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There is no way to start making plans earlier than Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) that is the largest shopping period during the calendar year. Both of these seasons have seen an increase in sales from year to year and so you'll need to be ready to anticipate more website traffic, as well as increased advertisement competition as contrasted with the previous seasons.

If you're the first to try conducting Black Friday Cyber Monday sales or have already tried this, then it's time begin preparing your strategy for the coming year right now and benefit from the below Black Friday checklist to get started.

To help you plan your plans to prepare for the season ahead to help you plan for the upcoming season, we've broken down this e-commerce Black Friday checklist into two components: the checklist to engage customers and a checklist to aid you with managing the back-end systems.

Black Friday check list: Customer engagement

The first step is to complete the list of customer engagement first.

Get started earlier

Really?

Therefore, you should begin your strategy in advance so that you will be in a position to execute the strategies you've planned ahead of time and increase your sales.

Develop an Black Friday counter-narrative

Black Friday sales will begin as you'd prefer them to. The public is beginning to realize this. So, it is advisable to run an anti-Black Friday campaign. Black Friday during the months preceding the event.

"Why wait? Now is the best time to buy and you can take advantage of these great deals and get your purchases done before the deadline."

The anti-Black Friday marketing slant would push benefits like having an early start on your holiday shopping, checking off your wish list before the crowds, and sitting in a relaxed state through December with all the shoppers who are in a hurry since you've got it all done earlier.

This is paired with a variety of always changing promotions and bargains in the week leading up to Black Friday.

Be sure to reach out to the right audience

This can be done to promote multiple products and also create a variety of ads that include Google as well as other social media websites.

If you own an online retailer that sells health foods.

One category includes protein-rich breakfast bars. The other category covers dairy-free, gluten-free, and gluten-free items. The other category comprises nutritionally-rich all natural items. They can be advertised with your brand's primary language clearly.

But, who do you think is the best audience each of the products look like? What matters to them? Include the same message in the Black Friday marketing content and you'll have more interested customers and boost the number of sales.

Identify products to feature this year

If you're a retailer with a large number of products, don't conduct broad Black Friday sales that will harm your sales. Instead, focus on a handful of merchandise with great deals to boost sales. Make use of them to draw an increase in customers to the shop.

If you can encourage customers to buy more than the Black Friday discounts, you'll raise the value of average orders as well as net profit.

If you've got items in excess and discontinued or seasonal items, these make great options for extreme deals since you'll need to get rid of these items if you're required to. Make use of items you are selling in large quantities in exchange for a reduced agreement with the supplier as well as products which have a huge market or that generate more profit.

And consider creating dedicated Black Friday sale landing pages for your most important products, instead of the usual page for your product.

What are the products you're planning to include in the midst of extreme Black Friday deals this year?

Make sure you are prepared to market through multiple channels.

Multichannel marketing may yield greater results than focusing on just the one channel. Find at minimum three channels you're planning to use this year in order to implement the Black Friday marketing strategy.

Channels include but are not restricted to:

• SMS
• Social media, all the possible platforms like Facebook, X, TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest
• Direct Post
• TV and radio
• YouTube, streaming online video and YouTube

Don't forget to design optimised landing pages and keep track of the visitors to your site through all the channels you use.

Develop follow-up strategies in marketing that go

The other key to profiting of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and other days of the shopping season during Christmas is following up with customers who might find your online store in the coming year.

Sure, a lot of Black Friday shoppers will come and buy items, then leave but then never come back. However, you could be lucky enough to win a few of them and turn these into frequent and loyal customers.

Begin a welcome sequence of emails. Start sending consistent email marketing. You should try to classify your new customers based on what they've purchased previously, and any additional details you've collected about them through the initial shopping experience. After that, you can provide them with new and relevant content throughout the coming year.

Are you implementing a strategy for marketing in time for Black Friday?

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

In preparation for Black Friday this year, create emails to market your business in order to reach your various customers prior to the excitement of Christmas shopping. They should be thinking of your brand before other stores on the internet start competing to be noticed. They ought to be purchasing from you while the other stores that are small business owners are awakening and discovering that they've not planned ahead for Black Friday.

