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Black Friday 2019: Everything you Need to Know

November 22, 2019 4 min read
It's the most wonderful time of the year if you're a retailer, on or offline with sales events like Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas Eve among them.
Unlimit Experts
Your payment experts
Unlimit Experts
Your payment experts

It’s the most wonderful time of the year if you’re a retailer, on or offline with sales events like Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas Eve among them. 

As a business, it’s a valuable time to ask whether or not your store or website is ready for the rush.

That’s certainly no understatement, in Europe for example, retailers see a 260% increase in purchases, the USA sees an over 60% increase, with regions like Latin America seeing more people getting online to capitalize on the discounts and sales. 

So if you’re a business owner that’s looking at how to position your eCommerce business ready for the holiday rush better – here are some important facts to bear in mind as we delve into the holiday season.

The biggest Week for Businesses

Black Friday is the start of one of the biggest retail weeks in regions of the world like the USA and Europe.

In the USA, for example, consumers will be dropping an eye-watering $87 billion across holiday sales, including Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

This figure is at least according to average spends of $400 between men and women, according to Finder.com

While these same holidays aren’t exactly ordinary for European customers, Black Friday has been steadily increasing in popularity on the continent.

 Shoppers in the UK are expected to spend £2.53bn over the first 24 hours and over £25bn over the holiday weeks ahead.

British customers are expected to spend anything from £300-500

More recent surveys have found, not only that more people than ever will be participating in the sales, but that the average spend ranges from €400-600, according to Deloitte.

With so much spending going on, some of the most popular products include Games & Toys, Clothing, Shoes & Accessories, Home Furnishings and Electronics. 

Which is no surprise because many shoppers on and offline are either shopping for the family or themselves.

Online Shopping is Growing at a Meteoric Pace

No matter whereabouts your target audience is, the appetite of online shoppers is not slowing down in the slightest.

On the contrary, we see more examples recently that the appetite of online shoppers is growing at an incredible speed.

Amazon said it sold over 100,000 laptops, 200,000 televisions, 300,000 headphones, 350,000 luxury beauty products and more than 1 million toys on Prime Day this year. CNBC

Two of the more recent examples of this that we’ve seen include Singles Day in Asia, which brought in over $38.4bn in online sales. Asia provides a valuable lesson on the need to be mobile and available, with keen learners benefitting immensely.

In July, Amazon’s self-invented day – Prime Day – managed to surpass the sales records of Black Friday and Thanksgiving 2017, bringing in $7.16bn over the 48hr period.

This feeds right back into Black Friday and the holiday sales; more people are either doing their shopping mostly or entirely online, as a McKinsey study found late last year:

Combining an increasingly growing number of online consumers with the kind of feverish appetite for sales demonstrates the spectacular type of opportunities that eCommerce platforms and businesses have in setting themselves apart from the crowd.

Be Flexible as a Retailer

Buyers remorse and big purchases are two things that your eCommerce platform needs to prepare for. Some of the biggest spends over the holiday season can reach highs of $1,000, for example.

If we take into consideration what it is that these consumers are buying (Recreational games, Furnishings, etc.), especially with many more people logging on to make their purchases, it means that big purchases are more likely.

One of the more popular solutions for these users is to pay by instalments. We see this with the growth of payment solutions like Klarna, Splitit, among others. 

The lesson? People want flexibility when it comes to payments, and as an eCommerce business, it’s to your benefit to provide it.

One of the other things to bear in mind is buyers remorse. On purchases of $900-1,000, 56% of men and 49% of women regretting what they bought.

The Conclusion?

Overall, half the world is logging onto the internet and finding out the kind of benefits that come with shopping online.

Whether it’s for the convenience, better offers and easier access to goods, businesses that provide an easy to navigate eCommerce platform with a streamlined payment solution will be able to ride the retail wave of this festive season.

Payment accessibility and flexibility are the keys to streamlined payments. That’s what Unlimint strives to provide for our customers worldwide, no matter what their industry or needs!

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