Black Friday
The days of waiting until Boxing Day for the best shopping deals are a thing of the past, UK shoppers splashed out over £810 million on Black Friday in 2014. Websites were crashing and people were fighting in the aisles, and this year its set to be bigger than ever. Sales over the 24 hour period are forecasted to surpass £1 billion pounds for the first time ever in UK history.
To put that in perspective it means that £11,574 will be spent every second, which looks a little something like this:
It's not just Black Friday, Experian and IMRG are expecting a surge on all the popular spending days this winter.
If you want to take advantage then you need to be prepared and plan ahead. The following promotional opportunities have already passed for this year:
Valentine's Day
Mother's Day
St. Patrick's Day
Easter
April Fools
St. George's Day
Father's Day
Halloween
How many did you participate in?
If you would like to talk about ways you can maximise your online sales and digital marketing during Black Friday, the Christmas season or on other special dates during the year then get in touch.
UPDATE: The figures are in!
We decided to have a look at the figures from this years Black Friday and see how they measured up to the predictions.
Spending exceeded the £1 billion figure as was expected, reaching £1.1bn. To nobody's surprise, the real winners were online retailers but with delays in delivering purchases and retail websites still suffering from downtime issues it is clear that many, including larger online retailers, were again unprepared for the increase in traffic and sales.
Retailer Argos was forced to issue an apology after customers complained on social media of orders not arriving. Despite the launch of their Fast Track service the retailer was unprepared for the demand for this service.
With Black Friday and Cyber Monday now permanent fixtures in the retail calendar and shoppers increasingly buying online lessons must be learned to avoid similar problems, not only for next year but the approaching sales around Christmas and New Year.
