In a recent InternetRetailing webinar, The secrets of peak trading success, we heard from Sangeetha Narasimham, regional marketing director SMB online for Europe at Ingenico on getting ready for peak trading at Black Friday – and throughout the year. Here’s a bulletpoint overview of what she said.
• Sangeetha Narasimham started the webinar with a look at the biggest peak shopping day of them all – Black Friday, which this year falls on November 29, while Cyber Monday is on December 2.
• She gave an overview of Ingenico and its work as a global payment processor across sales channels.
# 1 Create your own peak sales moment
- Not just about Black Friday
- Examples: Amazon’s Prime Day, six French retailers who came up with France Day, Alibaba’s Singles Day – now taking off in Europe as well.
- Opt for less crowded shopping days – Hallowe’en? “Be creative – create your own peak sales moment”
# 2 A world gone mobile
- Optimise your site and payments page for mobile – especially since 67% of European traffic now comes from mobile. “If you’ve not thought about how your site and products appear on mobile and social channels, you are missing a trick.” The role of tokenisation in making it easier to pay via mobile.
# 3 Cross border shopping
POLL: Have you thought about attracting cross-border sales this Black Friday? Yes: 57%; No: 30%; Not sure 13%.
- Cross border sales can help retailers to benefit from Black Friday across Europe – and this area has grown faster than domestic sales in recent years.
- Importance of localisation when it comes to language localisation and logistics.
- Business expansion: convert local shoppers by offering the right payment method at the checkout.
- How to bring in customers to the checkout.
- 59% of checkouts will be abandoned if you don’t offer a relevant payment method. It’s an opportunity to boost conversion.
# 4 Handling the volume
- Social media creating super fast hypes that require fast scaling
- New kinds of peak sales in the age of the influencer
- Importance of making sure that payments infrastructure doesn’t crash
- Case study: how peak sales transactions grow at a leading event: dealing with spikes in payments and logistics
- Check the post checkout conversion: how people buy some time after putting it into their basket.
- Transaction authorisation: role of payment method in avoiding card refusals.
- GDPR & PSD2 compliance: importance of looking after card data – and its role in better protecting the consumer from fraud.
# 5 Stand out from the crowd
POLL: Are discounts your main strategy this Black Friday? Yes: 58%; No: 29%; Not sure: 13%.
- Many retailers can’t afford to slash prices: when shoppers think about the major gifts they will give, they focus on the best gift to give rather than the most discounted one.
- Three ways to stand out: Offer unique products and generous returns policies; make sure there is a sell out or limited edition; use social and be personal. “By using more and more social you can reach your target audience better and convert a viewer into a buyer.”
- Gamification: how retailers are using this tactic to turn retailers into more frequent buyers.
- Chatbots: how to create a purchasing experience without leaving the chatbot to pay.
How Ingenico can help
- Optimise fraud rules
- Ensure platform availability
- Maximise approvals and minimise declines
The webinar concluded with a Q&A session that covered areas from social media to how to prioritise. Click here to watch the webinar in full.
