How to stand out on Cyber Monday

Cyber Monday has been a game changer since 2005, when the term was first coined to explain the huge boost in online dates that happened that first day people go back to work after their Thanksgiving holiday. If you have an online retailer built through a platform like Shopify, you have everything you need to make sure that your business is hauling in your fair share of wealth before this even begins. There’s a huge pie out there during this time of the year, so you should take these steps to stand out, and get great results. This money making opportunity comes, literally, once a year, so don’t be shy; adopt these steps well in advance.

Make Sure Your Website Is Mobile Ready
Ready to make some mad cash in one retail day? Then make sure your website can handle the mobile traffic. Between smartphone shoppers and tablet computers, sales from mobile devices were up 55 percent in 2013, according to PFS Web. This means that most people are going to want to get what they came to the site for and check out quickly. Phones don’t always have the best reception or the best data plans; they need to be sure that they’re going to be able to handle everything that gets thrown at them right away. Most every web platform needs to be optimized to work best on a mobile device. The good news is that, depending on how specific you’re buying, you might need only one mobile site. Tablets, iPhones, and Android devices are the major players in the mobile online shopping game, with phones out stripping tablets as of last year. Until the numbers come in this year, it’s impossible to say whether tablets, which are more popular than ever, are going to close the gap or not. Just make sure that your mobile optimized site can be viewed from both major operating systems and, if possible, include something to help those with tablets keep up with the rest of the world. Mobile outages could mean huge profit losses once Cyber Monday arrives, so test out your mobile site before the big Cyber Monday launch.

Make Sure That Your Server Can Handle the Strain
Just like your site needs to be maximized for the greatest mobile potential, your site needs to be able to handle a surge in clients. When deals are specifically for Cyber Monday, they have a built in timeline. This will lead to more people buying your products (yay!), but operates on a volume ratio that says that you can’t afford to do this all the time. Don’t let your site go down during Cyber Monday; that’s when you need volume to offset any profit losses you’re experiencing.

Perform an Email Blast Before Hand
Mobile shoppers spent an average of $134 per order on Cyber Monday, making it the most profitable mobile sales day of the year according to Digiday. This kind of hugely perfect pay increase doesn’t come along every day, but you know one thing; you’re not likely to be able to count on random chance to bring the customers you want to your door. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are all about bargain sniping, not browsing. Your customers will be coming to your site because they like what you have to offer, because you’ve built a connection with them. You have to get the word out. In addition to using more conventional methods of advertising, you can also boost things by using your collected emails to send everyone a little reminder. The best thing about online sales is that you can send a blast to everyone who’s shopped there before. An email a few weeks before, followed by one the day before reminding everyone that sales start at midnight is just the thing.

Make Sure Your Checkout Process Is Streamlined
The key to making more money is to focus on shopping cart conversion. This means getting customers who put things in their basket to actually check those things out. With that in mind, get rid of “cart roadblocks”, like links that take customers away from their checkout page. You want to funnel them all back into the checkout line, says Marketing Land. Think about it; you want customers to decide they like something and then immediately buy it. No going back, no checking other leads. If you currently have links that ask a customer’s acceptance on a privacy policy, you should have that policy pop up rather than sending people off of your main information page to find out about it. If they click away, they might not click back, so it’s key to keep them on target and focused. Another good idea is to collect their email address as early in the process as possible so you can still advertise to them, or remind them that their shopping cart is waiting for them at your site.