#122. Black Friday Cyber Monday Checklist | Podcast

Vira: 0:41

Hi everyone and welcome back to Email Einstein podcast by Flowium. I’m your host, Vira Sadlak. I’m an email marketeer at an agency called Flowium. Here at Flowium, we are very passionate about email marketing. And because we love what we do, we want to share our insights with you. And today I’m joined by my colleague, Amara. Say hi, Amara.

Amara: 1:02

Hi, everybody.

Vira: 1:03

Yeah, it’s not your first radio. You’ve been here a few times already, so I’m not going to do a big introduction. But for those of you who haven’t listened to our previous podcast, Amara is my colleague. She’s an email marketing guru herself, honestly, and she’s really great with all of the checklists and processes and bringing the structure into our lives. So that’s pretty much what she does at flowium. And today we kind of prepared the list for you as well. And today we will be discussing the checklist. Checklist for your Black Friday Cyber Monday preparation. And checklists like this, they are especially important now in 2022 with a very unsettled economic climate. Inventory issues, demand can change as well, like shifting consumer behavior. Navigating Black Friday Cyber Monday this year might feel a bit more challenging. That’s why we decided to put together. We’ve assembled our annual Black Friday Cyber Monday checklist for you to make sure that you’re ready and that this Black Friday Cyber Monday will go as smoothly as possible. So Amara, let’s do this. What’s the tip number one?

Amara: 2:19

Ooh, tip number one. Okay, so first I have to say what I love about this list that we’re going to share with you guys is this is a list that I think often goes unchecked, meaning that I think a lot of the times we spent just a lot of focus on strategy and what we’re going to say and design wise. But these tips seem to be, I mean, really often just not even looked at. So I love this. And tip number one is to check your website, specifically speed. Oh my heck. So I don’t know if you’ve ever been like on a website where it is slow to load. Vira, have you ever.

Vira: 2:57

Hate them? I hate them. And I don’t have enough, I don’t know, like time in my life to, to spend time on those websites. Especially around the holidays when that traffic is high. Right. On those websites. You can, you can see that around the holidays.

Amara: 3:12

Yeah. So I once went, I once went shopping. I was waiting for this big sale to launch. I had my like alarm set and I was there. I knew exactly when it was. It was this limited sale and I went and it even crashed. So it crashed for everybody and they had to come back in and say that they like fixed it and now you can come back. I can’t imagine how many like users, subscribers they lost because of that experience. So I think, I mean that’s like a huge one. You don’t want your website to crash. But I think checking your website speed is like the first check mark of that. And so really you can just check the load time. I think this is like that first low hanging fruit. I think both desktop and mobile by the way, because I think these are two different experiences too. I’m on my mobile all the time and that’s probably.

Vira: 3:59

Where do you shop on your mobile as well?

Amara: 4:01

All the time. I would probably say like it’s like an 1820 experience for me. I’m usually on my phone. I love it. It’s just easy to like go shopping on. So it just.

Vira: 4:10

I’m a desktop person. Just because so many stores are like not optimized for mobile. You that’s why every time I shop I prefer to go desktop actually.

Amara: 4:21

I think that’s just another reason to be like check your mobile experience.

Vira: 4:25

Right? Yes.

Amara: 4:27

Other words you’re like Vira and you’re like, well I can’t go shopping today on my phone while I’m running out and about and doing all of these other shopping like experiences outside of the home. Because you have to be at home on your desktop to shop if you know that the page isn’t set up right for like speeds. Yeah. So there are some really cool apps that you can use or even like websites that you can go to to really test your, your load time. Like page Speed Insights is one of them. There’s another one that’s called G, I think T Metrics GT Metrics. But both of those can like actually analyze the content and the load times for your pages. And it’s funny because if you go on and you type on some random sites you’ll see like failed it failed on the experience for load times. So you can go on and you can test your own site just by putting in your web address. And then they’ll give you, like, specific suggestions just to improve speed if needed. And really just to kind of help that user experience too, I think, with that as well. And then there’s. You can also do like, mobile apps. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Tapcart. They’re one of our partners.

Vira: 5:34

We had them on our podcast, actually, guys, we will link the podcast in the description box so you can go and learn more about the Tapcart.

Amara: 5:41

Yeah, so they, they set up like mobile apps and I was so surprised with how fast they can do it too. So if you’re like, wow, Black Friday, Cyber Monday is in a month. You can still get some easy setup options through Tapcart and just create an app experience which will also drag and drop.

