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The best time to begin planning is earlier than Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) as they are the most popular shopping time during the calendar year. Both of these shopping seasons have witnessed significant growth year-over-year which means you'll need be ready to anticipate more site traffic and increased advertisement competition as compared with years past.

Whether this is your first time conducting Black Friday Cyber Monday sales or you've done it before then you'll need to start developing this year's strategy now, and you can use this Black Friday checklist to get started.

For you to plan your plans ahead for the season to come We've broken down this ecommerce Black Friday checklist into two components: the customer engagement checklist, and the checklist for back-end systems.

Black Friday list of items: customer engagement

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

Get started earlier

Really?

Start preparations early, so that you can begin implementing your strategies for marketing earlier to increase the sales.

Develop the Black Friday counter-narrative

Black Friday sales will begin when you want them to. The public is beginning to realize this. So, run with an against Black Friday during the months prior to the event.

"Why wait? You're here to shop now and you can take advantage of these fantastic bargains and get your shopping done early."

A marketing strategy that doesn't promote Black Friday would push benefits like having a head start on your holiday shopping, checking off your wish list ahead of the rush, and laughing in your relaxed contentment throughout December at all the frantic shoppers because you got yours done earlier.

Pair this with an array of constantly changing specials and discounts in the days that lead up the day of Black Friday.

Try to connect with your targeted market

You can do this for multiple product lines too and make several ads, including on Google as well as other social media sites.

Suppose you have an ecommerce retailer that sells health foods.

One product category features protein-enriched breakfast bars. The other category offers gluten-free as well as dairy-free foods. And another includes nutrient-rich all-natural items. They can be advertised with your primary brand language, obviously.

However, what is the ideal public for these products look like? What are their priorities? Put that language in your Black Friday marketing content and you'll see more people engaged and will boost sales.

Identify products to feature this year

If you're selling lots of products, don't do broad Black Friday sales that will bite into your bottom line. Instead, highlight a few items with incredible deals to increase sales by making use of them to bring an increase in customers to the store.

If you are able to motivate additional orders beyond Black Friday discounts, you'll increase average order value as well as net profit.

If you're in the market for overstocked, discontinued items, or items that are seasonal, they can be great alternatives for massive discounts because you'll need to dispose of them in the event that you need to. Make use of items you have in abundance for a special agreement with the supplier and products that are in huge demand or generate higher profit margins.

Consider creating special Black Friday sale landing pages to highlight your best products, not just the usual product page.

What products are you planning to feature in the face of extreme Black Friday deals this year?

Create marketing strategies for multiple channels

Multichannel marketing tends to produce more results than using only one channel. Find at minimum three channels that you intend to use this year for your Black Friday marketing strategy.

Channels include but are not restricted to:

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

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

Prepare follow-up marketing strategies to go

The other key to profiting from Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the rest of the shopping holiday season is to follow up with customers who have discovered your online store this year.

Many Black Friday shoppers will come, buy, go, only to never return. But you can win some of them and then turn them into repeat and loyal customers.

Start a welcome email sequence. Start sending consistent email marketing. Make sure to categorize your prospective customers based on what they have already purchased, as well as any other information you have gathered regarding them based on their initial buying experiences. Then, engage them with new and relevant content throughout the new year.

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

Make use of email to get the message out early and frequently

In preparation for Black Friday this year, create email marketing campaigns to target your different customer segments before the holiday rush. It is important that they think of your brand before other online stores start vying for attention. They should be buying from you, while other small business owners are just realizing they didn't plan in advance for Black Friday.

The initial email marketing campaign is likely to be sent out by October. Email inboxes start to overflow in late November. If you could utilize email to get started planting seeds and offering the best deals before the peak, you'll increase sales, and increase the brand's reputation and build customer loyalty.

Create eye-catching visuals

On your product pages or on the landing page pages for the products that you'll feature You'll require photographs that have high resolution to attract interest and let your customers to experience the product with their fingers.

Send emails to abandoned carts

Making these available in advance of Black Friday will give you the chance to try out your marketing strategies, and discover which marketing strategies and offers will work for your web store.

Break your ad campaign into three pieces

There's a number of things on your Black Friday checklist, and it's easy to get overwhelmed. To help organize your work and figure out what priorities to put in place You can divide the entire campaign into three basic elements.

First is the lead up towards Black Friday. It begins when you wish it to start, and ends the day before Black Friday.

The next step is the day, which may include weekends or the next week, if doing the full Cyber Week. You can define what constitutes"day".

Last, everything after following the Black Friday period is the phase that follows your marketing strategy.

Black Friday is only one of the days. Your marketing strategy should encompass all of the period.

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

Update or create your return policy

If you've been running your online company for some time it's likely that you have this. But if you don't then now is the perfect time to create one. Or, if you do own one, perhaps you've realized from experience yours needs to be updated.

• The process of returning items shipped. Will you require the original packaging, perfect product condition, etc. ?
• The policy of refund. Does the customer receive their refund either in store credit, something else?
• Clear deadlines. What is the maximum time they can return items for full refunds or credit?
• A shipping address. Where will they send returned items?
• Contact information. How should customers get in touch with additional inquiries?

And, your return policy must be made public whenever it is relevant. The policy should appear in the order notification email that goes out after the purchase has been made. It must be printed and placed in the product that is shipped. It should be located on your website and simple to locate like in the footer, on the FAQ page, and on product pages.

Are you aware of the latest return policy?

Give faster delivery options

The time for shipping can be extended during the busy holiday sales time, when customers typically expect expedited shipping options.

Based on the findings of a 2021 Baymard study from 2021 in 2021, 19% of carts that are abandoned result from delivery times getting too long. Offering more efficient shipping options will reduce these lost sales and can be a particularly effective method for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Not only do quick shipping methods encourage buyers They also ensure that the products are delivered on time during a season when shipping times may be slightly longer due to the huge volume carriers are processing.

