The Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend is getting close, and Shopify companies are already developing their strategies for November 29, 2024. According to Shopify, last year’s average cart price was $110.71, and the total sales were 22% bigger than in 2022.
It’s never too late to start getting ready – the better strategy you craft, the greater results you can expect. That’s why I meticulously researched and wrote down the top 10 steps to prepare for this Shopify Black Friday period. Read further to learn how to elevate sales and retain customers.
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Try TinyCookie freeWhat are the biggest challenges during BFCM?
The Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) weekend cannot always be predictable and may come with some setbacks. Here are some of the most common challenges and mistakes Shopify merchants face:
- Having no strategy. Just because BFCM is a sales period, it doesn’t mean consumers are automatically going to come to your site and make purchases. It’s crucial to have a detailed and data-driven strategy with an allocated budget and tasks ready.
- Not preparing enough inventory. Treating Black Friday as just another day and not stacking up on inventory beforehand can result in huge revenue loss. That’s why you should analyze last year’s data, see what sold best, and get those products early on.
- Shipping delays. Some companies don’t get prepared for a sudden increase in order volume, resulting in shipping issues. Consider what you can do before Black Friday, like starting to work with multiple shipping carriers, and communicate realistic shipping estimates.
- Diversify presence across channels. Don’t put your budget into one place – market your Black Friday offerings on multiple top-performing sales channels.
- Promoting too late. Some companies do everything by the textbook, like creating BFCM ads or placing countdown timers… but they do it the night before or even the same day. To ensure a successful sales period, start marketing weeks prior to the event.
- Not preparing for traffic surges. If you’re offering mind-blowing deals, you should be prepared for a sudden increase in traffic. It’s valuable to optimize your site and speed it up so it doesn’t cause crashes and result in lost sales.
What to consider before Black Friday 2024?
The Black Friday sales period can bring a large increase in sales, but it doesn’t happen without effort. Let’s take a look at the top 10 things you should consider when preparing your Shopify store for the BFCM weekend.
1. Budget allocation
Making money during events like Black Friday requires spending money first, so prepare your budget plan early on. Here are a few tips to help you understand how to budget effectively:
- Make data-driven decisions. Don’t just spend money on whatever – make sure your money goes to inventory and sales channels that are actually valuable.
- Analyze last year’s budget. Check what kind of budget you used and how many sales you got during last year’s Black Friday to get an idea of this year’s expectations.
- Increase advertising budget. A big part of Black Friday sales happens because of good marketing. Make sure you invest in high-quality ads and advertising platforms.
- Prioritize best-performing sales channels. Check what channels generate the most traffic and revenue and prioritize creating an advertising strategy for them.
2. Performing a competitor analysis
Performing a competitor analysis can help you understand if the deals you’re planning to release during the BFCM weekend are good enough. It can also give you insights on how you can market your offers better.
Since Black Friday is a once-a-year event, it can be difficult to find out what your competitors did. But you can leverage the web archive and check them one by one. Here’s how to do it:
- Go to the Wayback Machine.
- Insert the home or product page URL of your competitor and press Enter on your keyboard.
- Click on the year you want and select any available day close to Black Friday.
- There you have it – you can now explore what your competitors did last year on their home and product pages.
Don’t just take a look at their BFCM-themed banners, consider what other useful elements they used, like free shipping, returns, or customer reviews.
For example, according to BrightLocal’s research, 75% of consumers always or regularly read reviews. That’s one of the sections you could include for social proof.
Also, Statista found that free shipping is the most preferred delivery in the US. So, if you’re planning to offer this, place an icon on your pages. Such elements help grab consumers’ attention, reducing friction and encouraging sales.
3. Identifying best-selling products
During Black Friday, your customers are likely to look out for discounts on your current best-selling products. You can check which of your products are the most popular using Shopify Analytics. Here’s how to do it:
- In your Shopify Admin, go to Analytics > Reports.
- Click the “ABC analysis” report.
That’s all – 80% of your top-selling products will have grade A, others – B or C. Don’t forget that this sales period is also a great opportunity to clear out your inventory and get rid of your lowest-selling products using huge discounts.