Vira: 5:58

Right? It’s like a drag and drop builder. It’s very similar to like Shopify in that sense. And they say that you can build like an app in as soon as, like in one day. Pretty much, yeah.

Amara: 6:10

So I think, especially if you don’t have a great mobile experience, but even if you do, I think the mobile app is something that especially like your VIPs, your followers, you can get people on there. And I love that option too, just to like build your own, own mobile app for that one. I believe they’re Shopify and so that’s perfect for like your Shopify stores as well. So. Yeah, and then you got to think too, like, customers who, like, join and they’re slow and it’s a slow site, just like you said. Either they’re going to leave. First off, I don’t care how much you want the item. If it’s going to take forever to load and you can’t even see the pages or you put it in your cart and then you go to the next page and then it just takes forever to load and you’re like, this isn’t going to work. I’ll just go somewhere else. And I think that’s what you want to avoid, right? Because even just seconds for load time, they count just seconds. Like the worst.

Vira: 7:06

Yeah, but that’s true.

Amara: 7:07

The worst experience, I think, is just slow e commerce sites because you’re going to lose all of your customers too. And hopefully you don’t. But also if you have competitors out there, which I believe most e commerce brands do, if their site is optimized for a better, like, website speed and load time, that’s not very cool. That’s not going to be a great, great experience for anybody. But I know when it comes to like seconds of load time. If you’re thinking about that, there is this really cool data that kind of came in. So one to three seconds will increase your bounce rate by 32% on a site.

Vira: 7:47

That’s insane when I think about it. Right.

Amara: 7:49

Five, like two second difference. Two second difference will increase it to 90% too.

Vira: 7:55

Wow, that’s crazy.

Amara: 7:58

Or like 10 seconds, the probability is like 123% that it’s going to bounce and, and just there goes everybody, there goes all of your fun followers and now they’re mad.

Vira: 8:11

So yeah, I mean it happened to me like before, especially the checkout pages. For some reason the checkout pages, they have like a longer load time and probably it’s because a lot of stores are utilizing like a gazillion of different app apps for checkout pages, which definitely like slows them down.

Amara: 8:32

Yeah, I think you’re hitting right on top of like a button here. Because if you have apps, I know Shopify has a lot of apps that go down. I imagine a lot of other stores do too. But if you have unused apps, this is one that you would want to go ahead and uninstall them. And the crazy thing too is even if you uninstall them, you still want your developer to check the code because it will just leave the code on your site and you’re like, but I uninstalled it.

Vira: 9:00

Yep.

Amara: 9:00

Nope, still there. Still weighing down your site. So I think removing any unused apps is really important. Checking with your developer, making sure that they are indeed off of there. Like the coding, the actual coding, that would definitely slow it down.

Vira: 9:15

A lot of, a lot of like Shopify store owners, they are guilty of that. How do you call that? Shiny object syndrome or whatever. Because there are like tons of this fun little apps, you know, and you just want to get them, them all on your website because they are doing this like a little fun things. But just like you mentioned, even when you delete or remove the app from your website, they still leave that code somewhere in your theme. It’s like when someone is like you have a tenant in your apartment and then they leave your apartment and leave a bunch of trash and you don’t clean it. It’s like that. So yeah, it’s very important to understand what it is and how to, how to clean up the unused apps, especially those for the checkout pages. Because from my experience this apps, this types of apps, they slow down your website the most.

Amara: 10:08

Yeah. Another one that’s really common is like the images the actual images on the website themselves, I don’t know. I’ve also been on websites before where the image doesn’t load because it’s like too heavy. Right. So I always think of like imagery on your website should load pretty quickly and not interfere with any other parts of the page. So if you have to wait, then I’m going to look at the store and be like, this is slow. I’m not going to waste my time here. And so you can always like, think of it this way. Keep any slideshows that you put on your site. Keep them very simple and short, two to three max. Or just use a featured image. That one is going to be really good. And then I know that developers are pretty awesome about like their best expertise here on your site. Just using the best practices for those images on your. On your page too with your theme. So I think. I never knew. I always think of it like a. I think it was our designers that said they called it a weight. Right? Every image has a weight. And so if it is too heavy, then it’s not going to work well, like when you’re going and loading a site.

