How big is the Black Friday event in Belgium? What impact has the event had on your business in previous years?
When I told people about Black Friday a few years ago, people would always ask me what it was about. But nowadays it seems to be a general understanding. In the previous years it was a remarkable occurrence that more and more advertisers wanted to be part of this event.
That being said, 2016 was one of our best years. Advertisers that took part of Black Friday in previous years, came with even bigger deals last year. Others that usually did not participate quickly realized that they had to partake in this quickly growing trend. This how Black Friday suddenly became much bigger and well known in our market. I think that it’s definitely a fact that if your online shop does not participate in Black Friday this year, it’s a huge lost opportunity.
For money-saving websites it’s interesting to see how you can offer the best deal to your visitors. The decision to create a separate page on which visitors can easily see all the promotions was easily made, since Goodkoop.be is a website that collects deals from various websites. We considered it a huge success because we received a lot of positive feedback from people. They found exactly what they wanted, which were discounts and money-saving tips. We were happy that we could offer our visitors an easy way to find what they were looking for so it became a win-win situation. Advertisers also profited because they had an extra spotlight to be in on our website.
What are your plans for Black Friday 2017?
This year we will also have a special theme page for Black Friday. On that page we started a countdown towards this special day of discounts. All the Black Friday promotions will receive a special spot on this page so that visitors can easily get their hands on the best deals.
But that’s not all. We will put our focus on delivering content by writing articles with money-saving tips for our visitors. Another thing we want to do is utilize our newsletter and Facebook page for this unique event. We want to do everything that can help our visitors save money.
Which products do you expect to be the biggest sellers?
Products that always do well are clothing and personal care products. You always need these type of products, so why not purchase them with a discount? That makes Black Friday the ideal moment for these type of products, because high discounts also trigger impulse buying.
If I look at the numbers from last year then I think that electronics will also be selling fast. That washing machine, laptop or TV that needed to be replaced will most likely be purchased during the Black Friday period, seeing that consumers can purchase a new one for a much lower price on these days.
Other than that this event offers a great opportunity to purchase products for the coming holidays. Toys, gaming consoles, sweets, jewelry, perfume and more are all available at a lower price point. ‘’Sinterklaas’’ and ‘’Santa Claus’’ will definitely not let this opportunity pass.
Will you also be participating in Cyber Monday?
Of course! As a website that is focused on online shops it is also interesting to look further than Black Friday. The discounts do not stop on Friday, they keep coming. Besides the special theme page for Black Friday, we also have a theme page for Cyber Monday. During the weekend and on Monday, we will also make sure that all of the promotions are on our website so that we can continue to optimally serve our visitors.
What are your predictions for Black Friday/the Cyber weekend in your market?
Although last year saw a big growth in popularity of Black Friday, I expect that this year we will welcome even more visitors than the previous year. If we look at the numbers of the last few years we can see that the amount of visitors grew with 46% from 2014 to 2015. The growth from 2015 to 2016 blew the growth from the previous year out of the water with 414%!
I think that the growth in percentage will be huge, but not as huge as we saw the previous year. In my opinion 2016 was the year that Black Friday got introduced in Belgium. But we'll see soon enough, perhaps it will exceed all expectations. We at Goodkoop.be will definitely go for it!
