Black Friday sales can make or break more than Q4 for ecommerce businesses. People are less likely to queue overnight these days. Instead, they scour the web for weeks, looking for the best deals.
With so many shoppers gearing up for the holiday shopping season, you can’t afford to miss out. The competition is fierce. The main battle for business owners is attracting their target audience and keeping them engaged enough to convert.
Our Black Friday checklist will prepare you to maximize engagement and increase your sales this holiday season.
How to Prepare for Black Friday
Black Friday brings in more sales revenue than almost any other event. According to Adobe, Black Friday Deals set a new record, hitting $9.8 billion in sales. Revenue is projected to increase by $1 billion in 2024.
Image sourced from business.adobe.com
Every online retailer will be scrambling to get a piece of the pie. Start at the front of the race by following the tips in our Black Friday checklist.
Identify Your Black Friday Products
Look at your historical sales data for the past several years. What items and promotions were your biggest winners? What customer feedback did you receive from email follow-ups and exit-intent pop-up surveys?
Don’t reinvent the wheel. Look at your ecommerce platform and feature your historically best offers for this year.
Grow and Segment Your Email Lists
Prepare your target audience by building a healthy email list. Use email marketing tools and website tools like Google Analytics to segment your audience by demographics and user behavior. Identify those who consistently buy during promotions and sales and make them your priority.
You can get ahead of the curve by sending out Black Friday newsletters near the end of September or first of October.
Build Black Friday Campaigns
Your email contact lists are the foundation of drip campaigns. Don’t forget other channels for spreading awareness.
Social Media
Use platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok to showcase sneak peeks of your deals or run teaser campaigns like daily countdowns. Learn how to follow up with Facebook leads and other social media prospects. Engage with followers through polls, giveaways, and interactive content.
Use social media listening tools like Hootsuite to ensure you reply to mentions and comments.
Paid Ads
Use paid ads with Google and Facebook Ads to target specific customer segments. Optimize ad copy for Black Friday-related and product-related searches. Tailor retargeting to reach repeat visitors or abandoned cart shoppers.
Influencer partnerships
Collaborate with influencers to expand your reach. Encourage them to create authentic content and ignite interest with their followers. Consider giving influencers an exclusive, shareable Black Friday promo code.
Press Releases
Distribute press releases to announce exclusive Black Friday deals. Use services like AgilityPR to source media lists and streamline your PR campaigns. This ensures you reach your target audience and generate anticipation.
Optimize Your Website, Audit Product Pages
A peak time for shopping also means peak demand for your website. Users abandon slow, unresponsive sites. They’ll look for a better shopping experience elsewhere.
Consult with your site CPanel or web hosting provider to ensure you have enough bandwidth to handle high traffic volumes.
It’s not only about reducing bounce rates. Portent reports that a site that loads in 1 second has a 300% higher conversion rate than a page that takes 5 seconds to load.
Image sourced from portent.com
Also, don’t forget about optimizing your website for mobile shoppers. Recent data shows that nearly 55% of global internet traffic comes from mobile devices.
Test your website performance with Google Page Insights or something similar. Follow the app recommendations whether it’s removing CSS code or compressing images.
Audit your product pages for the design and clarity of all various screen sizes. Is all the important information above the fold for desktop and mobile devices? Is all information and product images accurate?
Correct misinformation and broken 404 pages well before Black Friday hits.
Prep for Exchanges and Returns
The holiday season can be stressful for most people. One of those stressors is trying to find the right gift for someone. Even when buying for themselves, shoppers expect an easy way to return or exchange a purchase.
Narvar reports that 39% of consumers return an online purchase at least once a month.
Make sure your return policy is clear and up to date. Keep it simple and go with something standard, like a 30-day return policy. If you want to go above and beyond, extend the return window to cover the entire holiday season like many larger retailers.
Streamline Payment Process
Your shopping cart is the strongest signaller of users with determined intent to buy. You can still lose them, however, once they initiate the checkout process. The online cart abandonment rate sits at over 70%.
Reasons shoppers exit during checkout include:
- Extra costs or fees
- Slow-loading checkout pages
- Too many fields or pages
- Lack of trust elements such as security badges
- Too few payment options
- Mandatory account creation
- Items on back-order
Prioritize what’s most important to customers. A recent report from Baynard shows that extra costs, account creation, and trust were the top 3 reasons shoppers abandon their carts.
