Black Friday and Cyber Monday are incredibly useful holidays for small and large businesses alike. Shoppers know that retailers will offer massive price cuts and many shoppers view Black Friday and Cyber Monday as the best days of the year to score savings. As a shop owner, you should use the popularity of BFCM to your advantage.
Rising inflation and the threat of a looming recession means shoppers are looking to stretch their money further this holiday season. Deals on holiday gifts are a huge bonus. Massively reduced items and services are sure to see shoppers show up in droves to score the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. Make sure your small business has Black Friday ecommerce strategies in place to attract new and existing customers this holiday season.
Last year, more than 50% of respondents in the UK made purchases on Black Friday with less than a quarter of those shoppers doing so in-store. This has fantastic implications for online stores in 2022. While 2022 has seen a small dip in online shopping in lieu of in-store – this likely spawns from the pandemic lockdowns that made in-store shopping difficult – there is still a large percentage of shoppers looking to score deals online. Your customers are looking for you, so be ready to capture and retain them.
As a business owner you may be wondering which Black Friday ecommerce ideas are worth latching onto. Perhaps you’re thinking about Black Friday tips to drive sales or wondering which BFCM ecommerce ideas will help your business proactively prepare for the influx of Black Friday and Cyber Monday shoppers. Zimply is here to help! Read on for nine BFCM ecommerce strategies to create repeat customers, drive sales, and prepare your online shop for the holiday season.
- Focus on customer service
- Revise return and exchange policies
- Carefully consider which products to discount
- Update your FAQ
- Optimize your website performance
- Prepare an email marketing campaign
- Get social
- Small Businesses: Consider participating in Small Business Saturday
- Do you have an app?: Consider offering app-only deals
Focus on customer service
A stellar buying and customer support experience will encourage return customers throughout the year, not only during the holiday season. When it costs nearly 5 times more to attract a new customer, building a loyal customer base will only aid your online shop in the long run. Offering stellar customer service is one of the best ways to ensure customers remain loyal.
Get Zimply
The holidays are a chaotic time for small businesses. When it comes to customer communication, it can be tough to manage everything. Like most small businesses, you probably have a number of communication channels.
Easily manage your Instagram inbox, Facebook Messenger, your website’s contact form, and external customer support queries from one single location with Zimply. Not only will customer response times improve, you’ll gain a streamlined workflow for dealing with queries from multiple platforms. Happy customers means happy returns this holiday season!
Communicate offers, policies, and shipping times
How you treat your customers during the holiday season will bode well for your online shop throughout the year. Thorough communication regarding shipping times, backordered items, pricing, and order status are more important than ever when customers are looking to score deals on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. A customer experience complete with curated shopping, an easy checkout process, and simplified follow-up information regarding shipping times and status is sure to keep customers happy and returning for more.
- Communicate offers on your site’s home page and on individual sale items.
- Communicate shipping offers on your site’s home page, in the cart, and at the final checkout.
- If certain items are ineligible for return or are marked as “final sale” communicate that explicitly to your customer so there are no surprises.
- Alert customers if items are on backorder. If you have shipping date information from the manufacturer, add this on the website so customers can make an informed decision about the purchase and have a backup plan if it won’t arrive on time.
Consider hiring seasonal support staff
Black Friday and Cyber Monday account for 20 to 40% of all shopping for the year! That much traffic condensed into the span of a few days is sure to cause an uptick in customer support queries. Mitigate long response times, lengthy hold times, and ensure customer satisfaction by being able to keep up with the demand. If you want to put your customers’ minds at ease, consider hiring seasonal support staff to support the influx. You may also want to keep support staff around for the first few weeks in January when returns are at an all-time high.
Revise return and exchange policies
Return and exchange policies might need a refresh before the holidays to include specific language surrounding holiday shipping times and return policies. You may also want to include language that helps customers manage expectations if there are supply chain issues or if items are backordered. Being transparent with customers increases trust in your business.
Carefully consider which products to discount
With many ways to delight customers over the Black Friday weekend, there are still a few things to consider about product discounts. The team at Zimply have rounded up a few Black Friday and Cyber Monday tips to drive sales. Here’s what to consider when choosing which products to discount.
Discount high ticket items
If you’re an online store with many products, you’ll want to consider offering high-ticket items and services at a discounted rate. Most Black Friday and Cyber Monday shoppers use the day to make their most expensive purchases of the year so think carefully when choosing products to offer at a discount. You may also want to consider adding in freebies for customers who spend above a certain threshold.
Offer free shipping
Another clever way to entice holiday shopping on your online store is by offering free shipping! According to Shopify, 69% of stores running on the platform offered free shipping to customers this year. Another likely competitor, Amazon, offers free shipping to Prime members and doubles down with free shipping on certain items throughout the year. To stay competitive, consider offering free shipping on certain items or on orders above a certain threshold.
Alternate discounts
Some stores opt for a blanket discount on all items or promote offers for a set period of time. However, businesses that alternate discounts by offering specific markdowns on various items each day throughout the Black Friday to Cyber Monday weekend seem to do very well. By encouraging customers to return multiple times for separate items, you increase the likelihood that they will buy from your site again and again. This also helps to cut down on web traffic that may burden your site by spacing out visits over several days.
Update your FAQ
Whether this is your first or fiftieth holiday season, you’ll want to be as prepared as possible before the influx of holiday shoppers arrive at your virtual doorstep. Ensuring an easy to read and up-to-date FAQ is one surefire way to cut down on customer service queries during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday mayhem. If you’re hoping to ward off at least a few of the easy to answer Black Friday weekend queries make sure you have updated answers and that they are easily accessible.
Take inventory of customer queries throughout the year and in previous holiday seasons. Add these questions to the FAQ and make sure the answers are easy to find. Perhaps you add a frequently asked questions section during the checkout process so customers can easily find answers regarding shipping times, backorders, returns, and more.