4. Choosing Black Friday deal types
Prepare a strategy on what Black Friday deals you’re going to offer. For example, if you’re going to run daily discounts, have the whole plan ready before the sales start. And if you’re starting Black Friday sales early, you can start from lower offers and leave the best ones for Friday and Monday.
Statista compared prices of electronics, toys, and apparel on October 1st and November 20th and found that there was an average 22.9% decrease in price during Black Friday. However, to know what discount size is suitable for you, calculate the profit margin, so you don’t experience losses.
In terms of offer types, there are many types of BFCM sales you can leverage:
- Daily or hourly discounts. You can set up multiple discounts and leverage countdown timers to create a sense of urgency and encourage more sales.
- Category discounts. If you’re selling multiple types of products, you can apply specific sales to whole categories. For example, many stores write that they offer a discount of “up to” a specific number but only offer the biggest sale to their lowest-selling products. Here’s an example of category-based Black Friday offers:
- Bundles. You can create product bundles and offer them cheaper, which can help raise your average order value. For instance, a bundle could be a self-care kit, a cozy reader’s set, and more. Here’s an example of Mac Cosmetics bundle offer as a gift:
- Early bird discounts. You can leverage your email list to show appreciation to your loyal customers and offer them early BFCM discounts. Don’t forget to mention that they’re exclusive for members only.
5. Preparing inventory
It’s not always possible to know what kind of results BFCM will bring, so it’s best to get your inventory ready for anything. You can stack up on your current best-selling products discovered through the ABC analysis but it’s also useful to check what sold during your last year’s BFCM weekend.
To review your past Black Friday results, go to your Shopify Analytics and open the “Sales by product” report in the Reports section. Select the date range – I suggest monitoring results from the day you started your BFCM sales til it ended.
Additionally, review your inventory as early as possible as suppliers can get busy really fast during November. You can review the products you have in stock using Shopify’s native tools. Just go to Products > Inventory and you’ll find all of the products and their count.
However, make sure to double-check your inventory so you don’t discover any major mistakes the night before the sales start.
6. Creating a sales period strategy
Companies no longer carry out Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales on just their respective days. Many businesses start dropping BFCM deals at the start of the week and extend them for a week after Cyber Monday or even longer.
This year, Black Friday takes place a day after Thanksgiving. According to Queue-it, Thanksgiving Day brought the most mobile traffic (66% of all sessions) during the Cyber Week of 2023. So starting your sales early can ensure higher conversion rates as people are preparing for the holiday.
7. Crafting a Black Friday ad strategy
Review what sales channels brought you the most revenue and traffic during the last Black Friday period, and focus on creating an ad strategy for them first.
For example, you can leverage your social media channels, like Facebook, and create ads for your most wanted products. Here’s a Black Friday Facebook example of Ray-Ban:
The company doesn’t just announce Black Friday sales in general, they lure users with exciting deals. In this case, they demonstrate the product photo, half-the-price discount, and current price. This instantly highlights the value the consumer gets and can trigger a feeling of urgency.
You can also go a step further and use Google Ads. In the display ads, focus on clearly highlighting the BFCM sales, and use exciting language or imagery. Meanwhile, on search ads, make sure you place relevant keywords, including highlighting Black Friday. Here’s an example of the Black Friday Expert ad on Google Search:
This ad has all the useful elements a Google search ad should have. The meta description isn’t too long and there’s a CTA as well as the main keywords mentioned. There are some relative site links added and the maximum discount is mentioned. Plus, the added year signals whether the content is fresh.
8. Preparing an email marketing plan
Email marketing is a crucial part of your BFCM weekend strategy. According to Omnisend’s 2023 Black Friday report, almost 37% of consumers who clicked on an automated email during BFCM made a purchase.
So it’s never too early to start gathering your website visitor emails. The common way to do this is to motivate subscriptions by giving a small discount on users’ first purchases in exchange for their email. You can see an example of such an offer in a website footer below.
Alternatively, you can add a checkmark box during the signup or checkout process encouraging consumers to agree to receive special offers.
