(Untitled)

The best time to begin planning is earlier than Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) as they are the biggest shopping season of the year. Both seasons have experienced significant growth year-over-year and you'll have be prepared for the potential of more web traffic as well as increased marketing competition, compared to the prior years.

If this is your first time conducting Black Friday Cyber Monday sales or you've done it before and you're ready to begin planning your strategy for this year's event right now as you can use the following Black Friday checklist to get going.

To help you plan to prepare for the coming season, we've broken this ecommerce Black Friday checklist into two sections: the checklist for customer engagement, and the checklist for back-end systems.

Black Friday list of items: customer engagement

Let's start with the customer engagement checklist first.

Get started earlier

Really?

Therefore, begin your planning early, so you can begin implementing the strategies you have planned earlier and maximize your sales.

Develop the Black Friday counter-narrative

Black Friday sales will begin when you'd like them to. Some people are beginning to understand this. Therefore, you should run a campaign that goes anti-Black Friday throughout the days preceding it.

"Why wait? Now is the time to shop So, take advantage of these amazing deals and get your shopping completed early."

The marketing angle that is anti-Black Friday could promote advantages like making the most of the holiday shopping season, crossing off your shopping list prior to the rush, and having fun laughing throughout December at the crowds of shoppers who are rushed due to the fact that you've completed your shopping already.

This is paired with an array of constantly changing specials and bargains in the months that lead up the day of Black Friday.

Aim to reach your target market

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

Suppose you have an ecommerce shop selling healthy food.

One product category features protein-enriched breakfast bars. Another category has gluten-free and dairy-free foods. The other category is nutrient-rich, organic products. You can advertise each with your primary brand language, naturally.

But what does the target market for each of the products sound like? What are their priorities? Include that message into the content you create for your Black Friday marketing content and you'll see more people involved and boost sales.

Select products that will be featured this year

If you're selling lots of products, don't do blanket Black Friday sales that will bite into your bottom line. Instead, feature select merchandise with great deals to increase sales by using those to get more customers in the door.

If you're able to encourage more purchases beyond the Black Friday discounts, you'll increase average order value as well as net profit.

If you have overstock and discontinued products or seasonal items, these are great choices for extreme discounts because you'll need to dispose of them in the event that you need to. Use items you can produce in abundance for a special agreement with the supplier as well as products that are huge demand or generate higher profit margins.

And consider creating dedicated Black Friday sale landing pages to showcase your top items, and not only the normal product pages.

What products are you planning to feature with extreme Black Friday deals this year?

Create marketing strategies for multiple channels

Multichannel marketing can yield greater results than targeting only one channel. Choose at least three channels that you intend to use this year for your Black Friday marketing strategy.

Channels can include, but aren't restricted to:

• SMS
• Social media - all possible platforms like Facebook, X, TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest
• Direct post
• Radio and TV
• Online video like streaming and YouTube

Make sure to build optimised landing pages, and keep track of the traffic to your website from each of your chosen channels.

Have follow-up marketing plans ready to go

The other key to profiting on Black Friday, Cyber Monday as well as the remainder of the holiday shopping period is to communicate with new customers who find your store online this year.

Sure, a lot of Black Friday shoppers will come to buy, leave, then disappear forever. But you can win some of them, and convert them into regular and loyal customers.

Start a welcome email sequence. Start sending consistent email marketing. Make sure to categorize your prospective customers according to what they've already purchased in addition to any other details you've gathered about them from their first purchase encounter. Then, engage them with more relevant content in the new year.

Have you a follow-up strategy for marketing in place to Black Friday?

Utilize email to send your message to the masses early and frequently

For Black Friday this year, make email marketing campaigns that get your message to all of your customers before the holiday rush. It is important that they think of you before all the other online stores start vying to get their attention. It is important that they buy from you while the others with small businesses are just realizing they didn't plan ahead in advance for Black Friday.

