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You can never start planning in the too-early hours of Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) -- the biggest shopping season during the calendar year. Both shopping periods have seen significant growth year-over-year which means you'll need to prepare yourself to be ready for increased web traffic as well as increased marketing competition, compared to the prior years.

It doesn't matter if this is your first time operating Black Friday Cyber Monday sales or you've been there before and you're ready to begin formulating your plan for the year today in advance, and it's possible to use this Black Friday checklist to get to work.

In order to help you prepare to prepare for the coming season We've broken down this ecommerce Black Friday checklist into two parts -- the checklist to help customers engage, and the checklist for back-end systems.

Black Friday checklist: Customer engagement

We'll start by completing the customer engagement checklist first.

Start earlier

Really?

So, start your planning early, so you are able to implement your marketing strategies earlier and maximize sales.

Develop an Black Friday counter-narrative

Black Friday sales begin whenever you'd like them to. The public is beginning to understand this. Therefore, you should run a campaign that goes anti-Black Friday in the weeks preceding it.

"Why wait? Now is the time to shop and you can take advantage of these fantastic deals and get your shopping completed early."

The marketing angle that is anti-Black Friday would push benefits like having a head start on your holiday shopping, checking off your shopping list prior to the crowds, and having fun laughing through December with all the shoppers in a rush because you got yours done in advance.

Combine this with an assortment of constantly changing specials and deals in the weeks prior to Black Friday.

Make sure you reach your audience

It is possible to do this with different product lines and run multiple ads which include Google and various other social media sites.

Imagine you own an online store selling health food.

One product category features protein-enriched breakfast bars. Another category has gluten-free and dairy-free foods. And another includes nutrient-rich all-natural items. It is possible to promote each one using the primary language of your brand, of course.

What is the intended audience for each of these items look like? What are their priorities? Put that language into your Black Friday marketing content and you'll see more people involved and boost sales.

Choose the products you want to highlight this year

If you're selling a variety of merchandise, do not conduct general Black Friday sales that will bite into your bottom line. Instead, feature select items with incredible deals which will increase your profits using those to get an increase in customers to the store.

If you are able to motivate additional purchase beyond Black Friday discounts, you'll boost the average value of your order and net profits.

If you have overstock products, items that are no longer in stock, or items that are seasonal, they can be great alternatives for massive deals because you need to sell them out anyway. Utilize items that you are able to produce at a high volume for a discounted agreement with the supplier or products that are in huge demand or generate higher profits.

Also, think about creating dedicated Black Friday sale landing pages to highlight your best items, rather than just your typical product page.

What are the products you can offer in the face of extreme Black Friday deals this year?

Prepare marketing for several channels

Multichannel marketing can yield greater results than targeting just a single channel. Choose at least three channels that you intend to employ this year to implement your Black Friday marketing strategy.

Channels can include, but aren't restricted to:

• SMS
• Social media - all possible platforms, including Facebook, X, TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest
• Direct Post
• Radio and TV
• YouTube, streaming video online and YouTube

Don't forget to design optimized landing pages and track the traffic to your website from each of your chosen channels.

Prepare follow-up marketing strategies to go

Another way to make money on Black Friday, Cyber Monday and other days of the holiday shopping season is to keep in touch with customers who have discovered your website in the coming year.

Sure, a lot of Black Friday shoppers will come to buy, leave, only to never return. However, you could win some of them, and convert these into loyal and repeat customers.

Create a welcome email series. Start sending consistent email marketing. Make sure to categorize your prospective customers based on what they already bought, as well as any other data you've collected regarding them based on their initial shopping encounter. Then, engage them with additional relevant content during the new year.

Are you following-up with a marketing strategy in place for Black Friday?

Make use of email to get messages out quickly and often

In preparation for Black Friday this year, develop email marketing campaigns in order to target your different customer segments prior to the rush of holiday shopping. It is important that they think of your business before the many competitors on the internet start to compete to get their attention. They should be buying from you while the others with small businesses are simply waking up and realizing that they haven't planned ahead to prepare for Black Friday.

