Why “BFCM tips” don’t work, sale calendars, ethical design
Why “BFCM tips” don’t work
In our latest lesson, we talked about what stores should do for the holidays this year.
Like all of our lessons, it is actionable. You can do things after reading it. But given the subject matter, it is probably a great deal less actionable than most of you would think, and it is definitely a lot more muted than you would think.
Every time a value-based designer sticks the landing on BFCM weekend, they feel like this gif. Value-based design is a long-term practice involving slow, deep, patient work. BFCM is one weekend in a vast year. If you do the necessary work to understand your customers and make the numbers go up for the other 361 days of the year, then BFCM is yours to lose.
That’s why “BFCM tips” don’t work. One-off tips are fundamentally incompatible with a value-based design process. You are either practicing design or you’re harboring short-term thinking. It’s one or the other.
With 25 days to go until Black Friday, you can do what value-based designers do: throw a sale, tell everybody, and hope for the best. What will you do for the rest of the year?
This week, for paid members
- Our weekly paid lesson is all about sale calendars. How do you create one and maintain it into the future?
- And our design of the week discusses one of the most overlooked & important things you can do to improve buy box credibility.
Want in? Join us now – now named one of the best ecommerce communities going on the web.
Links & analysis
- This post on ethical design bummed me out – not because I think they’re wrong, but because I think they’re right. It will likely take a full collapse of the profit imperative, and corresponding societal restructuring around community needs and broad-stroke inclusive engagement, for tech to stop actively harming society. Until then, things promise to be very messy.
- That was depressing. Here are free icons.
- Most of you know that research doesn’t matter, but how it’s used does matter. This post walks novices along the process of synthesis, and nicely conveys the relationship between research and its corresponding impact.
- Since value-based design fundamentally and substantially mitigates business risk, it’s important to understand the correlation between business risk & evidentiary decision-making. This post provides a nice perspective.
- Wix’s UX department on writing quality error messages. All copy is written, and writing is design.
This week’s paid lesson: How do you create & audit a sale calendar?
This week’s lesson is for paid members. Sign into our community to read it, or join us today to get access.