Your first email marketing campaign should probably start in October. Inboxes of emails begin to fill up by the end of November. Therefore, if you use email to begin planting seeds and offering discounts that are the most appealing before the peak, you'll increase sales, and also increase your brand's recognition and loyalty to customers.

Create eye-catching visuals

If it is on your product page as well as the page that you use to direct people to your products that you want to showcase, it's important to utilize images with high resolution to attract attention and allow your audience to feel the item within the palms of their.

Contact abandoned carts via email

Setting up these before Black Friday will give you an opportunity to evaluate your strategy and decide the best marketing strategy and deals are most effective for your online store.

Divide your campaign into three parts

There are a ton of things to check off your Black Friday checklist, and it's easy to get overwhelmed. For help in organizing your activities and determine what priority to put in place You can divide the entire campaign into three essential parts.

This is the initial step in the run-up prior to Black Friday. The process begins whenever you'd like it to start but will conclude in the days leading up to Black Friday.

Then comes the day. It can include weekends, or even the week following, when you are doing the entire Cyber Week. It's up to you to define the 'day'.

Last, everything after your Black Friday period is the stage that is a part of your marketing plan.

Black Friday is only one of the days. Strategies you employ to market should be encompassing every day of the week.

Are you dividing your Black Friday promotions campaign into three parts?

Create or update your return policy

If you've run your online company for some time it's likely that you have this. But, if you don't have one, now is the time to create one. Or, if you do have one, maybe you've realized from experience yours needs to be upgraded.

• An option for returning shipped items. Do you require the original packaging, item's exact condition, etc. ?
• The policy of refund. Can customers receive their money back, either store credit, another option?
• Clear deadlines. When can they ship things back in exchange for a refund or credits?
• A shipping address. What address should they use to ship returned products?
• Contact information. How can the customer reach you for other issues?

Your return policy should be publicized as often when it is required. It should be included in the notification email to customers when the purchase has been made. The printed policy must be included in the package. Information should be made available on your website, and readily accessible, such as in the footer area of your website as well as on the FAQ page, as well as on the product pages.

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

Offer faster shipping alternatives

The time for shipping can be delayed if sales are in high demand during the festive season and customers often expect prompt shipping.

Based on findings from a 2021 Baymard study this study revealed that 19% of the carts that are abandoned result from delivery times getting too long. Offering more efficient shipping options can help reduce the loss of revenue and can be a good option during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

In addition, speedy delivery methods incentivize customers, they ensure that your products arrive on time in a period of the year when shipping times may be delayed due to the huge quantity of orders that carriers need to handle.

Consider the possibility of offering Purchase Now, pay later

It is possible to make this feature available right in the check-out page. However, you could also highlight it on the product page, the home page, your landing page, or any other place you think it could aid customers to overcome a price objection and continue to buy.

Make use of the chatbot

Chatbots assist in providing customer support and can increase sales. A lot of times clients face issues that chatbots might be in a position to assist them with. If they can just solve a couple of issues clarified, they'll complete their purchase.

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

If you can make it happen the chatbot could help ease the purchase process without the need for an increase in customer service.

Check out this season's Black Friday sales data

It is common to think of each year with a fresh venture. We start from scratch and make a fresh start without the advantage of knowledge.

If you've owned an online store for any amount of time, and you've conducted Black Friday marketing campaigns before it's likely that you've had some prior experience. Some of your data is already in place. You've probably done some things previously that probably performed very well.

If you're getting to far in your plans for the year ahead you should look back to the outcomes of last year. What was successful? What went wrong?

Are you able to replicate the successes of last year? Do you have the potential to make improvements by focusing on the things you didn't succeed at?

Black Friday checklist Black Friday checklist: Backend systems

We'll now move and look at the Black Friday checklist items that customers don't get to see everyday and that depend on customers to complete orders and experience a fantastic Black Friday shopping experience.

Create a faster website

95% of users leave a website when the website loads too slow. Site speed should be the main priority for any time of year, and it is especially crucial during times of high traffic. Here are some simple things to consider in the event that your website is slow.

