
- Use a keyword research tool. Use an analysis tool that gives you data on the ideas in your seed list.
- Expand and refine your list. Discover suggested keyword phrases from the keyword research tool. Find out the actual words people use as they search for your products, services or information. Find out how often the queries are used, which can help you prioritize the work.
- Verify keyword phrases. Analyze the competition in the search results that show up for the target keywords. Do you see web pages that offer products, services or information like yours? If so, it means you’re in the right space.
But what most don’t know is how to make a winning Amazon SEO strategy and crack the Amazon A9 algorithm. There are a lot of misconceptions out there about Amazon SEO and how it works. In the following article, we will break down everything you need to know to rank in Amazon, diving into their algorithm and explaining what Amazon SEO really is. Stay tuned!