Once you gather a decent list of contacts, you can prepare a few types of emails:
- Black Friday deal emails. You can send emails teasing the upcoming Black Friday or Cyber Monday deals to build anticipation. To go even a step further, you may even include a countdown timer to create a sense of FOMO (fear of missing out).
- Loyalty discount emails. The shopping holiday is a great way to show your loyal visitors appreciation. You can send emails with offers exclusive to your repeat customers, such as free shipping or early bird offers accessible before Black Friday.
- Abandoned cart emails. According to Klaviyo’s analysis, three follow-up cart abandonment emails generate around $21 million more revenue than only one. So, create a multiple abandoned cart email strategy to not miss good sale opportunities.
9. Optimizing your website
The pre-BFCM period is a great opportunity to optimize parts of your website so that consumers would have a seamless shopping experience. Here are a few main tips on how you can improve your site:
- Optimize content. Go over your most popular products at least and revise the product descriptions. Don’t make them too long and place focus on benefits rather than features to increase sales through relatability.
- Enhance site speed. You have to make sure that your website can handle traffic surges during Black Friday, so run your website through the PageSpeed Insights tool and fix any identified performance issues.
- Improve images. Pages take up a lot of page weight, so it’s best to compress them. You can also leverage the lazy loading feature which loads content only when necessary. All of this can be done automatically with the TinyIMG Shopify app.
- Power up the support team. According to Tidio, 60% of consumers are more likely to buy from websites that have live chat. So it’s highly beneficial to implement live chat for this sales period. To help loosen the agents’ load, you can even get a chatbot like Wizybot to handle the most basic questions automatically.
- Review the checkout process. If you haven’t yet, create a guest checkout option and minimize the necessary form fields. If possible, add faster payment methods, such as Google Pay or Apple Pay.
10. Creating a BFCM design for your website
When marketing your unique Black Friday sales, don’t forget to prepare your Shopify theme for it too. The most important aspect to consider is your BFCM landing and product pages. The event should be the main focus of your homepage, meaning the Black Friday announcement should be placed above the fold.
Here’s an example of Pandora’s 2023 Black Friday page:
The company’s banner is a clear main focus of the page – the fonts are bold and huge. Plus, mentioning the largest offers fosters customer curiosity. There’s also a CTA button to capture attention.
Here are a few general guidelines that will help you create a conversion-oriented page:
- Create an attention-grabbing banner
- Use bold and large text
- Leverage CTA (call-to-action) buttons
- Mention the largest offers, e.g. “up to 80%”
- Use icons to demonstrate free shipping, returns, or money-back guarantees
Don’t forget to also review your mobile website’s design. Always test if the new designs and banners are responsive, avoid adding too many pop-ups, and make texts, buttons, and links big enough to read and click on small screens.
In a nutshell: Your winning Black Friday strategy
While getting ready for Black Friday can seem overwhelming, a scheduled step-by-step preparation can simplify the process. Let’s take a look at an approximate timetable on how to prepare for the BFCM period in time:
- Allocate your budget in October
- Draft Black Friday offers and discount sizes in late October
- Have your inventory filled up by the start of November or earlier if possible
- Start crafting a BFCM ad strategy on different sales channels at the start of November
- Run early bird or BFCM teaser email campaigns in mid-November
- Start releasing BFCM ads a week before Black Friday
- Update your website’s design a week before the BFCM period
- Send early bird discounts to loyal customers 48-72 hours before Black Friday
- Release your best discounts and deals on Black Friday
Remember that this shopping holiday isn’t just about immediate sales. If you focus on ensuring the best customer experience, you can gain loyal customers who will foster repeat business and word-of-mouth marketing.
Frequently asked questions
The term BFCM means Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which is a popular sales period around the world when Shopify merchants prepare jaw-dropping deals for the products they sell.
The best BFCM promotions depend on the store’s niche. However, some of the most popular deals include offering daily or hourly sales, category-based discounts, product bundles, or early bird deals.
Abandoned cart emails are automatically sent to consumers who added a product to the shopping cart but didn’t buy it. These emails are important to leverage during BFCM because they can reduce abandonment rates. Based on research done by Moosend, 21% of abandoned cart emails get click-throughs.
