what is Black Friday?

 With less working and more shopping around the Holidays, stores often see a boost in sales where their numbers go from red (loss) to black (profit).

Despite the USA celebrating this shopping spree season for more than seven decades, the event only recently made an appearance in the UK. In 2010, Amazon launched the first Black Friday sale which became a massive hit with consumers. With more local shops and retail outlets soon taking part, seeing annual Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales has become common practice in the UK.

In 2022, numerous tech giants and retail juggernauts are taking part in the yearly tradition of dishing out discounts to consumers. As the cost of living continues to rise in the UK, now is the best time to get stuck into the event.  Read below for our top tips for checkout success!

pros & cons to shopping online

Online shopping has its pros and cons. On the one hand, convenience is a key factor in many working professionals’ day to day with finding the best deal made a breeze with price comparison sites.

However, virtual ticket/queuing systems are now commonplace in e-commerce marketplaces. Such systems allow companies to control how many customers enter their site to avoid errors and crashing, particularly during the Black Friday rush! And whilst this sounds great in theory, in practice, these online queues can lead to a frustrating shopping experience with many items being marked as out of stock by the time you get your foot in the door.

With hot ticket holiday gifts such as current generation game consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X needing ticket systems, what can you do to secure your spot and avoid disappointment?

toob’s top tips

✓ Create an account! Got your heart set on something special? By setting up an account in advance you’re able to preload your payment and delivery details. This allows you to bypass the tedious guest checkout process that typically results in disappointing out-of-stock notifications.

✓ Beat the bots. A sad side effect of online shopping is having to battle it out with scalping software that seeks to claim your prize before you and resell it for a profit. Luckily these pesky bots aren’t as effective on mobile apps which means downloading your desired shopping app should be a priority heading into Black Friday!

✓ Secure broadband connection. Imagine waiting for hours to reach the front of the line only to be told to head to the back due to lousy internet. Online queue systems are updated in real-time, making reloading the page or broadband dropouts disastrous in your battle for bargains. Does your internet connection let you down? It might be time to upgrade.

upgrade your tedious speeds

By upgrading to our full-fibre broadband you’ll have the speed and strength you need to avoid Black Friday fails.

With 900 Mbps symmetrical speeds you’ll be able to get in first and sweep through the sale before others even have the chance to load! A crucial factor in a successful online shopping experience is adequate download and upload speeds. This is important as you’ll need to not only download data as you browse but also upload it throughout the checkout process.

Want to bypass the buffer? Our fibre-optic cables are less prone to signal interference than old copper ones. This benefits your signal strength with 99.7 % of available signal making it to your router.

We want to see you succeed! This is why we are offering a £50 Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to anyone who orders our 18 month contract from 10^th – 30^th November.