• Test your website performance. Determine which aspects need to be improved through the speed test. Software such as Pingdom as well as Page Speed Insights can inform you of how fast your site loads and how it is performing in certain areas.
• Implement a content delivery network (CDN). A CDN serves your site's files from high-speed, dedicated, and geographically-distributed data centers. The visitors will get by caching the content of your CDN closest server this helps to speed up loading, and can also decrease bandwidth and load for your website. Jetpack provides the option of no-cost CDN in contrast to other networks, you can configure and install the Jetpack CDN in just a single click.
• Enhance your image. Even if you're employing an CDN which can optimize your files according to your requirements and requirements, you should upload as small a file as you can while keeping the best resolution. Exporting for web with Photoshop and using Image resizing and optimization tools like ImageOptim is a simple way to make your photos ready to upload on the internet.
• upgrade Your Hosting account. If you're on shared servers, your site may be slower to load particularly if other websites on the server experience significant increases in traffic. It is recommended to consider using an online server (VPS) or dedicated server.

Here are some more ways to improve the effectiveness of your store.

Does your online store operate at the speed that it ought to?

The inventory syncs with the pages on products

Speed up and simplify the checkout process

Your checkout process may work but, is it efficient and simple? It is important to make your checkout procedure as simple as possible, with the least amount of distractions in order to motivate your clients to complete their purchase. A few things you can make to be addressed, such as:

• Eliminate the visual distractions. Eliminate header and menus for footers and widgets on the sidebar, as well as additional distractions on the checkout page to ensure that your clients are determined to complete the purchase.

Make sure you are ready to make your order and have the items shipped by the deadline.

Do your dropshippers and suppliers have the capacity to handle an increase in sales? Are you able to increase production if the demand is higher than you anticipated?

This is an ideal circumstance to confront, you shouldn't squander the opportunity to boost the income of your business and gain new clients as the supply chain gets overloaded.

If you're planning to improve production prior of the holidays ensure that you place orders at the earliest opportunity with the supplier of your materials. This is particularly true for the products you sell come from another business and especially when those items are created overseas. Other companies are also taking orders from sellers in order to make preparations in preparation for Black Friday sales as well So, make sure to ensure that your purchases are secured before the deadline. In the event that you fail to do so, you might be facing high prices or no stock merchandise.

In the event that you're working through a third party logistic company (3PL) for the delivery of your items, take a look at the past data regarding the shipping and sales of your products and ask for them to transfer your stock to warehouses close to areas in which you tend to do the most transactions. This can speed up delivery to your clients. If delivery speed is crucial for you, ask your 3PL to send regular deliveries and to use providers that have the fastest time to delivery.

Additionally, you might need to recruit more workers or extend hours to handle the anticipated rise in production over the holiday season. This is crucial when you're creating handmade items or making things on your own. Even if the your production outsourcing is done, you may still have higher demand for services to customers or ordering fulfillment, marketing and many other things.

Gather customer details for follow-up marketing

In the past, we talked about how to follow up after your site is visited by customers who may not have visited your online shop before.

They aren't able to contact you absent the information of your customers.

If you're sending products then you're likely to receive the postal address of their service. Direct mail marketing and follow up is much more expensive than marketing via digital which is why you must have the ability to follow-up via email and possibly SMS, too.

In order to do this it is essential that the buyer have the option to register. One of the best places for this is on the checkout page at the bottom. Then, ask the customer's email address along with their phone number. Be certain to obtain permission to contact the client via email or text. But, you must make the phone number inconsequential so that customers who do not opt-in to marketing via SMS don't get confused.

There will be some who won't, but it's okay, just as some might. For those who do need to begin the process of following up on your marketing.

Are you prepared to collect emails and numbers?

Convert tracking can be established

It is crucial to monitor customer behavior as well as the performance of your marketing strategies during Black Friday and the rest of the Christmas season to ensure you can adjust your strategy in the coming year.

