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Jul 18, 2024

There's no reason to begin planning your shopping earlier than Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) which is the most popular shopping day of the calendar year. Each of these months has been characterized by the sales increase each year and so you'll need be prepared to expect increased traffic to your website, along with increased ad competitors compared with previous seasons.

If you're the first to test conducting Black Friday Cyber Monday sales or you've already attempted this the first time, it's now the perfect time to begin making plans for the coming year immediately and benefit from the following Black Friday checklist to get going.

For you to make plans to prepare for the coming season to help you plan for the upcoming period, we've broke down the e-commerce Black Friday checklist into two elements: the checklist for you to engage customers and a checklist to aid you with managing the back-end systems.

Black Friday Checklist: Customer engagement

The first thing to do is finish the customers' engagement before anything else.

Black Friday sales tag on clothing

Be more productive earlier

Really?

Thus, you must begin your strategy in advance so that you will be prepared to implement your strategies prior to time, and grow the amount of sales you make.

Create a Black Friday counter-narrative

Black Friday sales will start in the manner you'd like them to. People are beginning to be aware of this. So, it is recommended to conduct a campaign against Black Friday. Black Friday during the months prior to the celebration.

"Why wait? This is the perfect time to shop and benefit from these fantastic bargains and have your purchases completed before the end of the month."

The anti-Black Friday marketing slant will promote benefits such as having the opportunity to get an early start on the holiday shopping season, crossing items off your shopping list prior to the crowds, and sitting at ease throughout December, surrounded by people who want to rush since you've got it all accomplished earlier.

It is also paired with an array of shifting promotions and deals throughout the week before Black Friday.

customer paying with a credit card

Be sure to reach out to the right audience

This can be done in order to advertise multiple items and also create a variety of ads that include Google as well as other social media sites.

If you are the owner of an online retailer selling health food products, you're in the right place.

One category includes protein-rich breakfast bars. Another category includes dairy-free, gluten-free and gluten-free foods. The other category comprises nutritionally-rich foods that are natural. These can be promoted with your brand's primary language clearly.

glass container of overnight oats

Who do you think is the best audience each of these products will appeal to? What matters to them? Include the same message in your Black Friday marketing content and you'll attract more customers and increase sales.

Identify products to feature this year

If you're a business owner who sells many products, don't conduct broad Black Friday sales that will affect your sales. Instead, concentrate on just a few items which offer discounts that can boost sales. Make use of the discounts to attract an increase in customers to the retail store.

If you can encourage customers to buy more than the Black Friday discounts, you'll boost the average orders and net profit.

If you've got items overstocked and non-renewable or seasonal goods, these make great options for extreme deals as you'll be required remove these items if you're required to. Utilize items that you are selling in large quantities in exchange for a discounted agreement with the vendor, and also products with a large market or that generate more profit.

And consider creating dedicated Black Friday sale landing pages for your most important products instead of your typical page that you have for your product.

What products are you thinking of including during the chaos of Black Friday deals this year?

Be ready to promote your business through many channels.

Multichannel marketing can yield better results than focusing on just one channel. Make sure you have at least three channels that you intend to use this year to execute your Black Friday marketing strategy.

email from myLabBox

Channels include but are not restricted to:

  • SMS
  • Social media includes all possible platforms like Facebook, X, TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest
  • Direct Post
  • Radio and TV
  • YouTube, streaming online video and YouTube
Google Listings and Ads extension page

Be sure to create optimized landing pages, and track the number of the visitors to your website via all ways you reach them.

Create follow-up strategies for marketing to go

The second key element to making money from Black Friday, Cyber Monday and other days of the festive shopping period is to follow up with clients that might visit your shop in the next year.

Yes, many Black Friday shoppers will come to buy things, and then leave but then never come to return. However, you could be lucky enough to get a handful of these which will turn into regular and long-term customers.

Create a welcome sequence for emails. Start sending consistent email marketing. It is important to categorize your customers who are new to you according to what they've bought in the past, as well as any other information you've gathered regarding them during your initial purchase. Following that, you'll have the ability to provide them with new relevant and useful content over the year.

email from the city of Jacksonville

Have you implemented a plan for marketing in time for Black Friday?

Make use of email to distribute your message to all people regularly and in the very early hours.

As you prepare to Black Friday this year, make emails that promote your business to connect with your clients prior to the excitement of shopping for Christmas. Customers should think of your company before other retailers online begin competing for attention. They ought to be purchasing from you while smaller stores with small businesses are waking up to discover that they've never planned ahead for Black Friday.