The initial email marketing campaign is likely to start in October. The email inboxes begin to overflow in late November. Therefore, if you make use of email to start planting seeds and offering the best deals before the rush, you'll boost sales, and increase the brand's reputation and build customer loyalty.

Create eye-catching visuals

Whether on your product pages or on the landing page pages you'll create for products you've decided to showcase it is essential to use photographs that have high resolution to attract interest and let your customers to feel the item in their hands.

Create abandoned cart emails

Getting these set up ahead of Black Friday will give you the chance to try out your campaigns and see what methods of marketing and deals work best for your online store.

Your ad campaign can be broken down into three components

There's a number of items to check off on your Black Friday checklist, and it can get overwhelming. For help in organizing your efforts and know what to prioritize it is possible to break down your campaign into its three natural parts.

It's the first step in the run-up prior to Black Friday. The process begins at any time you'd like it to begin and ends the day before Black Friday.

The next step is the day. It could include the whole weekend or the following week if you're taking on the entire Cyber Week. The definition of"daytime".

Everything that follows following the Black Friday period is the phase that follows your marketing strategy.

Black Friday is just one of the days. The strategy you use to market should be encompassing the entire season.

Have you broken up you Black Friday promotions campaign into three parts?

Update or create your return policy

If you've been running your online company for some time it's likely that you have this. However, if not, now is the moment to start creating one. Or, if you do own one, perhaps you've learned from prior experience that it's time to update yours.

• A process for returning items shipped. Will you require an original package, in perfect quality, etc. ?
• The refund policy. Does the customer receive their money back in store credit or some other thing?
• Clear deadlines. How long can they send items back for credits or refunds?
• An address for shipping. What address will they use to send back products?
• Contact information. What is the best way for customers to contact you with any additional questions?

Your return policy must be made public as often as relevant. This should be included within the order confirmation email that goes out after your purchase has been completed. It should be printed and placed in the product that is shipped. The item should be displayed located on your website and easy to find, such as at the footer, the FAQ page, or on your product pages.

Are you aware of the latest Return policy?

Provide faster shipping options

The time for shipping can be extended in the holiday shopping season and customers often expect speedy shipping services.

According to an 2021 Baymard research, 19% of cart abandonments were due to the delivery time being too slow. Offering faster shipping options can help reduce the loss of sales, and is a great method for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Not only do quick delivery methods incentivize customers They also ensure that the products are delivered on time during a season when delivery times might be slow due to the large volumes of shipping that the carriers process.

You might consider the possibility of offering Purchase Now and pay later

This option can be made present at the bottom of your checkout. However, you could also highlight it on the product's the home page, on your landing page as well as wherever you believe it could aid customers to overcome an objection to price and stay buying.

Use a chatbot

Chatbots assist with customer support and can increase sales. Most of the time people have basic concerns that chatbots are able to answer. If they are able to find a few questions answered, they'll make a purchase.

However, if they must search for an email address, wallow on help forums, or wait for live chat support to respond, they are likely to abandon the procedure and go to a different site.

If you're able to make it happen the chatbot can help make buying easier without the need for an increase in customer service.

Check out the previous season's Black Friday sales data

The tendency is to view each year with a new venture, where we create a new project and then reinvent the wheel with no benefit of hindsight.

But if you've had an online shop for any period of time and been involved in Black Friday marketing campaigns before it's likely that you've had some experience. There's some data you've gathered previously. Some of what you've done previously may have worked effectively.

If you are getting to far in your plans for this year, revisit your results from last year. What was successful? What didn't?

Are you able to replicate the success from last year and improve on what fell short?

Black Friday checklist Checklist for Backend Systems

Now, let's move on into our Black Friday checklist items that people don't often see however, you rely on customers to complete purchases and enjoy a wonderful Black Friday shopping experience.

