With Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) just around the corner, now is the time of year to make sure every aspect of your e-commerce website is functioning at its very best.
This is the season to make sure that your SEO is maximized, your advertising is at its best, and your website is easy to navigate from home page to checkout. It is important to make sure that your Black Friday checklist is thorough and easy to work through as you near the shopping event of the year.
If your e-commerce website operates through Shopify, there are a number of Shopify Black Friday tools and strategies at your disposal to ensure great BFCM sales this holiday season. Shopify cannot do it all, however. It is important to combine your own research with what Shopify can offer in order to be fully prepared and confident about this year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday events.
BFCM On Shopify:
Look back on trends from previous years to have a better idea of what you might need to expect from Shopify’s BCFM this current year. This will make it a lot easier to create your Black Friday Checklist as you prepare for your own experience
In 2021, Shopify’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales totaled about $6.3 billion dollars, and the company was able to analyze what sorts of trends had been built up over the previous years. They have made predictions for the upcoming years that can help e-commerce business owners better anticipate what sorts of preparations and changes will be in their best interest.
More and more purchases during Black Friday and Cyber Monday are occurring on mobile devices like phones, instead of on desktop computers. It will undoubtedly be beneficial to have a website that is optimized for mobile navigation as you head into the holiday shopping season.
A cell phone is always readily available for a person to pull out and scroll through; it takes a lot more time and effort to sit down in front of a computer, and often during the busy nature of daily life, people will pull their phones out to pass the time riding the bus or waiting in line at a cafe.
This means that online shopping is readily available on handheld devices at any given moment. Because so much shopping happens on phones, it is important to have a website that is easy to use from a phone screen. People are not very likely to stay on websites that have confusing formatting or are difficult to navigate. The easier it is for people to explore your website from their phone, the more traffic and business you will get! Especially during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, people will be trying to shop quickly in order to get their desired products.
Making shopping easy to do with just a couple of taps will increase sales considerably.
Shopify Black Fridays of the past have seen a large percentage of sales happening on social media and not on actual e-commerce websites. It is not impossible for this percentage to increase, so it is more vital than ever to make shopping accessible to customers on social media platforms like Instagram.
Establishing a social media presence can be incredibly helpful to building your brand and increasing traffic to your website or to your Instagram shop. When you use popular hashtags that relate to your products and to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you are pushing your products and your company forward to more potential customers.
Additionally, you can “boost” your posts for a small fee on Instagram to make them stay at the top of people’s recommended pages for a longer period of time.
Site Speed and Performance:
BFCM Sales:
One way that you will find success with BFCM on Shopify will be through advertising your Shopify store. The more people who are aware of your store and see advertisements for you, the more likely they are to click a button and explore your page. Shopify has a number of tools that can assist you in marketing for yourself, but they cannot do the job for you.
Having an understanding of marketing tactics, especially as they relate to your specific business and the demographics you are trying to reach, will help you increase traffic and revenue over Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Shopify has marketing tools that will help you push your website onto different social media platforms like Facebook, which is more vital than ever during the holiday shopping season.
As Black Friday gets closer, utilizing email campaigns to reach current shoppers is a great way to remind people that the holiday is nearing and that you will be participating. Entice people to visit your store to explore your new products or services, and to check out what savings they could have by shopping with you. See if it is possible to offer any other perks like free shipping. If you are able to, try and integrate those benefits into your marketing campaign; they are always sure to catch the public’s eye.
Improving your keyword search results will be a massive help to increasing your Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales and website traffic.
When conducting an internet search for a certain topic or phrase, most people will not look past the first page of results from their search engine. It is important to be able to make it to that front page of search results to get the most clicks and views from potential customers.
One significant way of boosting your chances, and by improving your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) overall, is to work with keywords. Keywords, which are words and phrases that people use as part of their web searches, are important to drop into the text of your website. If your website’s text matches what people are searching for, the more likely it is that your website will get traffic. Algorithms and the ways that people are searching the internet are changing every day, so it is important to stay on top of trends and adapt your keywords accordingly.
As Black Friday comes nearer, it is likely that keywords will start to include more specific products and even the words “Black Friday”. Include those vital keywords in your website and push yourself to the front page of people’s search results.
Your Black Friday Checklist:
One thing that will be of value to you as you prepare for the influx of sales and traffic from BFCM Sales is creating a checklist. Shopify offers a list of twenty-five tips to better prepare for Black Friday sales, but it is important to make sure that you make a list of your own and are able to use certain strategies and tactics to best suit your own business and needs.
Advertising, streamlined and easy-to-use formatting, a simple and fair return policy, and preparing for large surges in website activity are all steps that you can take to feel better prepared for the biggest shopping event of the year. It is essential to make sure that your website can handle a large amount of customers all at one time, and make sure that your inventory is well-stocked to handle a lot of orders.
In order to get those large waves of shoppers, though, you have to make sure that your marketing and SEO strategies are at the top of their game. Utilize email campaigns, keywords, and social media to reach as many new customers as possible.
Customer Support Readiness:
Abandoned Cart Strategy:
During Black Friday and Cyber Monday on Shopify, it will be more important than ever to have a smooth and easy means of carrying out payment transactions with customers. With a large number of people all flooding the checkout at once, making sure that there are no glitches or crashes will be to your advantage, and will make it more likely for your customers to return for the next Black Friday.
There are a number of different payment methods and gateways that Shopify offers to support your business transactions. Choosing which one will be best for your business depends on a number of factors, like your products and target demographics. Take care to ensure that there are no risks of fraud and be sure to consider transaction fees. You have the option of using third party payment methods like PayPal or Stripe, which all come with their own pros and cons as well.
During Black Friday sales, it is important to make sure your payment method is fully prepared and able to handle large numbers of transactions in a short period of time.
Post-BFCM Customer Retention:
Call To Action Conclusion
As Black Friday and Cyber Monday approach, it is important to be able to prepare in as many ways as possible for how the holidays will impact your business.
Black Friday is a pivotal day in sales for many companies, and you want to make sure that you come out on top of it all. Focusing on your advertising and SEO as the holiday nears will allow you to get a lot more traffic to your website, which will mean more sales (and future returning customers!).
In line with more traffic and sales, though, comes the need for a website that can handle a large influx of transactions and activity. Make sure that you are prepared on every front for the energy and excitement of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and make it a day of shopping no one will forget.
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