Essential Features for Black Friday and Cyber Monday: Part II

In our last blog, we discussed how maintaining alternate payment gateways and creating gift registries are essential for ecommerce retailers preparing for the windfall that is Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Today, we will look at two additional aspects that we believe are incredibly significant for these two important days:

Coupons and Discounts

Above all other times of the year, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the two days that customers expect deals.  However, there are so many sales, discounts, and special promotions competing for the consumer’s attention they can experience “coupon overload”.

“What is one more 10%-off special or free shipping offer?”  

Ecommerce retailers need to create unique and attention grabbing deals that will attract consumers and bring them to their online store.

To create original promotions for your online store, you need an ecommerce platform that can apply  logic to the coupons you create and automatically award them accordingly.

The Upshot Commerce Coupons and Discount Extension is the most robust and flexible coupon system on the market today.  The extension is rule based, and can create offers based on all sort of variables within your system, including:

  • Free shipping with the purchase of a specific item
  • Discounts on a specific brand
  • FREE items automatically added to shopping cart when a certain value is reached
  • Buy 1 Get 1 Free
  • New Customer Only Discount
  • Discount Based on Customer Classification
  • Discount Based on Amount Spent
  • Discount Based on Payment Method (Visa, MC, AmEx, etc.)
  • Tax Free Coupons

The extension is so flexible that if you can dream up the promotion, we can probably make it happen.

Affiliate Programs

In an earlier blog, we defined what Affiliate programs are, and described how ecommerce retailers can leverage affiliate relationships to help boost sales for their online stores.

While maintaining affiliate relationships is an ongoing practice that is important all year round, it becomes especially important as the holidays approach.  As an ecommerce retailer, you want to cultivate those lucrative high site-traffic affiliates.

You want to make sure that you are coordinating banner ads and other advertising efforts to accurately reflect holiday promotions and sales.

You want to  keep track of click thrus and total sales from banner ads so that you can assess the effectiveness of your marketing strategy, and award high quality affiliates for their marketing efforts in turn.

You need the Affiliate Management Extension.

The Affiliate Management Extension enables you to easily create and track affiliate marketing programs, determining commission structures for affiliates based on key factors that you select.

To track the progress of your program, administration and reporting ecommerce tools allow you to view detailed reports and graphs of activity.  Your affiliates can also view reports as well, so that they too can actively participate in adjusting their marketing strategy as you promote and build your online store.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday can be incredibly lucrative times for ecommerce retailers, if they are prepared and make an effort to really engage customers in creative ways.

If you are looking for more ways that Upshot Commerce can help you to increase sales for your online store, please do not hesitate to contact us.

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