The first marketing email campaign should probably be sent out by October. Email inboxes start to overflow by the end of November. If you could use email to begin with the seeds, and offer special deals prior to the rush, you'll improve sales and also build your brand's recognition and loyalty to customers.

Create eye-catching visuals

Whether on your product pages as well as the landing pages or pages for the products that you'll feature, you'll need some pictures that are high-resolution to draw interest and let your customers to practically feel the product in their hands.

Send emails to abandoned carts

Making these available prior to Black Friday will give you the chance to try out your campaigns and see what advertising strategies and promotions will work for your web store.

Your ad campaign can be broken down into three parts

There's a number of items on the Black Friday checklist, and it's easy to get overwhelmed. To help organize your work and know what to prioritize You can divide your campaign into its three essential parts.

First is the lead up towards Black Friday. This begins whenever you want it to begin and will end the day prior to Black Friday.

The next step is the day. This could be weekends or next week, if you're taking on the entire Cyber Week. It is up to you to define"day".

Then, anything that happens after your Black Friday period is the follow-up stage for your marketing strategy.

Black Friday is not just one single day. Your marketing strategy should encompass all of the period.

Have you broken down the Black Friday promotions campaign into three segments?

Make or edit your return policy

If you've had your ecommerce business for a while it's likely that you have this. But if you don't it's right time to make one. In the event that you already have one, you may have realized from experience it's time to update yours.

• An option for returning shipped items. Do you need your original packing, in perfect product condition, etc. ?
• The policy of refund. Does the customer get their money back, store credit, or some other thing?
• Clear deadlines. How long can they be returned to receive full refunds or credit?
• A shipping address. What address will they use to send back products?
• Contact details. What is the best way for customers to contact you with any additional concerns?

And, your returns policy must be displayed whenever it is relevant. It should be in the order notification email that goes out after your purchase has been completed. It must be printed and included as part of the shipped product. The item should be displayed located on your website and easy to find, such as at the footer, the FAQ page, and on product pages.

Do you have an updated returns policy?

Offer faster shipping choices

Shipping times can increase in the holiday shopping season and customers often expect expedited shipping options.

Based on a 2021 Baymard study from 2021 in 2021, 19% of cart abandonments are due to delivery times being too slow. Offering quicker shipping options could help reduce the loss of sales, and is a great method during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

In addition, speedy delivery techniques encourage customers to buy and ensure your products arrive on time during a season when the shipping time may be slightly longer due to the huge volume carriers are processing.

Consider the possibility of offering the option to buy Now or Pay Later

This option can be made available right on the checkout page. But you can also mention it on the product page, home page, landing page as well as wherever you think it might assist customers in overcoming an objection to price and stay buying.

Use the chatbot

Chatbots help with customer service and increase sales. Most of the time, customers have simple queries that chatbots can answer. If they could just find a few questions answered, they'll follow through on their purchase.

However, if they must hunt down an email address, sift through help forums, or wait for live chat representatives to reply, they're more likely to quit the process and shop elsewhere.

If you are able to make it happen Chatbots can make buying easier without the need for additional customer service personnel.

Check out this season's Black Friday sales data

It's common to think of every year like a fresh venture. We begin from scratch and re-invent the wheel without any advantage of experience.

But if you've had an online store for any length of time and have conducted Black Friday marketing campaigns before then you've got some knowledge. You have some prior data. Some of what you've done in the past probably worked very well.

If you are getting too far into your planning for the year ahead, take a look back at your results from last year. What was successful? What didn't?

Can you replicate your successes from last year and improve by focusing on the things that failed?

Black Friday checklist Checklist for Backend Systems

We'll now move into the Black Friday checklist items that customers don't always see, yet you count on to help customers make purchases and have a great Black Friday shopping experience.