Optimize your website performance and security
Website performance can often go overlooked, but it shouldn’t. Don’t wait until something happens to get your website in top shape, especially if you have an online only shop. Slow loading times can seriously affect your bottom line. Nearly half, 47%, of internet users polled stated that they expect a website to load in 2 seconds or less. Users are likely to abandon a website taking more than 3 seconds to load. Below are a few things to consider when optimizing your website performance.
1. Make a plan. You likely won’t have time to do an entire website revamp ahead of the holidays so it’s important to make a plan to tackle the things you can realistically get done.
2. Identify heavily trafficked pages. Which pages currently have the most traffic? Which pages are going to have heavy traffic during the holiday season? Tackle optimization of heavily trafficked and slow loading pages first.
3. Make responsiveness a priority. According to data by SaleCycle, over 74% of Black Friday shopping was done via mobile last year. Make sure your site is mobile-friendly by using responsive design when designing, creating, and building your website. You’ll miss out on the bulk of your online customer base if your site is not responsive and user-friendly.
4. Check your site on Google PageSpeed. Google PageSpeed is a great tool in helping diagnose issues with your site’s performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO. Run your website URL to see a personalized list of performance data. Get started tackling any major performance issues before the holiday season.
5. Ensure optimum website security. Ahead of the holiday season take inventory of website security issues and resolve them. Being at the subject of an information breach is a quick way to lose customers and tarnish brand loyalty. Additionally, hackers thrive during the chaos of the holiday season when efforts and attention are focused elsewhere.
6. Check for GDPR and PCI compliance. Are your data retention policies in compliance with GDPR standards? Are you storing sensitive data such as personal information and credit card information in a secure way? Consult with a cybersecurity professional or service ahead of the holidays.
Prepare an email marketing campaign
Once your site is optimized, your cybersecurity measures met, and your communication sorted, start letting your customers know about special offers! Your email list is a great place to start. According to TechCrunch, emails are responsible for over 20% of online site visits during the holidays. Additionally, 68% of customers say they pay more attention to email marketing during this time.
Most people don’t have time to sift through loads of marketing emails, so rest assured that the bulk of your email list wants to be there. When it comes time to advertise deals, you have your customers’ full attention, especially during the holidays. Generate anticipation and create a sense of urgency about Black Friday and Cyber Monday Shopping. Your most loyal customers will show up!
Generate anticipation
It is important to prioritize your email marketing efforts ahead of BFCM and get customers excited for upcoming deals so they can start mentally planning. Generate interest in Black Friday shopping on your online store by creating email campaigns that tease deals and incorporate countdowns to Black Friday. You may also find that offering special gifts or promotions for Black Friday and Cyber Monday shoppers will create buzz for your business.
Create a sense of urgency
You can’t have too much of a good thing and Black Friday deals are no different. Encourage customers to do their holiday shopping before the last minute by offering deals and promotions that are too good to pass up, but make sure they know that the discounts won’t last forever. Limited-time offers encourage shoppers to make a purchase so they don’t miss out!
Rely on loyalty
Your email list should be viewed as a window to your most loyal customers, or at least those who have purchased from your shop before. While attracting new customers is a lofty and important goal, there is a huge benefit to notifying your existing customer base. Existing customers are more likely to buy and spend more money. An email marketing campaign ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday will let your most loyal customer base know that you’re prioritizing their needs and their pocketbooks this holiday season.
Get social
Social commerce is hot! If you are planning to capitalize on Black Friday and Cyber Monday shoppers, you must include social media in your strategy. Facebook and Instagram are some of the biggest platforms for social commerce in 2022, but there are a number of other platforms looking to help you to make sales on social media.
Retarget customers who have visited your site
Ramp up your BFCM strategy by retargeting interested customers on social media. Let’s say a customer visited your website looking for a pair of boots, but left the site without making a purchase. Your efforts and capital may be better suited encouraging the interested customer to complete a sale before attempting to reach a wider audience. The customer who already showed interest in the boots is more likely to purchase after seeing an ad with a discount code than a new customer who knows nothing about your brand.
Choose a social media ad strategy
Whether you’re using Instagram Shopping, Twitter Shopping, running Facebook ads or testing out other social media strategies on TikTok and Pinterest, there are a number of ways to reach your customers. WhatsApp is also offering a tailored shopping experience for businesses with a phone number list. These are some of the best platforms for social commerce so make sure your small business has a social strategy in place for attracting, marketing, and converting users into customers.
Consider participating in Small Business Saturday
Are you an early stage online store looking to gain lifelong customers? Use Small Business Saturday as a way to encourage shoppers to buy from a small, mom and pop operation! Shoppers love supporting small businesses, especially during the holidays. Encourage new and existing customers looking to support local businesses and small online shops by offering discounts, loyalty perks, and the sense of community that comes with shopping small.
Consider offering app-only deals
Online stores which offer a shopping experience through an app may want to offer discounts specifically for customers using the app. Not only will this increase app downloads and app use, it will also increase brand loyalty by encouraging users to shop on the app throughout the year. Apps can also be of use when offering specialized discounts to certain users.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday have the potential to make an impact on sales for the rest of the year and well into 2023. Make sure your online store is prepared to meet customer demands and to attract and retain customers. Prioritizing customer communication, quick page loading times, and optimum website performance will ensure that customers do not leave your site frustrated and without purchasing. Make sure your Black Friday and Cyber Monday ecommerce strategies are in place well ahead of time!
The team at Zimply are ready to help with all of your BFCM communication needs. Zimply helps small and large businesses collate customer queries from various channels and streamline the entire customer communication process. Reach out to the team at Zimply today to get started before the holiday season!