Black Friday has become an annual pre-Christmas shopping bonanza in the UK, despite being almost unheard of just a few years ago. So, if you’re counting down the hours, we’ve got the top tips that will get you ahead of the crowd.
Get a personal robo-assistant shopper
Chrome or Firefox both support plugins like Pricehawk or Price Rocket that will do the legwork for you automatically, showing you the cheapest prices and latest deals on the products you’re looking for as you shop. Simply search for the plugin, click ‘add’ and it will install itself in your web browser. It only takes moments and there’s no need to install any programs on your computer.
Do your research upfront
Traffic to the most popular websites can increase by up to 500% on Black Friday making browsing arduous and slow. You might even need to queue to get onto some sites. If you like to browse before you buy, do it in advance and bookmark the products you want to buy. Then, on the day you can go straight there and complete your purchase.
Speed up checkout
In a Black Friday sale every second counts, so speed up your checkout time with Paypal. Over 340,000 sites use PayPal worldwide and instead of tapping in your address and payment details, you’ll just need to enter your email and password to confirm the purchase, and you’re away. If you’re unsure about the legitimacy of some sites, use a credit card to protect purchases between £100 and £30,000.
Make the deals come to you
Websites like Hot UK deals, Money Saving Expert and Lovethesales.com will do the running around for you and show you all the top sales deals in one place. So instead of 20 windows open in your browser, you can just have one. Some sites may require you to register to get the full benefit, so do it the day before to avoid further delays.
Get Social
Follow the brands you love on social. They’ll tweet and post deals throughout the day to their loyal followers that you might not otherwise see or get elsewhere.
Look twice at the offer
If some sale items seem too good to be true, they probably are, particularly when it comes to electronics. Retailers use Black Friday to get rid of older stock, so while that flat-screen TV with £1,000 off the price tag might work ok, it’s probably not the latest or the best-selling model, so look twice and be ready to check product reviews, just in case.
Ignore it all and stay in bed
Remember when no-one in the UK had heard of Black Friday – that was nice wasn’t it?