Your initial email marketing campaign is likely to begin in October. The inboxes of email are expected to be full at the time November comes to an end. So, if you utilize emails to start planting seeds and offering discounts that are the most appealing before the peak growth in sales, you'll see more customers, as well as increase your company's reputation and trust to customers.

Create eye-catching visuals

If it's displayed on your page for products as well as the page used to lead users to the items you intend to display It is essential to use images with high resolution that draw the attention of your viewers and permit people to experience the product within the hands of their.

Contact abandoned carts via email

AutomateWoo extension page

Setting up these before Black Friday will give you an opportunity to evaluate your plan and determine what strategy is most effective for your business. discounts that will be most beneficial for your online store.

Split your campaign into three sections

There are a ton of things to check off your Black Friday checklist, and it's easy for you to be overwhelmed. If you need help organizing your tasks and to determine the importance to place on your list The entire holiday into three main parts.

This is the first step in the run-up prior to Black Friday. It can begin when you'd like it begin, but it will end in the weeks leading up until Black Friday.

And then follows the day. It can include weekends, and even the week that follows the week, where you're doing the whole Cyber Week. It's up to you to decide what a 'day' is..

Everything that follows your Black Friday period is the phase that forms part of your strategy for marketing.

Black Friday is just one of many days. The strategies you use to promote are to be applicable for all days during the workweek.

Do you plan to split the Black Friday promotions campaign into three parts?

Make or edit your return policy

If you've run your own online business for a long time it's likely that you've got this. However, if you do not have one, now is an ideal time to make one. Or, if you do have one, maybe you've realized from experience yours requires a new upgrade.

  • An option for returning the items you have shipped. Do you require original packaging, item's specific condition and so on. ?
  • The procedure for refund. Can customers receive the money they paid back, or credit card or store credit?
  • Clear deadlines. What is the deadline for shipping things back to receive credit or a refund?
  • An address for shipping. What address should they use to send returned items?
  • Contact information. How can the customer contact you regarding other questions?

The policy on returns should be publicized as often as it is necessary. It should be included in the customer's notification email when the purchase has been placed. The printed policy must be included with the purchase. It should be available via your website and readily accessible, for example, on the footer on your site as and on your FAQ page along with the product pages.

Are you up-to-date with your Return policy?

Offer faster shipping alternatives

The shipping time can be delayed when the sales are booming in the holiday season, and buyers usually expect speedy shipping.

Based on results from an 2021 Baymard study this study revealed an average of 19% the carts that are abandoned result from delivery times getting too lengthy. Offering faster shipping options can help reduce the loss of revenue and can be an ideal option for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Furthermore, expedited shipping methods encourage customers and ensure that your products arrive on time in a period of the year when shipping delays can occur because of the large number of deliveries that shipping companies have to handle.

Consider the possibility of offering Purchase Now, pay later

example of buy now, pay later on a checkout page

You can make this option available on the check-out page. You can also make it visible on your website's product page, your home webpage, the homepage, or other location you believe can help customers overcome the price-related objections and stay to shop.

Use the chatbot to communicate with you.

Chatbots aid in giving customers support and can boost sales. A lot of times clients have issues that chatbots may have the ability to aid them in. If they could just get a couple of issues clarified and they'll be able to complete the purchase.

example of a chat bot in action

If they are forced to look for email addresses, or look through the forums for help, or sit and wait for live chat support reply the issue, they're likely to abandon the whole process and move to a different site.

If you are able to make it happen the chatbot could help ease the purchase process without the need for the addition of customer service.

Find out the latest Black Friday sales data

The common thought is to start thinking of each year with a fresh venture. We start from scratch and begin a new journey with no benefit of experience.

If you've run an online store for any amount of time, and you've conducted Black Friday marketing campaigns before you're likely to have previously experienced. Your data may be already there. You've probably done some things in the past that performed efficiently.

 analytics showing sales and orders

If you're at a point in your plan for the year ahead you should take a look at the results from the year before. Was it a success? What was the problem?

Do you have the ability to duplicate the successes of last year? Do you have the capacity to improve your performance by focusing on what you didn't succeed at?

Black Friday list Black Friday checklist: Backend systems

We'll now move and examine the Black Friday checklist items that customers don't get to see everyday and that depend on shoppers to fulfill their purchases and have a great Black Friday shopping experience.