Accelerate your site's speed

90% of users are likely to leave a website if the website loads too slow. Site speed should be a top priority at any time, but it's especially important when you are expecting an increase in traffic. There are several simple things to do in the event of a slow website.

• Test your website performance. Determine which areas that need to be improved through a speed test. Tools like Pingdom as well as Page Speed Insights will let you know the speed at which your site loads as well as how well it performs in specific zones.
• Implement a content delivery network (CDN). A CDN serves your site's files from high-speed, dedicated, and geographically-distributed data centers. Visitors will be served 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 the option of a no-cost CDN, and unlike other networks, you can install and set up Jetpack CDN with the click of a button.
• Optimize your images. Even if you're making use of an CDN that can optimize your files for you, it's good method to upload only the minimum files that you can while maintaining an excellent resolution. Exporting for web using Photoshop and using free images resizing tools and optimization software such as ImageOptim are easy ways to get your photos ready for use on the internet.
• upgrade Your hosting account. If you're on a shared server you may see slow loading times, particularly when other websites on your server have high volumes of traffic. Consider a virtual private server (VPS) or dedicated server.

Here are a few more ways to speed up the speed of your store.

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

The inventory syncs with the product pages

Speed up and simplify your checkout procedure

The checkout procedure may be working but, is it fast and easy to use? You want to keep the checkout process as easy as possible, with minimum distractions, to encourage your customers to finish their purchase. A few things you can implement to make your checkout more efficient include:

• Eliminate the visual distractions. Eliminate header and footer menus, sidebar widgets, and other distractions from your checkout page so that the customer is completely focused on the purchase.

You must be prepared to fill orders and ship on time

Do you have dropshippers and your suppliers prepared to deal with increased sales? Are you able to ramp up production if demand exceeds your estimates?

This is an excellent problem to have but you shouldn't miss the chance to boost revenues and attract new clients because your supply chain gets stressed.

If you're looking to expand production prior to the holiday season, make sure you place your orders at the earliest opportunity with your supplier of material. It is the same if the products you sell are made by a different firm -- especially if those items are made in a foreign country. Other companies will be placing larger orders from vendors to prepare in preparation for Black Friday sales as well, so make sure you secure your order ahead of time. In the event that you do not, you might be facing higher prices or be out of inventory products.

If you're working with an outside logistics company (3PL) for shipping your goods, review historic patterns of sales and delivery of your goods and request the company to shift inventory to warehouses that are closest to the areas where you tend to do the highest transactions. This will speed delivery for your customers. If fast delivery times are important to you, ask your 3PL to send regular deliveries and to use companies that provide the fastest shipping times.

Additionally, you might need to hire more staff or expand hours in order to cope with the anticipated increase of production in the festive season. This is crucial when you're making handmade products or making products on your own. Even if the production outsourcing is done there's a chance that you'll have an increased need for customer service, ordering fulfillment, marketing and many more.

Prepare to collect customer information for follow-up marketing

Earlier, we discussed preparing to follow up when you get customers who haven't shopped in your ecommerce store before.

But you can't follow up without collecting the details of their contact.

If you're sending products then obviously they will give you their mailing address. But direct mail marketing and follow-up costs quite a bit more than online marketing, so you want to be able to track them using email and possibly SMS, too.

For these, the buyer must be provided with the opportunity to opt in. The most effective place to make this happen is in the page for checkout. There, you can request their email address and phone number. Be sure to get permission to talk with customers via text and email. However, make the phone number optional in order that those who don't opt in for SMS marketing don't become confused.

There are some who won't be however, which is fine as some might. And for those who do, you can now commence with your follow-up advertising strategy.

Are you ready to collect email addresses and phone numbers?

Convert tracking can be set up

You'll want to be able to monitor the behavior of your customers as well as how your marketing strategies perform over Black Friday and the rest of the Christmas season, so you can make improvements this year.

