Retailers should brace themselves for a “Black FiveDay”, rather than Black Friday this year.
According to global e-commerce consultancy Salmon, there will be a record-breaking £5 billion spent online from Thursday, November 24, to Cyber Monday on November 28.
Salmon has warned retailers to start preparing now for five days of peak trading in November.
The digital commerce specialist correctly predicted the first £1 billion online shopping day for Black Friday 2015.
Last year, despite the retail industry anticipating the Black Friday rush, digitally-led sales were even higher than predicted.
In the US, retailers saw a tipping point, as online sales outnumbered off-line sales for the first time ever.
In the UK, some retailers reportedly suffered website crashes due to the high volumes of traffic, while on some sites customers sat in online waiting rooms.
Said John Beechen, head of managed services at Salmon: “Retailers should think about peak trading as a crisis that they know will happen in advance. Preparation is vital, and retailers should already be considering their business and operational plans for the period.
“Retailers must also consider contingency plans to respond to issues during the week. At Salmon, we run a cross-client peak operations centre throughout the period to monitor and detect issues before outages and fix problems in real-time.
“Retailers should be ready to take advantage of the heightened consumer interest during peak trading – and avoid long-term damage to the brand through poor customer experience.”
Salmon will share its insights on how to prepare for peak trading at the IMRG’s Managing Peak Performance Connect Conference on Wednesday, June 15.
Mr Beechen will present a speech outlining how retailers should prepare for heightened demand during the busy online period.
Salmon will also launch the Black Friday 2016 Playbook at the event, to support retailers in their planning.
- For more information on IMRG’s Managing Peak Performance Connect Conference, click here.
- For more insight from Salmon on Black Friday, click here.