Accelerate your site's speed

95% of visitors abandon a site when the site loads slow. Site speed should be a top priority at any time of the year, but it's especially important when you are expecting more visitors. There are several easy things you can try if you have a slow website:

• Test your website performance. Determine which areas of your website require improvement by running a speed test. Instruments like Pingdom as well as Page Speed Insights will tell you how fast it loads and the performance of certain areas.
• Implement a content delivery network (CDN). A CDN serves your site's files from high-speed, dedicated, and geographically-distributed data centers. Users will receive with cached content by the CDN closest to them that reduces loading time, and also reduces bandwidth and loads of your site. Jetpack comes with a free CDN, and unlike other networks, you can connect and configure the Jetpack CDN with just one click.
• Make your images more efficient. Even if you're making use of a CDN which optimizes your images to your specifications, it's best procedure to upload the least file size necessary while preserving the highest resolution. Exporting for web with Photoshop or using no-cost images resizing tools and optimization software such as ImageOptim is a simple way to get your photos ready for the web.
• Upgrade your hosting plan. If you're on a shared server the site could experience lower load speeds, in particular if other sites that are on the server experience high volumes of traffic. You should consider a virtual server (VPS) or dedicated server.

There are many other ways you can improve the speed of your shop.

Are your eCommerce websites running as quickly as it can be?

Synchronize inventory and product pages

Simplify and speed up your checkout procedure

Your checkout process may work however, is it effective and intuitive? Your goal is to make the checkout process as easy as possible, with minimum distractions in order to motivate customers to complete their purchase. There are a few things you can do to improve are:

• Eliminate visual clutter. Eliminate header and footer menus, sidebar widgets, and other distractions from your checkout page so your customers remain focused on completing the purchase.

Make sure you are ready to complete orders and ship on time

Do you have dropshippers and your suppliers equipped to handle the increased demand? Do you have the capacity to increase production when demand surpasses expectations?

While this is a good issue to be faced with however, you do not want to miss the chance to boost revenue and win new clients because your supply chain gets overloaded.

If you want to increase production prior to the holiday season, make sure you place your orders with your material suppliers early. The same holds true if your products are manufactured by another company -- especially when the products are created overseas. Many other companies are taking orders from sellers in preparation in preparation for Black Friday sales as well Make sure that you make sure to secure your purchases prior to the date. In the event that you do not, you might be facing high prices or no stocks products.

If you're working with an outside logistics company (3PL) for shipping your goods, review historic data on shipping and sales for your products and ask the company to shift the inventory into warehouses closest to the areas where you tend to do the highest business. This can speed up delivery times for your customers. If speedy delivery is paramount to your business Ask your 3PL to deliver frequent shipments and choose providers that have the most rapid delivery times.

You may also have to recruit more workers or extend hours in order to accommodate the expected rise in production over the Christmas season. This is particularly important if you're creating handmade goods or making products on your own. However, even if production is outsourced and you're still in an increased need for customer service, ordering fulfillment, marketing and much more.

Collect customer data in order to follow-up with marketing

Earlier, we discussed preparing for follow-up when your store is visited by customers that haven't previously visited your e-commerce store in the past.

You can't contact them in the absence of the information of your customers.

If you're shipping products, then obviously they will give your address for mailing. Direct mail marketing, however, as well as follow-up cost significantly more than online marketing which is why you must be able to follow up via email or SMS too.

To do that, the purchaser should be offered the opportunity to opt in. The most effective place to do this is right on the checkout page. There, you can solicit their email address as well as phone number. Be sure you have their permission to communicate with them using email and text. But make the phone number non-contingent to ensure that customers who don't opt in for text message marketing won't get confused.

Not everyone will consent but that's fine, since some people will. And for those who are, now is the time to commence with your follow-up strategy for marketing.

Are you ready to collect emails and numbers?

Convert tracking can be set up

It's important monitor customer behaviour and how well your marketing efforts perform during Black Friday and the rest of the festive season in order to improve the following year.