Be sure that the website you are using is safe

One of the easiest and most effective ways to enhance the security of your website is to install a security plug-in. Jetpack provides free protection against attacks using brute force that thwarts attacks that are one of the most common types of hacking, in addition to two-factor authentication to safeguard your login method. The Jetpack WordPress security plug-in includes automated backups, malware scanning as well as monitoring of downtime for security against spam, as well as other.

Make sure your site works across all devices and browsers.

Your online store should display correctly on desktops devices, tablets, mobile phones and the most well-known browsers. You can check this using the devices you own but you'll have examine the manner in which your site appears when you use a computer and browser emulator like LambdaTest.

Even though you might not be able guarantee that your website's design is flawless on all platform and device however, there are tools such as Google Analytics to allow you to find out which the devices and browsers your visitors are using. It is then possible to focus your attention in testing and tweaking the performance of your website on your chosen platforms.

Are your websites mobile-friendly? functioning on as many devices as is

Examine the main functions of your site

Make sure you schedule your sale dates as well as coupons

It is possible to reduce the stress and stress of the busiest time of shopping by doing as much as possible in the months beforehand.

It's easy to create your coupon and scheduled sales prior to time. When you've figured out the products that will have sales, the timing of flash sales, special discounts, along with the ways prices will change over time, design the coupons and the additional back-end support mechanisms to ensure the success of sales. If you're planning to offer a free present with purchase, make sure you have the present readily available.

Make sure you highlight Black Friday bargains on your site

The customer can't benefit from an offer in the event that they do not know about the offer. If your customers browse your site on their own or are brought there by emails or paid advertisements it is important for them to discover your sales effortlessly.

There are a variety of ways to do this:

• Use pop-ups for announcing your sales, which include the call-to-action as well as a buttons that take them directly to your sale.
• Include a banner on your homepage to advertise the sales you make.
• Incorporate the "Black Friday Sales" menu item in the navigation of your website.
• Include sale items on the sidebar of your shop's page.
• Display sale icons on your thumbnails of the products.

Create your customer support systems

While you may require additional employees to assist the sales and customer service personnel in the weeks leading up on Black Friday, onboarding and teaching temporary workers is difficult and lengthy. There are many other methods to boost customer support aside from the hiring of temporary workers.

Three customer-service strategies are below that will be used this year.

Provide a variety of options for customer support

Alongside the direct line telephone support, which you have to offer when you have the capacity to offer the service, there are other options for customers to get their questions answered.

• FAQs or knowledge base. Help customers help themselves by providing an quickly accessible and easy to navigate FAQs, knowledge bases or other information.
• Utilize a customer Contact page. Let people get to the customer service team via email by using a contact form. Make use of conditional logic in response to the question form, to direct inquiries by customers who need customer service to the right email address.
• Find AI chatbots in operation.Filter out some of the most frequently asked queries such as "How much does shipping cost?" or "Do you provide delivery service to my area?" by using an AI chatbot. It will spare your customers support staff time as well as offer customers fast answers to basic questions

Utilize a customer tool for managing relationships (CRM)

CRM software can assist you in tracking your customers' interactions with your company and can assist with support issues, identify prospects and upsell customers.

Jetpack CRM is a lean and user-friendly tool that connects directly into your dashboard. There are no limits on contact and is among of the least expensive CRM options for stores that sell retail.

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

Review regularly the processes for customer service and ensure that they're correct. If there are any particular procedures or offers staff members must be aware of for Black Friday and Cyber Monday Make a note of them and sure that the team has access to these. A meeting to discuss the procedure around a week before the launch of your Black Friday deals may help keep these procedures in mind to your staff.

If you've simplified the process of customer service for your customers as well as your staff, you may find that it's still necessary to find more staff members to assist you during the holiday season. By enhancing your staff's efficiency will reduce the amount of seasonal employees you'll have to hire.

Are you prepared for the Advent shopping season?

It's a must-have Black Friday checklist may seem like an overwhelming task to get ready for a holiday that just lasts a few days, but these suggestions don't just be applicable to one weekend.

When you've incorporated them, some of these methods and strategies are able to improve your online presence every single day. If you are on top of the items on your checklist all through the year, you won't be required to do anything extraordinary as the time for Christmas approaches again.

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