Opinion: Many UK Retailers Not Converting The Black Friday Sales Hype

On ‘Black Friday’ I saw a mass of hype on the Black Friday Sales and Cyber Monday deals across the web. It wasn’t just from the US blogs and news websites, but from the leading UK ones too. So what’s wrong with that? Well if you try to actually find the deals it becomes apparent that the majority of them are not that visible and do not live up to the hype.

So with our very own @Koozai_Tom experiencing  the greatest one day shopping event in the US on his trip to New York, the UK is stuck with a relatively disappointing select few retailers.

Black Friday Sales are quite new to the UK market still, but after Apple’s introduction to them two years ago and Amazons just last year ago the media are already giving widespread coverage to this new concept.  These news reports are using the term ‘Black Friday Sales’ when in fact just a handful of retailers are calling them that. It’s fine for them to use other terms such as flash sales, 5 day deals and special events, but when it comes to promoting them then consumers would have struggled to find them via search. It is a good job that the media have been linking to the deals directly.

If you did a search for ‘black friday deals uk’ you would have seen a lot of news stories and a few affiliate websites but no retailers in the natural results targeting those keywords and just a few in the paid results. I can’t help but feel that UK retailers have missed an opportunity to drive traffic to their site using the term ‘black friday’ in their SEO and PPC.

Another issue I came across is that retailers are not always giving customers what they want. Amazon in particular was offering a wide range of obscure products such as the ‘Pet Nail Grinder’ and the ‘Medela Breastpump’. Other retailers were not offering the discounts to match the hype with some only offering free delivery.

Apple have embraced Black Friday in the UK and its currently the only day you can buy a discounted Mac, iPod or iPad from an authorized store. Apple even use this fact in its main marketing messages.

Black Friday Deals in the UK have a long way to come to match those of the US retailers however I do expect to see a greater change next year. For now UK shoppers will have to just voice their opinions on blog posts and discussion boards.

I’ve put together a collection of who I think are getting into the spirit of Black Friday in the UK, promoting it well and providing deals consumers want to see. Well done to the following:

Apple

ASDA

HMV

Gamestop

Comet

LEGO

Logitech

Image Source

Black Friday Being Handwritten via BigStock

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