Black Friday eCommerce Tips: How to Keep Selling

Is your store ready for Black Friday?

Black Friday is approaching fast and you are probably scrambling to prepare for the increase in visitors to your online store. How do you create an offer that your audience will find appealing?

It has to be better than your competitors and good enough that your customers won’t be able to pass it up.

Plus, you need to give your site a check-up before traffic and orders increased. Slow load times and broken pages can be costly for your business.

We have a lot of experience helping Shopify store owners owners beef up their holiday sales and leverage the busiest shopping season of the year. Let us share some of our favorite tips.

Black Friday eCommerce Tips that Will Help You Hit Your Goals

Black Friday is an exciting time of year for businesses and shoppers alike. This is the time when you do the majority of your sales, and your shoppers are looking forward to all the discounts that will help them save on gifts.

If you want to cash in on the excitement and boost your sales, follow these suggestions.

Create an Enticing Offer

Your offer is a crucial part of creating an effective Black Friday campaign. If the discount you offer is too low, your shoppers are likely to hunt for better deals elsewhere.

According to Numerator, discounts were even deeper in 2018 compared to 2017. Look at your competitor’s offers if possible so you can be competitive. You may need to consider offering a discount of at least 40% to tempt your shoppers to buy.

The way that you word your offer can make a big difference in its success.

For example, 10% off $100 doesn’t sound as good as $10 off $100, even though mathematically they are the same. Check out this post from SEO Yoast to find out ways you can create an enticing discount: The Psychology Behind Discounts.

 

 

Think Outside the Box

Be unique and do something new! Don’t use the same offer every year — make it something you wouldn’t normally do. Let’s look at a few ideas.

Combo Deals

If you sell products that go well together, consider creating a package of a few of these products and offering a discount to purchase them together.

For example, let’s say that you have an eStore that sells apparel. You could pick out a shirt, pants, shoes, and accessories to create an entire outfit. Offer a dollar amount off or a percentage discount that will make shoppers feel like they are getting a great deal. The more value your offer has, the more tempted shoppers will be to take advantage of the deal.

Referral Deals

Give your customers a higher discount off for the referrals they send you for a limited time as a Black Friday promotion.

Store-Wide Discounts

Think about offering a store-wide discount on all your products. This gives your visitors a chance to browse your store at their leisure without having to hunt down attractive offers.

Pre-Black Friday Flash Sale

Offer a flash sale the day before Black Friday. This gives eager shoppers to get a jump start on the deals and spend their money with you first. Make sure the flash sale isn’t as good or better than the deal you plan to offer the day of. Give them a reason to come back and shop more tomorrow.

Strengthen Your Website

If your website isn’t in its best shape, you could be losing business. An out-of-shape website can cause your visitors to bounce and shop elsewhere.

There are some simple things you can do to beef up your website and boost your sales for Black Friday.

Create Simple & Thoughtful Navigation

The navigation is one of the most critical aspects of your website. If visitors are unsure where to click or they have to make too many clicks to get where they want to go, they might leave instead.

What to Do

1. Reduce the number of clicks from the product page to checkout.
2. Make sure all your top-level pages are easy to find.
3. Include search tools to help them to locate the products they are looking for.
4. Consider that your Black Friday shoppers are looking for heavy discounts and perfect gifts — use categories to give them easy places to find what they want.

Check Your Website’s Load Time

If your pages are taking too long to load, you are missing out on potential sales.

What to Do

1. Use a tool like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to check the speed of your website.
2. Implement the strategies that we talked about in our article on the importance of site speed.

Make Sure Your Website Works Great on Mobile

Today, so many themes and shopping platforms come pre-optimized for mobile shopping. It’s easy to just assume that your mobile experience is good and move on.

What to Do

1. Browse your store on a mobile device — phone and tablet — and see what the experience is first-hand. Find a product and go through the full checkout process.
2. Work with your developer to make adjustments to improve the overall experience.

Recommended Reading: Shopify on Mobile Devices: 5 Strategies for More Sales

Get the Word Out About Your Offer

You might have the best offer on the planet, but if you don’t tell people about it, what good is it going to do you? Here are some tactics you can use to spread the word.

Feature Sales on Your Website

Your sale should be featured prominently on every single page of your website.

What to Do:

1. Make use of banner ads, slide-in’s, exit pop-ups, and countdowns.
2. Use colors and fonts that stand out. If your offer blends in with the rest of your website, it can be easily overlooked. You want your visitors to be reminded of the deals no matter what page they navigate to.
3. Make sure that any coupon codes are easy to copy-paste at checkout.

Share on Social Media

Don’t post blindly! Social media is only effective if it’s used the right way. Just sharing a link won’t get you clicks. You need to create copy that screams, “click me!” and include visuals like images or videos.

What to Do:

1. Optimize your social media profile. Create a cover photo that promotes your Black Friday sale and put it up early to spread the word.
2. Update your bio information to make sure it’s all accurate.
3. Add a link to your sales page on your site and create posts that promote your sale — you can pin this post to the top of your page on Facebook and Twitter.

Consult an eCommerce Expert

It’s impossible to think of every little thing you should do to boost your sales. Consult with an eCommerce expert and give your shop an advantage over your competition.

Schedule a meeting and let us help you increase your Black Friday sales!