Will your online store be invisible on Black Friday?

With 2020’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday predicted to be the busiest ever, eCommerce expert Optiseller is urging online retailers to make sure their data is in good shape, or risk missing out on valuable sales.

Competition for customers online is going to be fierce this year, so it is vital for product listings to be optimised. Descriptions and images need to grab the buyer’s attention right away. It is also increasingly important to optimise the item specifics or values associated with a particular listing. Item specifics help users narrow down their choices by filtering search results in many product categories, and according to eBay, are used by some 65% of purchasers.  

Sellers also need to make sure they are complying with marketplace policies to avoid being penalised. For example, in the past year, eBay has been cracking down on duplicate listings. Retailers falling foul of these rules have found their sales decline as their search rankings have been pushed down. If a seller’s inventory runs into hundreds of thousands of stock-keeping units (SKUs), it can be challenging to spot duplicates and eliminate them.  

Optiseller reports that it has a solution to these problems. Its online platform can scan a retailer’s entire inventory searching for poor quality listings, policy breaches, duplicate entries and a host of other issues which can impact on sales. Optiseller’s tools also help correct the problems detected and optimise all listings to increase their visibility.  

Craig MacCallum, CEO, Optiseller said: “We are anticipating that Black Friday and Cyber Monday will break all records this year, and looking further ahead, online Christmas shopping will be huge. IMRG, the industry body for online retailers, is expecting an increase of at least 30% for the peak festive season, so sellers cannot afford to lose sales through poor data management. We are fully aware that sorting out large inventory issues can seem an impossible task, but Optiseller can automatically check all the relevant factors and give sellers the tools they need to take remedial action in real-time.”