A busy month as we kick off the run up to Christmas.
Wayne
Black Friday, I love it...Firstly, let’s concentrate on our most hectic week of the year – or rather the most hectic month of the year – as the earlier weeks in November entail producing heaps of artwork and marketing material. It’s not just Black Friday either. As a web & marketing agency, we must forward plan, considering that after Black Friday we roll straight into Christmas, and then it’s the New Year sales.
We’ve perfected our process, as follows:
- What is it?
- What will it look like?
- Who’s doing it?
- When does it need doing?
- Who’s putting it live?
- Who’s taking it down?
- What’s replacing it?
Then we circle back round to the beginning: what is it, what will it look like, and so on… We follow this process through Black Friday, Christmas and New Year. This level of organisation means everyone involved is clear on their responsibility, and most importantly, nothing gets missed.
Plan & Execute
Launching a Black Friday promotion early is a no-brainer! 99.9% of the time a buyer will only buy the thing once. Whatever that thing is; a computer game, a new pair of shoes or curtains, or a software subscription, these are not things you buy daily like coffee. You buy them once until you need to buy them again. Your competition is waiting until Friday to roll out their sale, so why wouldn’t you get in front of that customer early and take their money off the market?
Approaching the Black Friday madness this way has reaped rewards for our clients in recent years.
Some takeaways from chart above:
- The first day of the early launch (2) did almost twice as much revenue as any other prior day in November.
- Launching the sale early meant every day of the week outperformed the rest of November.
- Black Friday was (as expected) the highest day for revenue in November, with Cyber Monday second, as customers know to look for ‘Black Friday & Cyber Monday’ deals.
- We achieved a conversion rate of 9.68% during the week, compared to 5.68% in the weeks prior. That’s 1 in 10 visitors making a purchase. Incredible!
Don’t Believe Everything You Read
From a personal perspective, I get most of my Christmas shopping done over the Black Friday weekend. Call me tight, but again, it’s a no-brainer.
A Which? survey shows that 98% of Black Friday ‘sales’ weren’t worth buying last year.
These headlines are nonsense. The survey included just 214 products, out of the hundreds of millions of SKUs available. This survey is the type of content we are fed by the media and it gives genuine online retailers a bad name. Sure, the big corporations will take advantage of people’s buying habits (Argos, Currys, anything M*ke Ashley has his fingers in), but I like to buy from local, independent retailers where possible. This is where you’ll find the real deals (David Dickinson reference), and they’ll be more grateful for your custom, too!
Some Interesting Bits & Bats
To finish off, here’s a few interesting things I’ve learned this month…
McDonald’s is trailing reusable packaging in France. Everyone’s favourite fast-food chain produces about three tonnes of packaging waste every minute! This trial really needs to be successful for the good of the planet. It looks great too, I love the retro look!
absolutely *loving* the design of this reusable packaging that's being introduced at mcdonalds france pic.twitter.com/kDSsNS5Xnz
— juan (@juanbuis) November 19, 2022
According to data – and I have absolutely no idea how this can be accurate – the eight billionth person on earth was born in November. A baby born in the Dominican Republic on Tuesday 15th December now holds that title. The world’s population has grown by 1 billion (14.28%) in just 12 years. Scary.
And to finish on some good news: Sam, the German Shepherd from the film I Am Legend, celebrated her 13th birthday this month and is living her best life! 🐕
It’s Coding Home
I just realised I haven’t mentioned the World Cup!
Probably because, at the time of writing, I’m sitting second-bottom in our Twilo sweepstake league table. Yes, I’m sure you’re not surprised to learn, that us geeks have coded our own sweepstake with a full-on league table and fixture list. More on that a little later.
The next end of month article will be December, where we’ll try something a bit different, so look out for that one shortly before Christmas!
Andrew
Celebrating the World Cup as only a developer can...The month of the World Cup! We decided to enjoy the tournament in true developer fashion and created a sweepstake to end all sweepstakes. We split teams into five pots depending on their FIFA world rankings and held a draw so that we have five teams each, with a good mix of abilities in each lot. Set up like a normal football league – we score three points every time one of our teams wins or one point every time a team draws. We’re also keeping track of goal difference.
To facilitate all of this and to make sure there is no cheating, we coded our own league table on the intranet that does all the heavy lifting, so we don’t have to.
It also means you can be reminded that you are losing when you log in on a morning. Let’s also not forget that the loser is making the teas for a week so a good performance matters!
Aside from the World Cup, I also enjoyed a relaxing holiday in Somerset. Admittedly most of this was spent being lazy in a caravan park having a few drinks but we did do some exploring of the local beaches. The weather stayed dry which was an added bonus!
Feeling refreshed, I’m now ready to take on December and the Christmas madness.
