How to prepare your eCommerce business for Singles’ Day Sales

November is an important time of the month for many brands, retailers and eCommerce businesses. It is the time of the year when some of the biggest sales events are happening.

Everyone around the globe is familiar with Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but how many of you have heard of Singles Day?

What is Singles’ Day?

Singles’ Day roots back to four male students in China in 1993 thinking about how they could break the monotony of being single. They decided that November 11th would be the Bachelors' Day when they would celebrate being single. After some time this celebration attracted both men and women throughout the whole campus and later to other universities. Therefore the name was changed to Singles Day.

Singles’ Day Sales

In 2009 Alibaba, the biggest online retailer in China saw a chance with Singles’ Day and took inspiration from Black Friday. Alibaba encouraged single people to treat themselves by offering large discounts on their website. First Singles’ Day Sales included 27 brands and produced a gross revenue of €7.8 million.

You might think that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the most significant eCommerce shopping days of the year. And you are not wrong. However, looking at global eCommerce, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are not even close to reaching the gross revenue of Singles Day.

In 2020 there were more than 250 000 different brands, including 31 000 foreign companies, which produced gross revenue of €74.4 billion. This makes it one of the largest global online sales shopping days by gross revenue. For comparison in 2020 in the US during Thanksgiving weekend, including Black Friday and Cyber Monday, only produced gross revenue of €25.6 billion. That means Alibaba alone generated almost 3 times more with €48.8 billion.

Singles’ Day Sales in Europe

The reason you might not have heard about Singles' Day is that it is mostly happening in China and the US. Although more and more European countries are beginning to adopt Singles' Day Sales in their marketing strategy, the same way as they earlier adopted Black Friday or Cyber Monday.

Despite being something "new" in Europe, Single’s Day is rather well-known in the UK, Germany, France, and the Netherlands. Between 2019 and 2020 average consumer awareness for Singles’ Day in European countries rose by 17.73%.

As awareness is growing, this is your chance as an eCommerce business to grow your gross revenue even more, by participating in Singles Day Sales. Take your chance and be the first of your competitors to adopt Singles’ Day into your sales and marketing strategy.

How to prepare your eCommerce business for Singles’ Day Sales

1. Optimize your website

As an eCommerce business, to prepare for Singles’ Day Sales you need to take care of your website performance. Here are three crucial things that you as an eCommerce business should pay attention to.

Improve your website loading time 

The suggested page load time shouldn't be longer than two or three seconds, as each additional second increases the bounce rate. If your page loading time takes five seconds, the probability of website visitor bouncing rises by 90%.

To lower the likelihood of that here are 4 things you can do:

• Optimize the size of your images
• Remove unnecessary plugins
• Reduce your redirects
• Remove unnecessary spaces, characters, comments, and other unneeded elements

Improve your customer experience on mobile devices

Did you know in 2019 90% of sales on Singles' Day were generated through mobile devices? So it is crucial for your business to make sure that your customers can easily navigate through your website regardless of which device they are using.

Add relevant keywords

To have successful Singles’ Day Sales make sure you are adding the right keywords to improve search engine ranking. Find out what your customers are looking for and target them with the right keywords.

2. Update your product data feed more than once per day during Singles’ Day Sales

You should think about scheduling more regular updates during the Singles’ Day Sales.

Here are 3 reasons why you should update your product feed more than once per day during Singles’ Day Sales:

• Stock levels. Keep in mind that every click costs money for your eCommerce business and it would be a shame to waste advertising budget by sending traffic to out-of-stock products. To avoid it and improve customer experience, make sure your product feed is updated regularly so it can reflect up-to-date stock levels. Whether it is making sure that it is “out-of-stock” or if you increase your inventory. 
• Competitive prices. Use a Competitor Monitoring tool to determine if your prices need to be adjusted to be more competitive. Either adjust your prices or use custom labels to automatically avoid advertising products where you are more expensive.
• Hourly special offers. If you provide customers with special hourly offers, having frequent daily feed updates helps your eCommerce business to handle this process more successfully.

Sounds challenging? Luckily you can frequently update your stock levels, pricing and promotional offers by scheduling regular updates of your product feed. 

3. Raise awareness among your customers

As for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you need to make sure your customers are aware of the Singles’ Day Sales promotions you are offering. At the same time keep in mind that your competitors also are getting ready for Singles’ Day Sales. Be visible and unique!

To stand out and promote your eCommerce business here are 3 tips:

• Email marketing. Use email marketing to your advantage. Give your customers more time to learn about your offers even before they consider a purchase. Also, use email marketing to let them know when you launch product discounts.
• Social media. Invest in paid media. Knowing your target audience, personalize your communications and reach the potential buyers. 
• Website. Create a Singles’ Day Sales landing page by using fixed URLs. When the Sale period is over, instead of deleting it, just simply hide the page in the menu. In this way, you will be ready for next year.

Conclusion

Whether you are already implementing Singles’ Day Sales or just researching its opportunities, you should take a chance to grow your gross revenue even higher in November month. Implementing the suggested steps in this article will help your eCommerce business to be competitive for Singles’ Day Sales.

Are you uncertain about your feed performance?

With a WakeupData product feed audit, you can get your feed checked for free. The feed audit provides a checkup of the feed, which includes product descriptions, product titles, unique IDs, and many more.

If you have more questions - Book a free Demo of the WakeupData platform and have all your questions answered.