More people prefer Cyber Monday sales. Why? I’m sure not getting trampled to death in an insane Black Friday stampede is up there at the top. But whatever the reasons are the numbers are unmistakable. Adobe predicts that the Cyber Monday sales for 2013 will be over 2 Billion USD ($2.270B) that is half a billion over the projected sales estimations for Black Friday($1.628B). !Neilsen published an article earlier this week on the top mistakes most retailers do on Black Friday. For those of you who haven’t read the article you’ll find it here. Here’s our thoughts on a few of them.

Contents!

• Sticking to traditional categories

• Leaving a bad first impression and Not having door-buster merchandise in stock

• Missing loyalty opportunities

• No sense of urgency

• Not measuring your objectives and Not scouting the competition

Surviving CyberMonday: Lessons from the mistakes retailers make on Black Friday

Sticking to traditional categoriesIts fairly easy to commit this mistake, after all most eCommerce stores sell products that are restricted to a certain category or vertical.

• One way to break out of this mould is to offer combo deals. You could offer a logical combination to something that you already sell, say you sell just apparel you could throw in a few shoes as well just to complete someone’s wardrobe.

• Doing this will also help you prevent your customers going elsewhere for the same thing.

• Guaranteeing availability on products for a certain amount of time is a great way to create a good first impression with the shoppers on your eCommerce store.

• Personalization is also a great way to create a good first impression, a good example of this is to create personalized landing page based on search queries or for different shopper cohorts.

Leaving a bad first impression and Not having door-buster merchandise in stockGetting on a site after days of anticipation only to find that Flat Screen TV you were really hoping to get is no longer in stock is an impression shattering bummer.

Missing loyalty opportunitiesCyber monday typically brings about a lot of new customers to most sites and in effect gives you an opportunity at creating a new base of fans

• Creating some form of a subscription list with the promise of more deals to come is a great way to get people interested. Just don’t ask them to fill out a form in the middle of a purchase.

• Doing this will also help you prevent your customers going elsewhere for the same thing.

• Creating customized deals for existing loyal customers will not only increase your chances at keeping them happy and buying, it will also give the newer customers something to look forward to.

• A perfect example of this is Airline loyalty programs, all the publicized and rumoured benefits of their loyalty programs usually act as an incentive for the existing customer base to stay loyal and also gives the newer customers something to aspire towards .

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• This problem gets amplified online, the easy availability of alternatives results in rather low attention span and a slow site, or a page crash right in the middle of a checkout isn’t going to do you any favors.

No sense of urgencyThe Neilsen article talks about how customers have very little patience for uninformed associates, understaffed checkouts and the like.

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