Black Friday in 2020: What to expect?

By Joana Falcão. Posted on October 23, 2020

Black Friday is known as the busiest sales day of the year. It is the “Friday after Thanksgiving” day and marks the start of the Christmas shopping season - 30% of all retail sales occur from Black Friday through to Christmas.  

One of the popular explanations of Black Friday’s name is that this day represented the point in the year when retailers began to turn a profit, thus going from being "in the red" to being "in the black".   

So we can all understand the importance of Black Friday in the Retail world. Year on year, we’ve been seeing the increase of e-commerce in Black Friday. According to Adobe Analytics, in 2019 consumers spent $7.4 billion online, an increase of $1.2 billion from Black Friday 2018, making it the biggest Black Friday ever for digital sales.  

But now with this new challenging situation that the pandemic caused, we have to adapt this season.                

COVID-19 brought changes to our lives and compelled us to become more digital, leading to a more tech and online world. Not only have us as consumers had to adjust our habits, but companies have also had to adapt their approach. And, more than ever, Black Friday & Cyber Monday have become great opportunities to boost online sales.

This season is already associated with e-commerce, especially Cyber Monday that is almost exclusively online. But, in 2020, online sales will have more impact than ever on companies' revenue due to the pandemic. Unable to have long queues and crowds in the shops, this has led companies to re-think their sales strategy. And why not take more advantage of online at this time? Almost 80% of the consumers plan to buy digitally on Black Friday to avoid crowds – a number that has been increasing year by year, but it is expected to rise dramatically higher this year. This means that brands are waiting for big sales on BF as always but in a different way. 

But the adjustments don’t stop there: companies also have to think about a new customer journey online such as making use of the sales funnel from Awareness, Consideration and Conversion. Thinking about the logistics in maintaining the excellence of consumer experience and encouraging customers to buy more digitally. Companies have to make sure that consumers are also comfortable making their purchases on their devices.  

In this unusual and unprecedented year, it will be even more important to please customers. They are shopping in advance looking for gifts that fit their current lifestyle. Black Friday and Cyber Monday is the perfect time for companies and brands to understand what the new consumer preferences are and of course to learn from this new journey on how it’s enhancing a more digital world as a solution to fight pandemic barriers. 

New behaviours and strategies have to be implemented by the companies to attract consumers, and as we have already demonstrated, Digital advertising will be the key to reaching them. For instance, the mobile market represented 61% of online transactions in 2019. This is a new and fresh opportunity to engage with consumers that have adopted mobile as their new “go-to” to shop and to also reconnect with existing mobile-savvy audiences. There are many ways to reach people on mobile, attracting their attention and bringing them to your website/app to make a purchase or interact with your brand.

Our shopping habits might have changed, but the Black Friday craze is here to stay. So, take advantage of this period and prepare an amazing digital experience for your customers. You won’t have your physical store crowded, but you can ( and should)  have your online store buzzing. Change and adapt as your consumers do, we all know millennials aversion to human contact, but in 2020 “all consumers” are afraid of it, so go online and sell. 

Some interesting facts from last year:

• Black Friday 2019 saw 93.2 million buyers shopping online.  
• Black Friday online shopping sales hit $7.4 billion, which is an all-time high. 
• Average savings on Black Friday specials are 37%. 
• About 40% of shoppers made online purchases on Black Friday 2019. 
• $2.9 billion worth of Black Friday sales happened through mobile phones. 
• Millennials were the biggest spenders on Black Friday 2019.    
• About 50.4% of women are Black Friday shoppers. 
• Amazon accounted for 54.9% of all sales on Black Friday. 
• The average adult plans to spend $400 on Black Friday sales.