How to successfully handle Black Friday in Hungary

Although retail in Hungary grew only at 6% in 2017, online stores improved in revenue by up to 18%, with up to 83% of online stores achieving better results than the previous year. And this growing trend can also be expected in the future, so Hungary definitely is a country where it is worth to expand as soon as possible.

These perfect campaign results are dedicated to the month before Christmas, when up ⅕ of online sales in the fourth quartet were realised on one day - on Black Friday.

Data from previous years

As we have already mentioned, there is nothing unusual in Hungary, e-shops run campaigns and discounts for several days or weeks instead of Friday. By setting the right marketing strategy, your revenue can significantly increase.

The data from the 4 largest online stores in Hungary (Edigital, eMAG, Media Markt and Euronics) show a clear increase of the number of orders. During 3 weeks in 2016 week, 20,000 orders were registered, of which only 25% on Friday, 2017 orders increased to 30,000, with around 10,000 on Friday.

Electronics always has been the top product among the orders in Hungary, and it is not even during Black Friday. The big hits are mainly televisions, computers, smartphones and computer games, as well as clothing and footwear, home accessories and games for children.

2016

2017

Expectations of the consumers

The most important factor of the purchase is still the price and the discount on the products, but recently, customers have also put emphasis on customer service in Hungary and the interaction between business and customer, the warrantee, the available forms of payment and the speed of problem solving.

On the contrary, the biggest problems the Hungarian customers experienced during Black Friday were the breakdown of websites, unavailability/lack of offered goods, a malfunctioning payment system, and a delivery time after Black Friday.

Tips for the e-shop owners how to handle Black Friday

Successful implementation of Black Friday campaigns depends on individual performance and successful collaboration of various areas. We have some tips for you to think about during while preparing for Black Friday.

Do not neglect the preparation:

Although the organization of a one-day event does not seem to be a complicated task, the underestimation of the preparations can lead to a significant drop in the revenue. Set up a specific budget, prepare one (or more) marketing plans, set the specific goals, dates and milestones you want to achieve.

Focus on products and supplies:

Black Friday is definitely about offers that the customer can not miss. Ask the basic questions:

• Do we have enough stock?
• If stocks are on the way, will they arrive on time to the warehouse?
• What is the highest cost for items in our segment?
• How did previous years go, which products were the bestsellers?
• How do we sell any remaining stocks?

Prepare multiple marketing campaigns:

During our pre-campaign we inform potential customers about discount offers, exact time of sales and discounts, and we collect valuable data and newsletter registrations.

At the beginning of the sale, we will have a list of high-quality visitors, and the marketing campaign are prepared exactly for them. The cost of customer query will be much lower, which will be appreciated especially at Black Friday when the prices for PPC campaigns will be higher.

Be prepared for the high number of attendance:

Nothing is worse than having everything prepared, warehouse full of products, successful marketing campaign and ….. if D day comes, because of the number of attendance your system fails. There exist are many ways to optimize the performance of the e-shop, the effect of is reflected not only in the campaign but also on other days.

Storing and displaying images in the correct format can reduce traffic and speed up page loading. Another salient step is the optimization of CSS and JavaScript snippets, and the use of cache control header is also recommended. In addition to temporarily storing the results of each query, caching of landing pages (index page, landing page linking in ad campaigns) can also make a significant contribution to reducing the loading in peak.

Be prepared for the upcoming days:

Despite the end of the Black Friday discounts many people, who visit your e-shop in the following days, because they get your advertisement, that is still available, or they open your newsletter too late.

In this case, it may be an unpleasant experience for them to expect certain discounts on the products, but the price is already changed. Therefore, we recommend that you do not change the discount prices immediately after the end of Black Friday, so the number of orders will be higher than during the classical days.

After the end of Black Friday, evaluate the results and collect ideas and suggestions for improvement for next year.