Your checkout's Best Friend this Black Friday
- Laura Lutener
Black Friday 2020 was, of course, entirely unprecedented (that word none of us have ever heard used so much and probably never want to hear again). November was a weird time, we were in a one-month lockdown, hoping for a free Christmas but with no real certainty whether or not it would work. So, like most things in 2020, Black Friday went entirely online.
Our usage figures here at Fetchify for Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the weekend in between, showed the huge difference in online traffic from the year before. Black Friday shopping was up by 43%, and Cyber Monday up by 61%. With businesses desperate to make the most of the online event, sales extended beyond the main two days and weekend also saw impressive growth in sales, with Saturday up by 71% and Sunday by 76%.
Now, in 2021, while another Lockdown Christmas is unlikely, there is still a lot of uncertainty. So yes, the high street is back open. But with a recent survey suggesting that half of consumers* are planning on shopping exclusively online this year, the all-night queues outside shops and mad stampedes of two years ago are unlikely to make a come back just yet. And let’s be honest, who wants to be doing that when you could be getting the same deals from the sofa with a cup of tea?
However, while the experience of a virtual Black Friday may be more relaxing for shoppers, for online stores and checkout systems, the impending stampede will be no less brutal than any physical rush of previous years. The current global shipping and supply chain difficulties are only likely to increase Black Friday traffic even more, as shoppers have been encouraged to plan ahead and buy Christmas presents early. Is your ecommerce site prepared for another unprecedented (yes, I’m sorry) year?
One of the largest challenges that comes with the increased traffic of these huge sale events is increased cart abandonment. Did you know that overall cart abandonment on Black Friday 2020 was 77%*.
A big advantage for customers to browsing Black Friday sales from the comfort of home is the ability to compare deals across shops, in multiple tabs, at once. Picking the best item, the best price, the best postage deal, and the easiest UX. Don’t lose shoppers to your competition for something as easily avoidable as a poor checkout experience! For helpful tips on how to improve your overall checkout UX, check out our articles on Top 10 tools to optimise basket completion and Media Lounge’s 8 Tips to Improve Site Usability and Conversion Rate.
Not all changes will be quick to implement and with Black Friday 2021 only a month away, the pressure is on to get the highest ROI as quickly as possible. One quick win for checkout optimisation is integrating Fetchify’s address lookup tool. By reducing the number of keystrokes required to complete the checkout form, the type-ahead address finder speeds up the process by auto-filling the correct fields. This not only reduces friction at checkout and increases your conversion rate, it will also guarantee you capture accurate and validated customer data, effectively eliminating failed deliveries caused by incorrect addresses. With the shipping issues we already mentioned, this is really not the moment to compound the delays with missing deliveries in the last mile.
Mobile conversion is up at least 40% versus the prior period. Basket abandonment has reduced and it’s reduced at exactly that point in the checkout that Fetchify has beeninserted. 
Head of eCommerce
It aids conversion and makes the checkout process more streamlined and easier to use from a customer experience point of view, and that’s why we use it.
Head of Digital
With over 30 ready-made plugins for all major ecommerce platforms, as well as extensive documentation for custom integrations, you can get our Address Auto-Complete API working in minutes. Start your free trial today and prepare your checkout for Black Friday. If you have any questions, get in touch and our expert team will be happy to help.
About Fetchify
We are a pioneer in SaaS address lookup and data validation solutions. We process millions of data transactions each day for thousands of clients ranging from small e-commerce startups to large household brands such as Heinz and RBS. Our flagship products Address Auto-Complete and Postcode Lookup reduce friction on checkouts, leading to increases in conversion rate of up to 40%, and helps reduce failed deliveries by as much as 75%. Since launching in 2008, we have differentiated by our ease of integration and exceptional support.
