As Black Friday and Cyber Monday draw near, a slew of new online websites and tools are springing up to help consumers locate the bargains they want.
Deal News and BlackFriday.org are two examples of sites that have recently made improvements. Deal News, which has tracked Black Friday offers online for several years, has tweaked its iPhone App that does the same. Version 2 adds a number of new features, including deals that both been leaked and confirmed for Black Friday. The app also enables consumers to save items of interest to a shopping list.
BlackFriday.org, which also tracks rumored deals, is leveraging tips it has been sent from consumers or picked up off of Twitter. Today's rumored listing, for example, is from Sam's Club. BlackFriday.gottadeal.com also posts advance copies of holiday sales circulars, online deals and in-store specials.
Tapping Twitter, SocNets
Many of these tools, not surprisingly, will be focusing on deals retailers are advertising on social media sites, which are projected to play an important role in online holiday shopping for the first time.
CheapTweet.com focuses specifically on mining deals posted on Twitter. The site, which launched last year on Black Friday, offers up an ongoing, updated list of national retailers' offers and local buys.
RetailMeNot.com, which serves up coupons, discounts and promotional codes for merchandise, groceries, travel and services, has launched a page for this holiday shopping season that will aggregate Black-Friday and Cyber-Monday coupons, deals and promotions. It also features live Twitter feeds.
Online Conversions
Meanwhile Yahoo is reminding online retailers not to overlook the potential of Black Friday as they plan their own promotions and campaigns for this holiday season: The traditional offline shopping day can be a significant 24-hour period for online sales conversions, according to new internal research. The Yahoo Network Insights team examined last year's consumer patterns and found that online retailers experienced a greater percentage increase in conversions on Black Friday than on Cyber Monday.
As part of the analysis, Yahoo examined more than 2.6 billion ad impressions of retail advertising clients delivered across the Yahoo Network during the month of November 2008, as well as Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Click-through rates, sales conversions and online retail traffic were compared to determine how online advertising performed on the most critical shopping days of the year. The result? While click-through rates were down 27% from the rest of the month on both days, online traffic and sales conversions rose considerably. When compared with the average day in November, Black Friday showed a 147% increase in conversions, while Cyber Monday had a 73% increase in conversions.
"Since click-through rates were lower on the two key days, online merchants should be investing throughout the month of November to build awareness," Yahoo concluded. "This will drive lower funnel activities during the holiday shopping season, while also reserving significant spend to drive conversions on Black Friday and Cyber Monday."
