Is Your Company’s Website Ready for Black Friday? [Infographic]

Thanksgiving and Black Friday in the US are less than a week away, people.

While personally, you may be on the hunt for the perfect pair of stretchy “eating” pants, professionally, it’s time to ensure that your website and marketing are ready for uptick in business that comes with Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and more recently, Cyber Monday.

B2B or B2C, shoppers are on lookout for great deals on these days. In fact, in 2015, the number of people shopping at home increased by 21.5%.  So, whether you’re hosting a sale, unveiling a new product or service, or simply publishing some holiday-themed content (like yours truly), you’ll want to take steps to have your website ready for the big day. 

To help, the team over at Apica Systems, made this handy infographic touching upon several crucial points to evaluate your site on, eye-opening user statistics, and ways to improve its performance.

Insights shared in the infographic include:

1. Online spending is expected to increase 56% over the next five years
2. Google found that as little as a .5 second increase in load time can drop site traffic by 20%
3. 57% of consumers will leave a retail site if it’s slow
4. In 2015, holiday sales increased 15-16% due to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. In-store sales declined 10%.
5. 51% of millennial smartphone users are likely to complain about poor online shopping experiences on social media.

How to prepare for Black Friday:

1. Monitor your backend: Make sure your website infrastructure is equipped to handle extra traffic.
2. Validate Mobile APIs
3. Cross-browser and multi-device test your site
4. Check and optimize your site speed

Other facts to keep in mind:

• According to Blazemeter, Black Friday sales tend to ramp up around 6:00am and peak at 10:00am.
• 33% of online consumers abandon transactions if they have a poor experience.
• 46% of mobile shoppers will abandon transactions if they encounter difficulty.

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