Vira: 11:16

And it’s not just for the websites, it’s also for the email. Right. We’re testing each and every email that we are sending to make sure that it’s not too big. Because when you’re using too heavy of the images, then your email will get clipped and the customer will not see the entire email of yours. They’ll have to load it in like a separate tab or something. So pretty much, yeah. Heavy images, oversized images, they’re a problem both on like Shopify or like WooCommerce stores and in emails as well.

Amara: 12:15

Yeah, I know for us, I mean, when I. On the email side, we even run our, our clients, we run all of their campaigns and like their flows, we run them through an extra program. Email on acid Litmus is a great one. We use both and we will test it for clipping to. So it’ll actually tell us if it’s. If it’s weighing too much, if you would. Maybe not in those terms, but it does let you know those things. And I think website is the same thing. You pull it up, you’re going to load it. And especially on different devices, you know, that could also impact that time too. So I know other reasons, same kind of thing that kind of goes with the imagery. I think everybody wants their website to look awesome, right? You just want it to look so good and so pretty and easy and like cool or whatever. Your kind of theme is. But if you have like complex fonts, like really, really detailed fonts that are crazy, that can also hold it down, like inefficient liquid codes or unresponsive themes, all of those themes come up. Also if you do use themes, I would also check to make sure they’re updated too because I know that’s a common one too. If you don’t update it, it’s going to take forever to load or not load at all.

Vira: 13:29

That’s for sure. That’s for sure. No, I’ve noticed that a lot of fashion brands have slower websites for some reason and maybe it’s because they rely so heavily on those images to communicate the value of the product. Because you want to see the product, you want to see the quality of the product and stuff like that. But yeah, from my experience fashion websites are usually the slowest. That’s, that’s interesting. Yeah. And Zara even like last year I remember it was such a big pain to shop on like Zara website. Well first of all I’m not a fan of their pictures of the products. Have you seen their pictures?

Amara: 14:10

No.

Vira: 14:11

It’s so funny. It’s not like they are wearing the jeans and just like standing in front of the camera. They are standing in this like weirdest, most like unnatural poses ever and you’re like, well I’m not sure if it’s gonna look good on me this like high fashion poses, you know, like I can’t even, I can’t even do the same thing that you are doing on the picture. How am I supposed to know if this product is gonna look good on me or bad on me? Well anyways, I love that brand. It’s just sometimes it’s their shopping experience is not optimized for my taste anyways. So yeah, that’s a good, that’s a good advice Amara, to check your website speed and to make sure that your website is loading faster than three seconds or like faster than one to three seconds. Tip number two, if you are new to email marketing and I think some of you might be, some of you are just starting your businesses or just building your first automations, make sure that you at least have four must have flows and I mean we can discuss. Probably not all of my colleagues would agree with me but I think that these are the four main ones. Abandonment cart Definitely the must browse abandonment welcome series and post purchase. These are your basically like the foundation of your email marketing. The basics and if you don’t have time to complete all of this for automations, I would probably start from the abandonment cart. One research suggests that actually between 47 and 72% of consumers experience some sort of like checkout friction while shopping on mobile or desktop and they abandon their cards during the purchasing process. There can be multiple reasons why they’ve done it. Slow website, just like we discussed. Unoptimized checkout process, unoptimized for experience for mobile users. Shipping cost. Sometimes that’s a big reason why people abandon the carts as well. How to fix it? Well, you need to have a strong abandonment checkout flow to bring your customers attention back to your website. And if you have something in place already, good. If not, we would recommend to send more than one email. And with our customers, with our clients we are creating the sequence of like three to five emails. Three to five emails is optimal. In email number one we usually don’t offer any reminder, we don’t offer any discount codes for most of our clients we just offer like a quick reminder of the product that they have in their cart. Then in email number two and three you can provide them some sort of a discount if a part of your strategy or if you have some nice content. You can also maybe do some quick reminder with a content piece as well. So yeah, three to five emails is optimal. Especially during the holidays when people will be shopping simultaneously on different websites and comparing different brands. It’s always a nice little flow to remind your customer about the brand. The second flow, as I mentioned, browse abandonment, send one to two emails if you don’t have anything welcome series. Depending on how much time you have, how much efforts you’re willing to put in the email, it can be like as short as like one to two email sequence or like eight emails. I mean you can do the endless amount of emails as long as you understand your customer and what they want to see from you in their inbox and the post purchase flow or like a thank you message that engages with your customer after they’ve placed their order. So basically this flow kind of prevents your customer from having that buyer’s remorse, you know. And I heard that the first 24 hours after you’ve placed an order are actually customers experience the highest buyer’s remorse. That’s why it’s a perfect time to reach out to them, to educate them about the brand, to make them excited about receiving your receiving their product that they just purchased. So yeah, make sure to have this for flows in place. That’s like the bare minimum. If you want to learn more about different flows, go and check out Our podcast, we’ve pretty much discussed the entire life cycle here, but this four is what I would start from.

