Get your shop ready for Black Friday

Black Friday really is the kickoff to the sales season: shop owners make more, shops are popping, and shoppers buy loads, but… at what cost? The shop owner’s peace of mind, more likely. Especially those without a proper search solution that makes their lives easier (wink).

Those who have Motive Commerce Search, on the other hand, can just spend some time understanding their shoppers' thriving relationship with the search box, take control of their shop’s search and configure everything so that it is ready beforehand.

Learn some tricks we’ve learnt from the past, as well as taking a look at some tips on which features to use and how to use them to get more than ready for the first sales event of the season, no stress.

Let’s see what these people want

When you have a lot of people over for dinner, you do your research before actually getting to the cooking, right? So why not do the same when preparing for many, many visitors coming to your online shop?

Using Motive Commerce Search Analytics is a safe first step to take before tweaking your shop’s search for Black Friday. Analytics allow you to see what your users search for the most and how often those searches end up in clicks. Jot down those repeatedly searched items in your notebook so we can later configure some Business Rules for them.

Additionally, you can also see which searches return no results, and you’ll be surprised to learn it’s not uncommon for “Black Friday” to be a very popular search. That’s it, just the name of the event itself. And very frequently, that’s a search term that won’t return any results, as it’s not usually in descriptions or product names.

If it looks like a sale and it sounds like a sale

Therefore, let's fix that and make those shoppers find the Black Friday they were searching for. Use the Motive Commerce Search Synonyms tool to make the products you want shoppers to see appear when looking for Black Friday.

Remember, Synonyms are groups of words that are configured to function as the same term in search results. That is, every time you search for a word, all its synonyms will also appear in the search results.

For instance, if you want those highly discounted shirts to appear in front of people that search for Black Friday, create a Synonym group containing the terms Black Friday and Shirts, and every time a shopper searches for Black Friday, all items related to shirts will also come up.

Flashing lights and results alchemy

Now that we know the first actions to take to save your shoppers from seeing the terrifying No results page, we can dress the shop up and make it ready for this very special day. The Motive Commerce Search Banners are ideal for this, as they can grab your shoppers’ attention just after they’ve searched.

Allowing you to show any image you want, banners can be configured for all searches or specific ones. Add your cool banner for your Black Friday promotions, for all searches. Or maybe make it specific for those searching for Black Friday only. The possibilities are vast.

You can complement the neon lights of banners and simple touches of synonyms with more sophisticated configurations too, like those available with Motive Commerce Search Business Rules. Go deeper into detail and take some action on your search results to position your items where you want them to be.

Business Rules let you boost or bury products according to their many attributes. You can use them to promote that brand you have a partnership with or that category you know your shoppers are searching for the most.

On the contrary, if you have some items you’d rather keep a low profile this Black Friday, you can configure a Bury rule for them to appear lower down in search results.

Ready to get down to work?

Go and try these features now to enjoy a relaxing day when Black Friday comes around, free of stress and confusion. Or even take the chance to apply what you’ve learned from Motive Commerce Search Analytics to your shop’s home page. If you want to try these features for your Black Friday campaign but you haven’t joined Motive yet, there’s a 30-day free trial for you to enjoy!