The awareness of Black Friday in Britain has gathered pace over the past few years, among both businesses and consumers alike.
Traditionally, Black Friday signalled the start of the Christmas shopping season in the US as the infamously wild commerce event, which is known to trigger arguments and brawls, follows on from Thanksgiving. However, UK giants like Tesco, John Lewis, Currys and Argos can all be found embarking on a discounting bonanza to rack up sales from deal-hungry seasonal shoppers. Someone in a solid place to know what consumers want on each day of the year is Claire Davenport, MD of deals website Vouchercodes.co.uk. So in time for Black Friday 2014 on 28 November, Real Business spoke her to find out how and why the day is winning over Brits. She noted that Black Friday in the US has been a big deal for over ten years, though it’s only been barely a fraction of that time that the UK has adopted it. “It’s only natural that Black Friday made it over the pond. Amazon coined the phrase here and it made sense: consumers have firmly settled in the money-saving mindset given the fact austere living is still on the agenda in double dip recession UK,” Davenport said. “I think retailers realise that customers here want a chance to take advantage of big sales and deals before Christmas – it’s an expensive occasion after all.”Read more on Black Friday:
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We’ve had huge demand for #BlackFriday and know some of you may have problems accessing our site. We’re doing everything we can to resolve this, and thank you for your patience. Posted by Tesco on Friday, 28 November 2014As Salmon’s CTO Glen Burson put it: “Black Friday’s surge in sales in November 2014 threw traditional British pre-Christmas shopping habits into disarray. Shoppers, lured to online retailers with significantly discounted flash promotions, spent an estimated £810m online in a single day ) almost 50 per cent more than industry experts had predicted.” Strictly speaking, the ethos of Black Friday isn’t contained to just one day. Some deals continue across the weekend, while Cyber Monday follows three days later and is generally expected to be the busiest online shopping day. Salmon’s data revealed that sales grew, but at a smaller rate.
Black Friday versus Cyber Monday: How British shoppers are set to behave
With that in mind, Black Friday 2015 is expected to set a new milestone for British ecommerce. “We believe that demand will start to surge before Friday 27 November as shoppers come online early to search for bargains,” added Burson. “At Salmon we predict that in 2015 the frenzy of Black Friday, heightened by national press coverage, will lead to the first £1bn online shopping day in the UK.” Based on the results experienced by Salmon’s clients, which include firms such as Argos, Audi UK, Halfords, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s and Selfridges, traffic will begin to pick up from 7am to 9am ahead, and at the start, of the working day. The spike tailed off by 30 per cent by the time 3pm rolled around, but sales then surged once more at 5pm when the working day was over, continuing into the night. Burson detailed: “Overall we saw an average fourfold increase in traffic for Black Friday compared with other days in the Christmas Shopping period but interestingly a higher completion rate of orders, which may indicate that Black Friday shoppers were more ready and waiting to make an order due to both advanced publicity and the fact that many bargains were available on Black Friday only.” Ahead of the day, companies planning to embrace Black Friday should have team members agree to certain rules to follow, including:- Know roles and responsibilities
- Ensure systems are operational
- Communicate with each other
- React quickly to issues
- Prepare for shift handover
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