Amara: 18:35

I like this four. I think that’s a great. That’s a great starter. I mean, the other one that I’m always huge on is Exit Intent, I think especially during, like, Black Friday Cyber Monday. But if I was going to choose four, I think these are perfect. I know when I’ve gone on some sites and I do abandon my cart, sometimes it’s not even an intentional, Like, I don’t want to buy. Right? It’s. Sometimes it’s, I’m busy, I’m pulled away, get distracted. Yeah, there’s distractions. I don’t know if anybody can hear this right now, but I can hear my children in the background. They’re totally distracting me. Oh, good. So part of me is like, do I pause and go yell at them? I’m just kidding. So. But I think, like, I think those are really important to catch those people, especially while they’re on your website. I think your traffic is going to increase. And so if you don’t have these flows, these initial four, especially these four, in place, I mean, we talk about, like, nine foundational flows that we believe everybody should have based off of, you know, gosh, doubling that within a year of being online. So these four are really capturing your audience and their behaviors as they are visiting. And especially with the increased traffic during Black Friday Cyber Monday, I can’t imagine how many opportunities you would miss if you didn’t have these on. That would be sad.

Vira: 19:52

You can also customize them and make, like, holiday themed, you know, so instead of just sending like a generic email, maybe in the welcome series, you can send some sort of, like, a gift guide for different types of customers. Or maybe in the abandonment cart, you can also say, like, hey, this is the product that you checked out, and these are the products that would be great stocking stuffers or something like that. You can customize it or even if you have already something, just like maybe add like a cute Santa hat or something. One thing that I learned from our designers, though, that it’s a bad idea to create those green and red sort of like colors emails, because some people who have, like, color blindness, they will not recognize red and green. That’s something that I didn’t realize, but I was like, yeah, that makes sense, actually. So we are trying to stay away from those, like, traditional holiday colors and do something a bit more inclusive. That’s just like, a little thing that I learned lately.

Amara: 20:56

I love the idea of Being inclusive, I think that’s amazing. And I have to say, also for the post purchase flow, I think reassuring them during this time, especially with your increased traffic. So reassuring them that, you know, keep them excited, let them know about the product. I think that that’s amazing. Even just reassurance of your brand and being there for facts or frequently asked questions if you need it. I love that idea.

Vira: 21:21

Yeah. Even communicating some shipment terms or something. Because during the holiday season, shipment can take longer or getting the product can be a bit longer. So make sure that your flows reflect your internal processes and reflect your checkout process. Reflect all of that little processes you know, that you have internally. Yeah.

Amara: 21:43

Oh, for sure, for sure.

Vira: 21:44

Cool.

Amara: 21:45

All right, should we go on to. To tip number three?

Vira: 21:48

Let’s do this.

Amara: 21:49

Okay. So this is one of my favorites too. It’s. It’s experience your own customer journey and optimize the checkout process. So I know that we’ve already kind of laid out a few little tips about that checkout page and how important it is, but honestly, ask yourself, how easy is it for me to actually buy a product on my website? Like, I know some of them. You have to input information first or sign into an account. Before you ever go to a cart, I think you have to ask yourself, like, does that make sense for this time of year? Do I have to force people to do these extra steps just to get into the page, let alone the load times for the checkout page too? I know we talked about that, I mean, repeatedly. But make sure it doesn’t happen to your customers. I think it’s really important. Same thing with, like your abandoned carts. Right. So if I do go to a checkout page and I get busy, I get distracted, I’m going to come back shortly, or anything happens and my mind goes in 10 different directions, I do want a reminder. I want a reminder that it’s there. I don’t know if you’ve ever done this, Vira, but have you ever gotten an abandoned cart email and you go and you click on it and your order is gone? Have you ever experienced that?

