Friday 27th November is Black Friday 2015 and if last year was anything to go by it’s going to be a big day for UK traders. As Black Friday fast approaches, we look at how retailers are preparing their websites for this increased search volume and online traffic.
Below is a roundup of how some of the UK’s leading retailers are approaching their web pages in the build up to this Black Friday:
ASDA
Let’s start with how not to prepare your website for Black Friday. The ASDA website has a message announcing that this event has now finished. Come on, ASDA – you need to be quicker than that.
Debenhams
Debenhams have a very simple approach with a clear countdown and a link to view their other offers in the meantime.
Maplin
We recently bought a snow machine from Maplin (but that’s another story), so we were keen to see how they were promoting Black Friday on their site. We have to say this is one of the most considered and clear approaches that we’ve seen.
Here are some of the great features they’ve included:
– Clear countdown
– They highlight that offers will be valid for one week, therefore preparing for increased volumes of traffic
– A ‘subscribe for deals’ button
– ‘Can’t wait’ spotlight – a promotion of current offers and reductions.
Argos
Argos has a strong, bold page and is heavily promoting the event through PPC to grow awareness.
They have created a hashtag #JustCantWait to help spread awareness of the event and also offer information about how to register online and delivery details.
Marks & Spencer
This is another simple approach, clearly announcing the date and promoting current offers below.
So to summarise, here are our 4 key SEO tips for retailers this Black Friday:
- Keep your Black Friday landing page live all year round
In order to maximise search rankings, you need to be thinking of Black Friday as a year round marketing campaign. As we’ve seen with the ASDA example above, many big name retailers are removing or neglecting related pages after the event. By doing this people are either experiencing broken links or pages with out of date content.
- Update the page with new offers throughout the year
Although Black Friday does have a timely appeal, instead of taking the pages down after the event, we suggest that you keep the pages live and active to promote any ongoing offers throughout the year, allowing Google to properly index these pages and in turn improve the search rankings.
- Get the page ready for the current year as soon as possible
Retailers and customers are now thinking about Christmas earlier than ever, with many festive promotions starting as early as August. Getting a countdown to Black Friday on your website as early as possible in the year makes you look up to date and gives you the opportunity to feature other offers before Black Friday arrives.
- Provide a mailing list sign-up on the page for data capture
If visitors are landing on your Black Friday web page, it’s pretty safe to say they are interested in your product offers. This is a prime opportunity to capture email addresses to communicate your product offers and discounts throughout the year.