Be sure that your website is safe

An easy and efficient way to increase your website's security is to set up the security plugin. Jetpack includes no cost security against brute force attacks, to stop being one of the popular kinds of hacking techniques in addition to the two-factor security for security of the login procedure. The Jetpack WordPress security software provides regular backups, malware scanning, spam prevention downtime monitoring along with other features.

Make sure your site works on all devices and browsers

Your online store must be displayed correctly on desktops devices, tablets, mobile phones, and all leading browsers. It is possible to test this using your personal devices quickly, however you'll be interested in testing your site's display on a device and browser emulator, such as LambdaTest.

While you might not be able to guarantee that your website's appearance and functions flawlessly on every device and operating systems, you can use tools like Google Analytics to determine which the browsers and platforms your users are using. It is then possible to concentrate your efforts on testing and revising your site's performance on those specific platforms.

Does your site work on mobile devices? and working on every device is

Check your website's key functionality

Create your sales schedule and coupon codes

It is possible to reduce the stress and anxiety of the most hectic holiday shopping time of the year by doing as much as feasible in the weeks leading up to it.

One easy task is to create your coupon codes and sales in advance of date. When you've figured out which products are going to have sales, the timing of certain flash sales and special deals, as well as how the prices are likely to change with time, create the coupons and the other backend support systems that will ensure the success of sales. If you're offering a free gift with purchase, make sure that you've got the gift in stock.

Highlight Black Friday deals across your ecommerce store

The customer can't benefit from an offer when they aren't aware of it. Whether your customers come to your site naturally or bring them to your site through email marketing and paid advertising it is important to be able to find your sales easily.

There are many ways to do this:

• Create pop-ups that announce your sales and a call to action and button that takes them directly to the sale.
• Include a banner on your home page to promote your sales.
• Create the "Black Friday deals" menu item on your site's navigation.
• Highlight sale items in the shop's sidebar.
• Display sale icons in your thumbnails of products.

Set up your customer service systems

If you do need to add more staff to assist your sales and customer service staff in the days leading up to Black Friday, onboarding and training temporary workers can be difficult and lengthy. There are many other methods to increase customer service support in addition to employing temporary employees.

Below are three customer-service techniques to be implemented this year.

Give a range of choices for customer support

Apart from telephone support via direct line- which you should offer if you have capacity for it, there are different ways for customers to receive answers to their queries.

• FAQs and knowledge base. Help customers help themselves by offering an easily navigable and accessible FAQs or knowledge bases
• Use a customer service contact form. Let people get contact with your customer service team via email with a contact form. Make use of conditional logic that is in response to the question type to route customer service inquiries to the right email address.
• Get AI chatbots in action.Filter out some of the most commonly-asked questions like "How much does shipping cost?" or "Do you deliver to my country?" by using an AI chatbot. This can save your customer service team valuable time as well as provide customers with rapid answers to the most basic of questions.

Make use of a customer relationship management tool (CRM)

CRMs can help you track the interactions of your customers with your company and quickly deal with support requests, verify leads, and upsell your customers.

Jetpack CRM is a compact and accessible tool that integrates directly with your dashboard. There are no contact limits and it's also among the least expensive CRM solutions for stores.

Be sure that your customers instructions and FAQs for service are up to date

Review your customer service procedures and be sure they're correct. If you have any special methods or special offers that your staff must know about for Black Friday and Cyber Monday Make sure to document these procedures and make sure that your staff has access. Meetings to discuss your procedure a week or so prior to launching your Black Friday deals may help to keep these processes in the forefront for your staff.

When you've streamlined the customer support experience to both visitors and your team You may discover that you still need to add more people to help with the holiday season. But maximizing your current team's efficiency will minimize the amount of seasonal employees that you'll need to make.

Are you ready for Christmas shopping season?

It's a Black Friday checklist may seem to be a bit of a hassle to prepare for a sale which only lasts for a couple of days. However, these guidelines weren't created for just only one weekend.

When you've put them in place, the systems and methods are able to improve your business online every day. If you're at the top of these items on your checklist throughout the year, you'll not need to put in a lot of effort for the holiday season next year.