Black Friday 2015: Lessons for multichannel businesses
Black Friday pre-Christmas frenzy
The pre-Christmas shopping frenzy that is Black Friday is almost upon us again. Black Friday 2015 is on the 27th November. As multichannel businesses prepare to maximise on the opportunity, consider some of the things didn’t go quite as well as they should have last year:
- Website overload
- Many retailers experienced website problems as millions of shoppers tried to grab a bargain for delivery or for click and collect. Some of the websites of larger businesses were simply unable to process the volume of incoming requests in real-time.
- Inventory
- Many customers placed web orders for discounted goods which were erroneously displayed as in stock.
- Fulfilment – click and collect
- Tesco is one retailer that experienced severe problems with click and collect orders. Amongst other problems, customers encountered long delays at collection points and were sent erroneous emails that orders were ready to collect.
- Fulfilment – deliveries
- Many next day deliveries failed with customer services unable to provide answers about order status. M&S was criticised on social media as disappointed customers went on to have orders for similar products fulfilled on time by rivals Next and John Lewis.
- Instore safety
- Everyone loves a bargain, but the hype around Black Friday seems to bring out the worst in some people. Competition for limited stock turned ugly with security losing control as customers wrestled with each other.
- Converting tripled numbers of web visitors into growth
- Argos had 13.5 million visitors, three times as many as it had on Black Friday in 2013. The four-day 2014 event drove a 45 per cent rise in like-for-like sales. However, overall growth for the 18 weeks to 3 January 2015 was just 0.1 per cent.
Black Friday: Trial by consumer frenzy
Black Friday is just about the most arduous challenge that could be designed to test the multichannel capabilities of a business. Thankfully, most businesses in the mid-market won’t have to deal with the volumes seen by big brands and national chains. However, multichannel operations of mid-market businesses still need to link up properly.
Connect the dots of multichannel with BlueBridge One
BlueBridge One lets today’s wholesale and distribution businesses to connect the dots of multichannel. Wholesale, In-store, Online and M2M are elements that need to be integrated. BlueBridge One is an expert at developing NetSuite as an ERP and e-commerce platform for wholesale distributors that need to accommodate consumers, retailers and channel partners.