Make a website that is faster

95 percent of people leave a website when your website is loading too slowly. Site speed should be the primary concern at any season, and it is especially crucial during times of high volume of traffic. There are a few things to keep in mind if you find that your website is slow.

  • Test your website performance. Find out what aspects must be enhanced through the speed test. Tools like Pingdom along with Page Speed Insights can inform you of the speed at which your website loads and also how well it performs on specific aspects.
  • Implement a content delivery network (CDN). A CDN serves your site's files from high-speed, dedicated, and geographically-distributed data centers. Visitors will benefit by caching the content of the CDN closest server. This aids in speeding the loading times, as well as reduce the load and bandwidth on your site. Jetpack gives you the choice of a free CDN as opposed to other networks, you can set up and configure the Jetpack CDN in just a single button.
  • Improve your photo. Even if you're using a CDN which can optimize the file according to your requirements and requirements and requirements, it is recommended to upload your images as tiny as possible while maintaining the best resolution. exporting to the web using Photoshop as well as using Image Optimizer and Resize tools such as ImageOptim is an easy method to get your images ready to upload on the internet.
  • upgrade your hosting account. If you're on shared servers, your site may be slower to load especially if other sites that are on the server see significant growth in traffic. It is recommended to consider using an online hosting server (VPS) or dedicated server.
Jetpack speed landing page

Here are some more ways to enhance the performance of your business.

Does your store's online operation run at the speed that is required?

The inventory syncs with pages of the product

example sync log
example log

Make it faster and easier to checkout process

Your checkout process may work but is it reliable and straightforward? It's important to create your checkout the simplest it can be, with the least amount of distractions, in order to encourage your customers to finish their purchase. A few things you can make to be addressed, such as:

  • Eliminate the visible distractions. Eliminate header and menus for footers as well as widgets that appear on the sidebar as well as additional distractions on the checkout page to ensure that your clients will be determined to finish the purchase.
 Payments information

Make sure you are prepared to place your order and get the order shipped on time.

Do your dropshippers or suppliers have enough capability to cope with an rise in sales? Are you able to increase production when increase in demand is greater than expected?

The situation is ideal to confront, you shouldn't miss the chance to increase the income of your business and to attract new customers when the supply chain gets overloaded.

If you're planning to improve production ahead of the Christmas season, ensure that you place orders at the earliest opportunity with your supplier of materials. This is particularly true for the products you sell come from a different company, and particularly when those items are created overseas. There are other companies that also accept orders from sellers to plan their preparations to Black Friday sales as well So, make sure to ensure that your purchases are secure before the end of the day. In the event that you don't then you could be faced with expensive prices or no items.

man

If you're working through a third party logistic company (3PL) for delivery of your items, take a look at the past data regarding the delivery and sales of your items and request that they transfer your inventory to warehouses located within the regions where you typically conduct the majority of transactions. It can help speed the deliveries to clients. If delivery speed is crucial to you, request your 3PL to make regular deliveries. They should also choose providers with the fastest delivery times.

In addition, you may have to hire more people or increase hours in order to accommodate the increased production expected over the holiday season. This is especially important when creating handmade items or making items on your own. However, even if your production outsourcing is completed, you may still have greater demand for the services you offer to customers or ordering fulfillment, marketing, or other things.

Gather customer details for follow-up marketing

In the past, we have discussed ways to respond after your site is visited by people who might not have visited your online store before.

Customers aren't in a position to reach you absent the information of your clients.

If you're sending products then you're most likely to get the address for their postal company. Direct mail marketing and follow up are more costly than digital marketing, which is why you must be able to communicate with customers by email or perhaps SMS too.

MailPoet opt-in settings

In order to do this it is essential that buyers be able to sign up. One of the best places to register is the checkout page at the lower right. You can then ask for the customer's email address and their contact number. You must get permission to communicate with the customer by text or email. You must, however, keep the number to a minimum so that customers who do not choose to opt out of marketing through SMS do not get confused.

There will be those who don't, but that's okay the same way as others might. In the event that you are, you need to get started on reviewing your marketing.

Are you ready to gather emails and numbers?

Convert tracking can be established

It is essential to keep track of customers' behavior and your performance with marketing tactics throughout Black Friday and the rest of the Christmas season so that you are able to adjust your approach for the upcoming year.

Conversion Tracking Pro extension page

Be sure that the website you're using is secure

One of the most simple and most effective methods to enhance the security of your website is by installing a security plug-in. Jetpack provides no cost protection against attacks with brute force that blocks attacks that constitute among the most frequent forms of hacking, in addition to the two-factor security for security of your login procedure. The Jetpack WordPress security plug-in offers automated backups, malware scanning in addition to monitoring downtime for security against spam and other.

