Tech Bytes: Three Tips to Make Every Day Cyber Monday

Cyber Monday, the day of the year that traditionally sees the highest volume of digital shopping transactions, falls this week. In honor of the occasion, I’d like to offer three tips on how to keep the spirit of Cyber Monday alive throughout the year.



Obviously retailers cannot afford to offer Cyber Monday-level online bargain prices all year long, but there are several non-monetary steps they can take.



Make It Personal

With the glut of personalization solutions available on the market today, there is no excuse for any retailer to not offer a personalized digital shopping experience.



Busy consumers are not interested in navigating through multiple site pages looking for the products they want, or even worse, receiving product prompts and recommendations that do not match their actual preferences.



By personalizing the digital shopping experience so that consumers can easily find the items they most likely want to buy, based on past shopping/browsing history, demographic profile, etc., retailers can increase both frequency of visits and size of market baskets. Of course, there is a limit to how far personalization should go. Overly targeted product recommendations may cause consumers to feel their privacy has been violated, and shoppers should easily be able to opt out of online tracking if they choose.



Make It Mobile

“Mobile first” is not just a technology buzz-phrase, but a growing fact of life in how consumers now engage with the Internet. According to IBM Digital Benchmark analysis, mobile traffic accounted for almost half of all online traffic the weekend before Thanksgiving. While desktop PCs still account for close to three-quarters of online sales, burgeoning mobile traffic volumes will inevitably lead to higher mobile sales volumes. Particularly among younger consumers, a smartphone or tablet is now the standard Internet connectivity device.



Also, keep in mind that a lot of Cyber Monday traffic comes from consumers shopping at work, school and other places where they are outside their homes on a typical Monday. Optimally developing a site for mobile access, rather than bastardizing a desktop site for mobile use, is the best way to draw the widest range of consumers from wherever they are located. Isn’t that what Cyber Monday is all about?



Make It Seamless

The more seamless your digital shopping experience, the more likely consumers are to engage with it. “Mobile first” hardly means “mobile only.” A customer who investigates an item on their tablet should have it show up as a targeted item for purchase when they log into their desktop later, or be able to reserve it for in-store pickup.



The seamless experience should also extend to social media. For example a customer who tweets about a certain product can then an individualized discount via email. Furthermore, customers who opt-in for location tracking should receive time- and location-sensitive text discounts on key items they have expressed interest in on any channel.



So hopefully you all will have a happy and healthy Cyber Monday, and remember that high-volume digital sales don’t have to come only once a year.