Vira: 23:00

No, I haven’t.

Amara: 23:03

It’s so frustrating. I remember, like adding all these different things and I think I was shopping on multiple sites and I came back to it. It was even like in the same shopping and I had X’d out of the website. So when I went back into my email because I knew they were gonna send an abandoned cart, and they did, but my whole order was gone and I was like, I’m not gonna do this. Again, I had like 12 items in that cartoon. So I think really recognizing not only the checkout experience, but also what happens if you do abandon a cart. Are you set up to reach back out to them, to remind them? Especially while Black Friday, Cyber Monday, I mean, those sales are so massive, and usually they reach out. And even if you don’t do sales, I think even just that shopping experience during that weekend, I know I’m saving up for it. So I think really making sure that you are connecting with people. One of the best suggestions here is ask your. Ask your brother, ask your sister, ask your best friend to go and record, like, the checkout process for you. I know we use Loom, but even if they use any other type of app or anything, recorded the checkout process and have them send it to you. And the reason I mentioned, like, someone else is because I think we know our sites more so than anyone else we know, like, go here, click here, add this button. Right. But if somebody else does it, an outside resource, they can record a video for you, send it to you, and you can see how easy it was or how difficult it was as well. We do this with every single one of our clients. Every single new project that comes in, we have what’s called a buyer’s journey, where we record the checkout process and we do everything from adding it to our cart to going in to putting in a coupon code, to literally checking it out and buying the product and really experiencing it from start to finish so that we can see how we can improve that for the experience. I think the customer journey is so important.

Vira: 25:01

Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good one. I usually ask my American colleagues or my friends to experience the customer’s journey for me, like when I’m starting new projects just because a lot of my clients, they don’t deliver to Canada. And I’m like, so sad because we have the best clients ever. And I was like, like, hey, Greg or whoever, how was that tea that you tasted? Tell me about it in details, you know, but no, yeah, I agree. Customer journey is very important. And just like you said, it might seem intuitive to us just because it’s like our baby, this business. Right. But it’s always a good idea to make someone else go through it so you can sort of like, see the areas of improvement. Yeah, yeah.

Amara: 25:42

1. I know that this is a totally not an E commerce brand, but I will tell you, I went to order pizza online for my kids and I. And I went to the checkout page and I couldn’t find the checkout button. Kid you not. I could not find the checkout button. I was, like, reloading the site. I had to re. Put in my order, and I was like, this is ridiculous. So we ordered pizza from another location because it just wasn’t intuitive at all.

Vira: 26:07

And I bet you, you were not the only one who experienced that. Yeah, that’s a bummer that happened with me. Like, the apps sometimes on, like.

Amara: 26:16

Yeah, make sure your checkout buttons or, like, the next step buttons or whatever it is that goes through, make sure that they’re easy to find. Like, really make sure that it’s necessary, too. I hate when I have to enter, like, extra steps or if I have to fill out.

Vira: 26:34

Ctrl F, you know, to find the checkout button.

Amara: 26:38

Oh, my gosh. That’s what I said.

Vira: 26:38

Seriously. Sometimes I do doing that, it’s like, ah. But that’s frustrating. My. My mom doesn’t know the control. Control F combination. She wouldn’t think of it anyways.

Amara: 26:47

So, yeah, I just barely learned about Control F, like, a year ago. So this whole time, I’ve been going blind for so long.

Vira: 26:55

1. I’ve noticed that, like, when I. I barely do physical shopping, all of my shopping is online. Even the grocery shopping. I kid you not. So sometimes I go to, like, a physical store to, like, Walmart or, like, grocery store. And I kid you not, I have this feeling that I need to press Ctrl F. That’s stupid. That’s, like, so millennial of me, you know, to say that, oh, my gosh, I did my life. Yeah.

