Its not long now until Black Friday and Cyber Monday where people go crazy for heavily discounted goods and we are already working with our clients in preparation for this. Last year was obviously a bit of an anomaly with the Corona Virus outbreak but sales figures indicated that there was over £8.5 billion spent on Black Friday in 2019 in the UK alone.
If you don’t fancy being elbow deep, fighting over the last TV on display then why not snag a bargain online from the comfort of your own home. Generally online sales are focused on Cyber Monday which follows Black Friday but the two events have become merged in recent years with more people now shopping online anyway.
Often you can grab an even better deal online than in store anyway, especially larger items that take up al lot of shelf or floor space in a physical shop. Also its often easier for the seller to ship directly from their warehouse or distribution centre and they can pass on this cost saving directly to the consumer so again online can have more benefits.
So in order for you to grab the deal of the year we have comprised some top tips for securing your bargain online……
- The early bird catches the worm. Most ecommerce retailers will turn on their discounted prices early on the 26th. i.e. 6.00am or 7.00am. Stock will often be limited and it can be a first come first served scenario so we recommend researching what time the retailers sale starts by checking out their social media or speaking to their customer services in advance and setting the alarm clock.
- Do your research in advance. Sometimes those bargains may not be the bargain you first thought. With the internet being such a a competitive market place the product you are searching for may already be discounted with other retailers or possibly even cheaper than a Black Friday Deal so its worth knowing how much to pay and what really is a bargain.
- Use Bookmarks: Save time on the day and book mark your favourite stores or even product pages on what you wish to purchase. You can even be super advanced and create separate folders for different products that are offered by different stores. Every second counts.
- There is nothing worse than finding something online, adding to your basket and while you are in the process of checking out you get to the final stage and it then says ‘Sorry out of stock’ . We have all been hit by this in the past im sure. Something you can do to try minimise this is pre register or sign up for an account prior to Black Friday. Often you don’t have to purchase anything in advance and stores will allow you to sign up as a customer. Or alternatively if you have ordered form them before dig out your username and passwords ready and test logging in prior. By doing this you can fast track the checkout process and secure that bargain.
- Save credit/debit card details to your browser. Now IT and security professionals will hate us for saying this but most modern browsers allow you to store these details and can pre populate checkout forms automatically for you and then you just need to drop in the last three digits of your security number on your card. So no need to be typing out long card numbers and expiry dates.
- Similar to the above, most browsers allow you to pre populate form data such as delivery addresses, email addresses, contact phone numbers etc. Again this can save you valuable seconds while going through the checkout procedure which could mean the difference between securing a deal or loosing out. Just make sure these are all 100 percent correct prior to ordering.
- Lastly beware of scams, if it looks too good to be true then maybe it is. We recommend only purchasing form trusted retailers and do your research into these in advance. There is no better time for Scammers to target people than during this frenzied long weekend online and on social media platforms so please be carful and consider using credit cards rather than debit cards as this does give you much more protection.