Check that your site is secure

One of the easiest and most effective ways to enhance the security of your site is to set up an security plug-in. Jetpack offers the free brute force attack protection, to stop an attack that is one of the more popular kinds of hacking techniques as well as 2-factor authentication to safeguard your login method. The Jetpack WordPress security plugin also offers regular backups, malware scanning as well as spam prevention downtime monitor along with other features.

Make sure your site works on all devices and browsers

The website you're selling on must look good on desktops, tablets, mobile devices as well as all major browsers. Check this out using your personal devices quickly, however you'll be interested in testing the way your website displays using a browser and device emulator such as LambdaTest.

While you might not be able to guarantee that your website's appearance and performs flawlessly across every device and platforms, you could use tools like Google Analytics for you to discover what browsers and devices your visitors use. It is then possible to concentrate your efforts to test and tweak your site to work best on those specific platforms.

Are your websites mobile-friendly and accessible on as many devices as possible?

Verify the key functions of your site

Create your sales schedule as well as coupons

You can reduce the panic and anxiety of the most hectic holiday shopping time of the year by doing everything possible in the months beforehand.

A simple task is setting up coupons and sales in advance of date. After you've determined which items will be discounted and when you'll be able to offer specific flash sales or special discounts, as well as the way prices will change over time, design the coupons and the additional back-end support systems to ensure sales success. If you're offering a free present with purchase, make sure you have the gifts on hand.

The highlight Black Friday sales in your online store

It is impossible for customers to benefit from a sale when they aren't aware of it. Even if your clients visit your site organically or you get them there through the use of email marketing or pay-per-click it is important to discover your sales quickly.

There are a variety of methods to accomplish this:

• Create pop-ups that announce the sale, and a call to action and button that takes them directly to the sale.
• Create a banner for your website to advertise your sale.
• Add a "Black Friday Sales" menu item on your site's navigation.
• Include sale items on the sidebar of your shop's page.
• Display sale icons in your thumbnails of products.

Prepare your customer service systems

While you may require more employees to support your sales and your customer service department on Black Friday, onboarding and training temporary workers is difficult and lengthy. There are other ways to increase customer service support as well as employing temporary employees.

Below are three customer-service strategies to implement this year.

Give a range of choices for customer support

Alongside the direct line support phone -that you must provide when you can afford it, there are alternatives to assist customers get their questions answered.

• FAQs, or knowledge bases. Help customers help themselves by providing a quickly accessible and easy to navigate FAQ page or knowledge base
• Make use of a customer service contact form. Let people get to your customer service team via email using a contact form. Make use of conditional logic that is in response to the question type to route questions from customers to the appropriate email address.
• You can put AI chatbots to work.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, and give customers rapid answers to the most basic of questions.

Use a customer relationship management tool (CRM)

CRM software can assist you in tracking your customers' interactions with your business and swiftly deal with support requests, verify leads and even upsell your clients.

Jetpack CRM is a slim and user-friendly tool that is able to integrate directly into your dashboard. There's no limit on contacts and it's one of the most affordable CRM options for retail stores.

Make sure your customer service procedures and FAQs are current.

Review your procedures to assist customers and make sure that they're accurate. If you have any special processes or offers your representatives must be aware of for Black Friday and Cyber Monday Document them, and make sure your team has access. A quick meeting to review your processes a week or so prior to launching any Black Friday deals may help keep these new processes top-of-mind to your employees.

After you've improved your customer service experience to both visitors and the team members You may discover that you're still required to recruit more staff members to assist you during the holiday season. However, maximizing your team's efficiency will minimize the amount of seasonal employees you have to bring on.

Are you ready for the holiday shopping time?

It's a Black Friday checklist may seem like a lot of work to prepare for a sale which only lasts for a couple of days. However, these guidelines don't just apply to only one weekend.

Once you've implemented them, many of these systems and techniques will continue to strengthen your business online every day. If you're at the top of these items on your checklist throughout the year, you'll not have to make extraordinary efforts when the holidays roll around next year.