The ultimate Black Friday guide for retailers
Avoid congestion
Review the traffic flow in your store and walk through it yourself to experience every aspect of the customer journey. Place top discount items evenly throughout your store to prevent overcrowding in one area. Avoid big open spaces where large crowds can form, this can create tension and even arguments when customers are trying to look at products.
To improve consistency across your estates it can be good to use a tool such as Oplift Review. This tool allows you to take POS photos to send to your stores. This will ensure that all displays look the same, you can communicate what an area should and shouldn't look like for the day of Black Friday. For two way communication, the app allows stores to send photos back to head office to ensure everything has been done correctly.
Prepare your staff
As we all know, the Black Friday shift can be overwhelming for staff because of the sheer number of customers you will have coming through your doors. It is always a good idea to motivate staff and get them excited to work, you can do this by; counting down the days until the sale, sending motivational messages or creating contests which can help you to give staff a boost. An example could be the department who sells the most stock wins an extra day of holiday.
It is great to send these communications daily to ensure you keep up motivation. A great tool for doing this would be Oplift Engage. The dashboard means you can display company banners for your motivational messages. The notifications feature means you can notify employees about how many days until the sale. You can even send specific messages to those working on particular shifts, such as "Are you ready to outsell the men's department and make sure you get that extra day's holiday." All of these are sent directly to each employee's own personal device, ensuring no message goes unnoticed.
Extra checklists
On this hectic day, your usual checklist just won't suffice. Ensure you have new ones in place to make sure you are covering every touch point in your store for Black Friday. This could include extra checks for opening such as; are discount signs in correct locations, have Black Friday items been put back on the shop floor and not in the stock room, are the queue barriers in correct positioning, etc.
Oplift Engage allows you to quickly create extra digital checklists which can be sent to all stores. If a check hasn't been done, a notification will be sent immediately to head office so they can find out why and fix it immediately, ensuring there are no hold-ups.
Know your sales
Black Friday means sales are happening quickly, which can mean you need to alter discounts and deals in the moment to ensure that you optimise your stock properly. To do this, you need to be able to see your store stats in seconds.
Oplift's VPOS system built on top of Oplift Extend allows you to instantly see sales information which means you can adjust discount plans accordingly.
Back up staff
There is always a high chance that staff will call in sick on this day, so it essential that you have back up in place. Have a list of staff who are working and have a list of staff who have said that they can be available if they are needed. The notification feature on Oplift Engage means you can quickly send an instant message to all those individuals who are available in a specific location, this is vital if you should need any of your back up staff to come in for the day. As soon as you have filled the position you can send another message to notify you have found a replacement. This makes it easier for you to cover shifts as quickly and efficiently as possible.