Amara: 27:21

Yeah. I think another thing, too, is think about your checkout experience. I know when I’m ordering, especially if I’m planning ahead for, like, ordering gifts or for holidays, I want to know about a few things. One, I want to know how much shipping is in general. Like, sometimes I don’t even care if I’m paying higher shipping if I know what it is. But I hate being surprised with that fact, especially right at checkout. So if. If the shipping is really clear, I think that makes it a really easy experience. And then I think also, how long is my order going to take? So I. I know I personally placed orders where I’m like, I don’t know when it’s coming. Who knows when it’s coming? Maybe I need to go buy something else and just cancel that order because it’s taking too long. So I think really having your shipping policy in place, as well as how long your shipping time is, is essential, I think for just a really good customer journey. I Think about, like, being able to track my orders too. I received a tracking link. I have a lot of online shopping experiences, so I received this tracking link, and when I clicked on it, it was like, create an account in order to find your tracking link. And I was like, I’m not doing this. I’m not putting this in. And so then I was just Frustra with this customer to the point that I think I didn’t know when my product was coming. Shipping was fine, but I didn’t know how long it would take. And then the tracking number that they did send me was so hard to actually track that it was a really unfortunate experience, I think, especially when other sites make it so easy, you know, so there’s something to compare it to.

Vira: 29:01

Yeah, they tell you exactly, like, if you pay 10 bucks, you will get it by this day. If you pay, like five bucks, you will get it by this day. And yeah, I’m the same, actually. I have no problem paying for the shipment if I know upfront that this is what I will have to do. But if I’m like going to the checkout page and I have, I don’t know, like, $300 worth of closing in my cart, and they’re like, and now pay three bucks for a ship. And I’m like, I’m not gonna do that. Like, seriously, I’m like, sometimes so cheap when it comes to, like, shipment payment, especially when they don’t tell you upfront. So.

Amara: 29:40

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that, like, just the transparency of that really, really does add on to your customer journey and something else too, especially with the holidays coming up. I mean, maybe Black Friday, Cyber Monday, unless your product is like a super long turnaround. But I do think that as it gets closer to the holidays, towards the end of the year, if people are buying gifts or New year celebration gifts or anything like that. I think having an order by is also really important. Something that says like, order by X to receive by Christmas or order by X to receive by Hanukkah, or, you know, I think those are extremely nice to have because it takes out the guessing game. I love being reassured that my order will be here on time. It was an easy, you know, checkout process and just that whole experience. So I think that’s really important. And I know, you know, you’re expecting more traffic during this time of year. I think all E commerce brands are so just making sure that nothing gets bogged down, especially with the loading. I know we keep mentioning that, but also the checkout page, you’re going to receive more traffic. So really thinking about that customer journey I think is just so important. You know, you don’t want to have your website crash like I experienced. I will tell you, I did not go back. I was like, nope, I’m out. So it’s important.

Vira: 31:04

Don’t be like those websites and definitely don’t be like the pizza place Amara was trying to order from. Yeah, make the customer’s journey as easy as possible. And my tip is kind of connected to yours as well. The tip number four is to have a plan in place for customer support and order management. This one is huge because no matter how clever your marketing campaign is, how great your shipping is, how fast your shipping times are, how beautiful your packaging is this year, if you don’t have a good customer support strategy in place, it will leave your customers frustrated. So yeah, so it’s very important. Just like Yoamara mentioned, it’s very important to make sure that your customer kind can easily navigate through your website, but also make sure that you have your contact contact info in front and center that customer can like easily find you in case they need some help on your website. It’s also a good idea to include like a contact us page and the FAQ page in case customer don’t find what they were looking for.

Amara: 32:16

And I would say yeah, really quick Vira. So I think especially like if you don’t have a contact us or information on how to to contact your team, it also does look more like a fraudulent site. And I think if you have new visitors coming to your site, it does build just trust. In general, if you’re like, this seems like a real business. I feel good ordering from this place for the first time. Whereas if you’re like, I don’t know who runs this, I have no contact information. Nothing is up here. I have no idea if I can trust this brand.

Vira: 32:48

Yeah, FAQs are very important and you can think of it as sort of like, you know, it’s similar to how a software company might use the customer input to make the product better or to make some product developments and updates. You can use your customer review or feedback to find those repeated problems or repeated questions that your customers have and address them before they appear. So the typical questions, especially during the holidays can be how long is your shipment time? Basically will, will my product arrive in time for my holiday party? Or if you’re selling, I don’t know, like shoes, the questions like I wear size 11 Nike. Will your shoes in size 11 fit me? Like something like that, Something like all of the questions that you continuously getting from your customer, that’s a good idea to put them on your FAQ page and yeah, so definitely make sure to reevaluate your support process. And if you have like budget or time to set up a live chat, it’s amazing, it’s an amazing tool. You can also use those like live chat bots in case you need assistance or sometimes even those like SMS automations. You can kind of have the automated responses stack. And even if you already have a routine for like shipping the products and you probably do have it, make sure to reevaluate it before the holidays. How does your normal order value, order volume compare to the holiday season? Are you prepared to like handle twice as much shipments or are you prepared to handle twice as much customers orders? That’s very important to sort of like, like re evaluate those processes before the holidays to make sure that.

