Black Friday is almost here! Around South Africa, eager shoppers are double-checking their budgets and making wish-lists! Black Friday is now so well-entrenched, everyone’s getting in on the action. With discounts of as much as 80%, thousands of bargain hunters will flood SA’s online retailers when the clock strikes midnight.
With a number of lead-up sales also soon to be underway, many shoppers have already begun to flex their bargain-grabbing muscles. But is there an art to shopping safely and wisely when the real madness strikes? The answer is yes.
Toni Wilkinson, Chief Marketing Officer at PriceCheck, South Africa’s number one product discovery and comparison platform, and a Silvertree Internet Holdings company, shares her thoughts.
Here are Toni’s top six tips for getting the best deals on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
- Have a plan. Know what you want, need and can afford before you get enticed by all the offers in front of you.
- Choose a secure way to pay. Credit card payment methods that ask you for a supplementary one-time PIN such as Verified by Visa, Snapscan and PayPal are all good options.
- Take note of the delivery and return details. Will you get the purchase when you need it? And, if you need to return it, will you end up paying more on delivery costs?
- Look out for hidden costs or additional purchases you might need to make.
- Compare deals. Similar deals might be packaged slightly differently, so make sure you are comparing apples with apples.
- Only buy from reputable retailers so you can be sure you will receive authentic products.
“Our Black Friday deals run for an entire week on PriceCheck.” Toni explains, “starting 19 November and running through until Cyber Monday 26 November 2018.”
In 2017, PriceCheck witnessed a huge increase in site traffic at midnight on Black Friday compared to the average day – almost 3 times the normal number of users logged on – showing that SA’s online shoppers stand ready and waiting for Black Friday deals to break.
To help them prepare for the increased demand, PriceCheck has been working closely with its merchants over the last 4 weeks to curate their product offerings. ‘From a customer demand side, we’ve also been upscaling and testing our servers to accommodate the increased traffic to our site, to ensure we have no downtime,’ Toni explains. ‘We’ll also have our developers on standby for the full 24 hours. We experienced no downtime last year, and are confident we can replicate this again this year.’
On Black Friday, PriceCheck will have a dedicated list of curated Black Friday deals, encompassing all site-wide deals either above 30% or equal to R2 000 or more in saving. ‘Global researchshows that there is limited consumer pre-planning for Black Friday 2018, which is a great opportunity for consumers to use a comparison service such as PriceCheck to see all the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals in one place and click-through directly to get the deal before it sells out,’ Toni explains.
PriceCheck’s Black Friday deals will run from 19 November – 26 November, with category specials running daily in the build-up to Black Friday.
‘Consumers can look out for offers from the following categories in the build-up week to Black Friday,’ says Wilkinson. ‘Deals will cover Fashion & Beauty on Monday, Home on Tuesday, Toys & Gadgets on Wednesday, and Electronics on Thursday, with every category of course available on Black Friday itself. Deals will also run across all categories and brands.’
What are some of the brands to watch out for this year? Toni highlights some of 2017’s top performers: ‘The most popular brands last year were Samsung, Apple and Hisense. In general, our top products included cell phones, TVs, smart watches, laptops and multimedia players. Last year the most popular category was tech by far, followed by fashion, toys and baby.’
On the question of whether Black Friday is profitable for businesses, Toni explains that volume and demand are key. ‘Global research shows that consumers are planning to spend even more on purchases in 2018 compared to previous years, reaffirming Black Friday as one of the most significant revenue-generating opportunities in the retail calendar. Retailers may experience a slow start to sales in November, due to the high demand for deep discounts over the Black Friday week. During Black Friday week itself, retailers generally experience a spike in sales, relying on high sales volumes to compensate for low margins. They also use the event to mark the start of the shopping season.
To help shoppers find the best Black Friday deals, PriceCheck uses a powerful, intelligent search function. ‘We want to be the first site South Africans head to on Black Friday,’ Toni emphasises. ‘We aggregate products from all the reputable retailers, saving consumers time when searching for the products they want.’
