Lessons from Wal-Mart's Black Friday

Black Friday is the name given to the day after Thanksgiving, traditionally the biggest shopping day of the year for US retailers. This year, Black Friday was a bit blacker than usual for Wal-Mart, as their web site was crushed under the load of online shoppers trying to beat the crowds by shopping from home.  The good news is that web site owners can learn a lot from Wal-Mart's mistakes, even if you're not handling millions of visitors like the retail giant.

Do your IT people know what your Marketing people are doing?

Wal-Mart's marketing department did a great job of promoting their website in their advertising efforts, including television advertising to inform shoppers that their Black Friday sale prices were also available online. They promoted an exclusive preview of several specials on the web site on Thanksgiving day, and reportedly stepped up their online advertising campaigns (at the time of this posting you can still see special "Black Friday" themed Walmart ads in rotation for certain keywords on Google Adwords).

Apparently these advertising efforts were effective, but their servers just weren't ready for it.  Maybe there wasn't enough communication between the folks running the web site and the marketing staff, or maybe they just underestimated the success of their ads, but the result was the same - disappointed customers.  As a business owner, it's vital to keep your web staff informed of any new marketing efforts, especially when your web site is featured prominently in your ads.

Monitor the web

As early as November 9, Wal-Mart's Black Friday sales ad was leaked onto the internet, and widely circulated on bargain-hunter and technology news sites. So widely circulated, in fact, that Wal-Mart couldn't possibly have missed it.  This early look at the super-low sale prices drew even more attention to the specials, and Wal-Mart should have been able to anticipate an increased demand, especially from net-savvy computer buyers salivating over some particularly low PC and game system prices.

Smaller businesses are also susceptible to the effects of online rumors and leaks, though they may not be as widely publicized as the Wal-Mart leak.  You can take steps to stay informed, though, and it's so easy that there's no excuse for letting this one slide. One of the easiest methods is with Google Alerts, which can email you whenever your company name is mentioned anywhere on the internet. In addition to keeping on top of rumors and leaks, Google Alerts can help you stay on top of reviews of your company and other mentions on external web sites.  It can also come in handy for monitoring the buzz around your competitors.

Be honest with your customers

Another Wal-Mart goof that was apparent early in the day was failing to acknowledge that their web site had fallen victim to it's own success. When the web site began to falter, visitors were greeted with a page that said the site was down for "scheduled maintenance". Scheduled maintenance on the busiest shopping day of the year?

To Wal-Mart's credit, they reportedly later replaced the "scheduled maintenance" message with one that acknowledged the higher than anticipated number of visitors.  If your best efforts to prepare for a surge in visitors still falls short, it's important to just be honest about it.  As soon as it becomes necessary to combat the rush of traffic, make it reasons clear to your customers. People appreciate honesty, and it's better to admit that you have to many customers than to give a weak excuse that no one's going to believe anyway.

There are worse problems to have

In the end, running a advertising campaign that's too successful probably isn't the worst thing that can happen to your business. At least you know your marketing staff is doing well, and too much traffic isn't a terribly difficult problem to solve, as long as you have the time to plan for it.  Still, it's even better to have a huge surge of customers and be able to handle them, so make sure your web site is up to the task before you step up your marketing efforts, and learn to anticipate traffic surges before they bring your site to it's knees.