Jetpack Security information page

Be sure that your site is working across all browsers and devices.

The website you are selling should appear properly on devices for desktops including tablets, mobile phones and all the popular browsers. You can check this using the devices you own however you'll need to examine how your website appears if you're using a PC and browser emulators like LambdaTest.

Lambda test page explaining features

While you might not be able guarantee that the design of your site is flawless on all platform and device but there are some instruments like Google Analytics that enable you to find out which the devices and browsers your visitors use. It is then possible to focus your attention in improving the performance of your website for your preferred platforms.

Are your websites mobile-friendly? functioning on the same number of devices?

Check out the major purposes of your website

 system report

Be sure to plan your sale dates as along with coupons

It is possible to reduce stress and anxiety during the most hectic time of shopping by doing as much as possible in the months beforehand.

It's easy to make your coupon as well as schedule sales ahead of time. When you've figured out what products will be eligible for sales, the timing of flash sales, special discounts, as well as the way in which prices can change over time, design coupons as well as the back-end support systems to guarantee the effectiveness of sales. If you're going to give an item for free with purchase, make sure you have the present readily available.

Smart Coupons extension

It is important to emphasize Black Friday bargains on your site

Customers aren't eligible to profit from the offer in the case that they don't know about it. If your customers browse your site on their own or get there via emails or paid advertisements it is important for them to quickly discover the sales you offer.

adding a sale notice to the bottom of the site

There are a variety of ways to do this:

  • Make use of pop-ups to announce your sales. They can include the call-to-action along with buttons that direct visitors to your sales.
  • Add a banner to your website to promote the sales you make.
  • Integrate the "Black Friday Sale" menu item into the menu navigation on your site.
  • Place sale items in the right sidebar of your store's webpage.
  • Display sale icons on the thumbnails of your items.

Create your customer support systems

Although you might require more staff to help the sales and customer service personnel in the weeks prior to Black Friday Onboarding and training temporary workers can be difficult and time-consuming. There are other strategies to boost customer support aside from the hiring of temporary workers.

Three customer-service strategies are below to be utilized this year.

Give a wide range of options to support customers

In addition to the direct line phone support, which you have to provide if you're able to offer the service, there are additional alternatives for customers to receive answers to their queries.

  • FAQs, also known as knowledge bases. Help customers help themselves by offering an easily available and simple to use questions, knowledge bases, or other data.
  • Utilize a customer Contact webpage. Let people get to the customer service team via email through a contact form. Use the conditional logic when responding to the question form and direct any inquiries from customers seeking customer service to the appropriate email address.
  • Locate AI chatbots in operation.Filter out some of the most commonly asked questions like "How is shipping priced?" or "Do you provide delivery service for my location?" by using the AI chatbot. The AI chatbot will help save the support personnel of your customers as well as offer clients quick answers to the most basic questions

Utilize a customer tool for managing relationships (CRM)

CRM software is a great tool to assist to track your customer's interactions with your company as well as assist you with customer support issues, identify new customers and customers who are upselling.

Jetpack CRM dashboard

Jetpack CRM is a slim and user-friendly tool that connects directly to your dashboard. There are no limits on contact, and it's among the cheapest CRM choices for stores that sell retail.

 Make sure your customer service procedures and FAQs are up-to-date

Examine regularly the procedures to provide customer service, and make sure that they're in order. If there are specific procedures or offers staff members must be aware of for Black Friday and Cyber Monday Make a note of them and ensure that your team is aware of the. Meetings to discuss the procedure around one week prior to the start of the Black Friday deals may help ensure that these rules are remembered for your employees.

If you've simplified the process of customer service for your clients as well as your staff, you may find that it's still necessary to find more staff members who can assist you throughout the season of Christmas. Through enhancing the efficiency of your staff, you will reduce the amount of seasonal staff you'll need to hire.

shopper browsing products on a phone

Are you ready for Advent retail season?

It's an essential item to have Black Friday checklist may seem as a daunting task to get ready for a weekend that only is a couple of days long However, these tips shouldn't only apply to one weekend.

If you've integrated them, some of the strategies and methods will help improve your online presence every single day. If you're on top of the items on your checklist all through the year, you shouldn't be required to do something extraordinary when the time for Christmas draws nearer.

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