Amara: 34:48

I love that, I love that question. I think that’s. Oh my gosh, that’s amazing insight. I can’t imagine that you’re like hi, we have triple the orders and the same amount of people here and so please send out everything on time and make sure it works.

Vira: 35:01

And I mean if you know that there will be some delays, make sure to communicate it clearly on your website and be very like transparent and be very upfront about it. Right? Because otherwise your customer support team will be slammed with all of this like requests from the clients and everything. And it’s the same goes for your website. Your website should be robust enough to handle that extra traffic because yes, during the holiday the traffic for some of you will be like twice as high, like three times as high. Take steps to evaluate your website, maybe talk to your developer or to your hosting to make sure that your, your website will be able to handle that load of customers. Because there is like nothing worse than the website that is crashing during the Black Friday day. I mean it, it happened to some of the big retailers too. It happened to some of the big, I mean e commerce stores as well. Sometimes even like websites like Apple or something. They were glad glitching during the holidays. So don’t be like Apple. I mean no, they are doing amazing. It’s just make sure to talk to someone on your team to be sure that your website can handle that extra traffic. And also make sure that all of your staff are trained on your policies like return policies, shipping, all that kind of stuff so they know how to handle your requests. And also this, this last point that I want to mention and I’ve Seen this. There’s a lot of my clients are doing this actually. Empower your customer support team to make decisions themselves so they can help quickly, you know, if the customer is like, not happy with their customer service or with their experience. Empower your team to offer a discount code or offer them some help. Be sure that everyone understands the big goal, what you do if something goes wrong, and make sure that you have a plan in place for support and order management.

Amara: 37:19

Yeah, I love those tips. Yeah. And it leads right into our last one, Vira. So it’s a great intro into tip number five for today, which is optimizing your return policy. So we just talked about, like people going onto your website, how important that is, is experience the customer journey. That’s important checkout, really important, you know, support for your, your customers. I mean, really, these are things that make you a great brand. And then that last one is just really optimizing your return policy. So fun fact, Vira. Think about like, e commerce. When it comes to all of the products that, like, you’ve shopped for, what would you guess is the number one most returned item during these busy seasons?

Vira: 38:05

I know this one just because I worked with this type of clients in the past. It’s definitely the fashion. Fashion segment, the closing. So that’s like the biggest one. And yeah, I mean, their returns are insane. And I’m like, honestly, I’m the same. Sometimes I order like two sizes because I’m not sure how it’s gonna look on me. Right. So, yeah, I’m the same. I’m definitely a part of that statistic.

Amara: 38:30

Yeah, I think it makes sense because you can’t try anything on. Right. So you’re kind of guessing. And I don’t know, for me, sometimes I’m a size 6 or sometimes I’m a size 7 or if I order shoes, that’s the worst. Sometimes I’m a size 8 and sometimes I’m a size 8.5. And that difference is huge. So I think knowing that when you are making those purchases, especially I think in the fashion industry, but, but I’m talking shoes, beauty and personal, like, products, electronics, outdoor, sports, care, food. No matter what you’re selling, if you have a really great, awesome return policy, you’re going to help your, your customers, your subscribers to feel more confident right. In the purchase that they’re going to make. So I know of all of the items that were returned, I believe in 2020, 75% of them was clothing and accessories. So that’s huge. That’s massive. Massive. So, and I Think especially because online shopping really did increase quite a bit. It really did also increase that number of returns that kind of came in. So return products for 20, 20,$428 billion worth 10% of total retail sales. Wow, that’s insane. So I think having a good return policy is really essential. But also even a exchange policy, maybe if you do offer just, you know, the exchange in the right size versus just a return in general, it will really help your customers to feel like reassured in your brand. Also know that they can have a good customer experience. And I think most customers do expect free and easy returns just because I think that when you’re shopping online, it’s nice to have that option to return a product or question a product. It goes back into kind of that post purchase to Vira that you talked about, giving reassurance to them that you bought the right thing. But hey, we’re here to answer any questions you have. And then just like it’s important to find the FAQ or the contact us have your return policy very like front and center as well.