Image sourced from baymard.com
Create Abandoned Cart Emails Reminders
Part of streamlining the checkout includes retargeting cart leavers. Use your customer data platform (CDP) and email marketing automation to send gentle shopping cart reminders. What is a CDP if you’re not going to use it to track user behavior?
You should use cart reminders year round, but tailor these email templates for Black Friday. Since it’s Black Friday, it’s a good tactic to send these within an hour of abandonment. Create a sense of urgency by including a countdown timer or entice shoppers to offer an additional small discount.
Maximize Payment Options
Offer multiple payment options during checkout. Let customers use their preferred credit cards or payment services like PayPal. As it’s the holiday season, people are willing to spend more for a good deal. You can reduce friction by accepting payment with solutions such as Klarna and Clearpay that enable shoppers to pay with affordable installments.
Tighten Up Your Shipping
Shipping is its own issue for online shoppers. Don’t create obstacles that disengage users and cause them to bounce from your ecommerce website.
Consumers expect two shipping options from ecommerce retailers, free shipping and fast shipping. Hidden costs like shipping are a primary reason for shopping cart abandonment. Likewise, customers will exit checkout if you can’t get the items to them when they need them.
If you don’t normally offer a free shipping option, at least offer it as part of a Black Friday promotion. Fast shipping is a must, with LinkedIn reporting that over 40% of customers will pay extra for fast delivery.
Offer Early Access
Your loyal customers bring in the most lifetime value to your business. You can strengthen brand loyalty further by offering existing customers early access to Black Friday days. These can be exclusive offers for buying early. Additionally, you can give them the first refusal on highly limited deals.
Here are other ways you can reward loyal customers on Black Friday:
- Double loyalty points for incentive programs
- A one-time VIP discount code
- Free upgraded shipping
- Include a free gift with the purchase
Have Multiple Offers
While it can be tempting, don’t settle for one offer or a site-wide discount. Different audience segments are tempted by different promotions. Generate more engagement by giving them multiple discount offers to choose from.
For example, you can offer promotions that escalate with shopping cart totals. So maybe $25 purchases get 10% off while $100 purchases get 20% off.
Use Bundles
Create tailored product bundles that ramp up savings. For example, if you sell guitars, create package deals that include an amplifier, guitar case, and cable for a higher discount. Bundles are a great way to make product recommendations and upsell Black Friday shoppers.
Set Up Customer Service and Support
Time is of the essence during a one-day event. You can avoid losing out on sales by having readily available customer service channels. Ensure you provide plenty of options for shoppers to get questions answered.
Have the following support channels ready to go before Black Friday:
- FAQs sidebar: explain the event and details like shipment, order tracking, and refunds.
- Chatbot: install a widget to answer commonly asked questions about returns and shipping.
- Live chat and SMS/ MMS: gives customers the option to communicate with your team by text.
- Phone: handle any questions about products and orders with an office phone service.
- Social media: pay attention to mentions and DMs. Respond rapidly to questions and resolve concerns.
- Email: respond to tickets created from an online contact form or when subscribers reply directly to email messages.
Look at the historical data pipelines to assess call volumes for your support team and ensure all channels are adequately staffed for the entire day.
Image sourced from salesforce.com
Remember, 71% of customers make purchase decisions based on customer service. Happy customers are also more likely to recommend your brand and its Black Friday deals to others.
Follow Up and Promote Cyber Monday
There’s no rest during the busy season. When Black Friday is over, it’s time to get ready for Cyber Monday and the rest of “Cyber Week.” In fact, Cyber Monday’s revenue in 2023 eclipsed Black Friday’s, with $12.4 billion in revenue.
The good news is that all of your preparation for Black Friday will have you ready to go for another spike in demand. You can also go over this same checklist again just to make sure.
Follow up with every order by sending welcome emails and customer feedback surveys. Find out what’s not working. Fix what’s making customers feel less engaged.
Also, use follow-up emails to promote Cyber Monday and any other upcoming seasonal promotions.
Be Prepared for Black Friday
Black Friday means the digital masses will be online, clicking through ecommerce sites like yours. You can’t predict exactly what will happen, but you can be prepared for anything. Have your online store, campaigns, and team ready to go ahead of time.
Reduce buyer friction by offering rapid support, responsive websites, and excellent customer service. Entice shoppers with a selection of offers and discounted products that generate interest and provide value, and you’ll be well on your way to maximizing customer engagement.