Vira: 40:40

So there’s kind of trained us, right, to expect that all of the returns will be. Be free. I mean, I, I return stuff all the time. I order like two different sizes or like two different colors or something like that. And Amazon and Costco, like in Europe, it’s, it’s completely different. The return process, it’s not as easy to return item as it is in the States. Like, most of the clothing can be returned like after seven days, I think, oh, wow. And you can’t even return everything. So they have more rules for return, you know.

Amara: 41:14

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love how like super easy. You did point out that Amazon kind of led that part in the industry because, you know, if you order something and it’s the wrong item, you just go on, you click return. I drop it off at a USPS here. I don’t even have to put it in a box. They’ll do it for me.

Vira: 41:31

They actually now pick up the returns. Do you guys have it in the States as well or is it.

Amara: 41:37

I’m not, I’m not that savvy, but I probably.

Vira: 41:41

I mean, yeah, they actually like come to your space and pick up your, like your return. How cool is this? It’s like the same people who usually like deliver the products. The same people can like pick up the product, which makes total sense, right? It does. You just need to leave it in front of the door. It’s like we’ve experienced it for the first time, like last week and we were like, so excited. We left the package in front of the door and we were like, literally sitting by the window to see how it’s going to be. It’s like the reverse Santa, you know, is pretty much when they not deliver the things to you, but they like take them from you. But it’s like just as exciting. I love it.

Amara: 42:18

Oh, I love that. Well, and maybe you can’t be Amazon, right? Maybe you can’t do the full on spectrum, but I do think that they’ve kind of made the bar pretty high to the point where you’re shipping your return policy. It does need to be very clear and it needs to be easy and simple. I think those are really important places. I know, I know. Sometimes I’ve even had to return something and it came with a return label in the package just in case I had to.

Vira: 42:43

Nice.

Amara: 42:44

I thought that was a great idea. But I think think about the places that you’re going to put it, right? Be very transparent and clear here. So think like your shipping and return policy page, having your own landing page that they can go and be directed on, like in the post purchase checkout. I think having it very clear on your checkout page where people are actually purchasing is a great idea. Your FAQ page, anytime anyone has a question that they might have, ask, you know, can I return this? What’s your return policy? And then also just, you know, product pages in general, if you have a product that people are hesitant to order and you know, that give them the reassurance that if they don’t love it, they can always send it back. And then I think last is just, gosh, those transactional emails are huge for us. So think like the order notification emails, you know, your order has shipped. Thank you for your order. That gives that reassurance too. And just really staying in touch with your consumer, your subscriber.

Vira: 43:44

Yeah, that’s super important. And I mean, we all will be returning the stuff around the holidays. So make this process as transparent and as easy for your customers as possible. Yeah, so now you have it. The five tips from us. The five tips on how to. How to prepare for the Black Friday Cyber Monday season by the like, right now, when we are recording it, it’s still like the end of October, but when you will be listening to this podcast, you guys, you will be like a week and a half away from Black Friday Cyber Monday. So I really hope. Yeah, I’m like, I’m recording this. I’m saying like, hi to future Vira. You’ve got this. Everything going to be okay. You will survive this. This is like the busiest time of the year for us and for you as well, guys, I’m sure. But yeah, here are the five tips if you guys want to have them all kind of like gathered in one nice PDF file. We will share the link for our Black Friday checklist in the description box. So just follow the link, leave your email, and we will send you a detailed sort of like, list with all of the check marks and everything so you can make sure that you and your brand are ready for Black Friday cycle Cyber Monday season. Well, that was fun, Amara. Thank you so much.

Amara: 45:06

Well, I wish Everybody a happy Q4, a Q4 here, and of course, an amazing Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend. And yeah, I’m, I’m excited. It’ll be great.

Vira: 45:17

It will be great. We will survive this. This will be our best one yet. Thank you so much, Amara. It was, as always, fun having you here. You’re. You’re welcome to come back anytime on our podcast. And guys, thank you so much for listening. Get ready for Black Friday Cyber Monday. If you have any questions, as always, feel free to reach out to us and make sure to download that PDF with like a cheat sheet for Black Friday Cyber Monday because it’s super, super helpful. Thank you so much for listening and we hope to see you here next Tuesday. Thank you guys. Bye. Take care.

Amara: 45:51

Bye.