Think about the possibility of offering Purchase Now Pay Later

It is possible to make this feature accessible on the checkout page. You can also include it on the product page, the home page, on your landing page as well as wherever you think it might assist customers in overcoming an objection to price and stay purchasing.

Employ an automated chatbot

Chatbots help with customer service and boost sales. Most of the time clients have queries that chatbots can solve. If they could just get one or two questions answered, they'll follow through on their purchase.

However, if they must search for the email address of a person, scroll through help forums, or wait for live chat representatives to respond, they are likely to leave the whole process and look elsewhere.

If you can make it happen Chatbots can reduce buying friction without requiring more customer service staff.

Check out last calendar year's Black Friday sales data

The tendency is to view every year as a brand new venture, where we begin from scratch and re-invent the wheel with no advantage of the hindsight.

If you've owned an online store for a length of time and have conducted Black Friday marketing campaigns before then you've got some knowledge. You have some prior data. You've probably done some things before probably performed very well.

So before you get too far into your planning for this year, revisit your results from last year. What was successful? What wasn't?

Can you replicate your successes from last year and improve on what fell short?

Black Friday checklist Black Friday checklist: Backend systems

Let's get to what are the Black Friday checklist items that people don't often see yet you count on for customers to make purchases and have a great Black Friday shopping experience.

Speed up your website

90percent of visitors abandon a site when the site loads slow. Site speed should be the top priority any time of the year however it is especially crucial for those who anticipate more visitors. Here are some easy things you can try to speed up the loading time of your website:

• Test your website performance. Discover which parts of your site need optimization with a speed check. Software such as Pingdom as well as Page Speed Insights will let you know how fast it loads and its performance in specific areas.
• 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 server that reduces loading time, and also reduces the bandwidth as well as load on your server. Jetpack comes with an unpaid CDN, and unlike other networks, you can install and set up Jetpack CDN with only one click.
• Improve your image. Even if you're making use of an CDN which optimizes your images to your specifications, it's best method to upload only the minimum files that you can while maintaining an excellent resolution. Exporting for web in Photoshop or using no-cost images resizing tools and optimization software such as ImageOptim can be a quick and easy way to make your images ready to be uploaded on the internet.
• Upgrade your hosting plan. If you're on shared servers the site could experience lower load speeds, in particular if other sites on your server have high volumes of traffic. Consider a virtual private server (VPS) or dedicated server.

There are many other ways you can speed up your shop.

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

Sync inventory with products pages

Speed up and simplify the checkout process

It's possible that your checkout process works but, is it fast and intuitive? You want to keep your checkout form as simple as possible, with minimum distractions to help customers to complete their purchase. There are a few things you can implement to make your checkout more efficient include:

• Remove visually cluttered. Eliminate header and menus for footers, widgets in the sidebar and any other distractions on your checkout page so your customers remain focussed on making their purchase.

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

Do your dropshippers and suppliers prepared to deal with increased sales? Are you able to ramp up production when demand surpasses expectations?

While this is a good issue to be faced with, you don't want to squander the opportunity to increase revenues and attract new clients because the supply chain becomes stressed.

If you're looking to expand production in advance of the holiday season, make sure that you make your purchases with your material suppliers early. This is especially true for your items are produced by a different company, especially when the products are made in a foreign country. Some companies may be taking orders from sellers in preparation to prepare for Black Friday sales as well, so make sure you lock your orders in well before the deadline. If you don't, you may be faced with higher prices or be out of stocks products.

If you're working with the services of a third party logistics service (3PL) for shipping your merchandise, take a look at the past data on shipping and sales for your products and ask them to move inventory to warehouses that are near the locations where you are likely to make the majority of sales. This will speed delivery for customers. If speedy delivery is paramount to your business Ask your 3PL to send frequent shipments and choose providers that have the most rapid delivery times.

Additionally, you might require hiring more employees or increase hours to handle the expected increase in production during the holiday time. This is particularly important when you're making handmade products or producing products in-house. However, even if production is outsourced and you're still in an increased need for customer service or order fulfillment, marketing, and much more.

Collect customer data to send follow-up emails

Earlier, we discussed preparing to follow up when your store is visited by customers who may not have visited your e-commerce store in the past.

However, you won't be able to follow-up without collecting the details of their contact.

If you're sending products then obviously they will give the address of their postal service. However, direct mail marketing and follow up costs significantly more than digital marketing, so you want to be able to follow up with email, and perhaps SMS too.

To do that, the purchaser must be provided with the opportunity to opt in. The most effective place for this is at the bottom of checkout. On that page, request their email address and telephone number. Make sure to get permission to communicate with them using email and text. But make your phone number unrequired in order that those who don't opt in for messages via text won't be confused.

Some people won't however, which is fine as some might. If they will, it's time to start your follow-up marketing strategy.

Are you ready to gather email addresses and phone numbers?

Set up conversion tracking

It is important monitor customer behaviour as well as how your marketing efforts perform during Black Friday and the rest of the holiday season to make adjustments the following year.

Be sure that your website is secure

An easy and efficient way to improve your website's security is by installing the security plugin. Jetpack includes free protection against brute force attacks that will stop an attack that is one of the more popular forms of hacking, and two-factor authentication to safeguard the login procedure. Additionally, Jetpack's WordPress security software includes regular backups, malware scanning, spam prevention downtime monitoring, and more.

Check that your website works on every device and all browsers.

Your ecommerce website needs to display correctly on desktop devices, tablets, mobile phones, and all leading browsers. It is possible to test this with your devices easy, however, you'll need to check the way your website displays using a browser and device emulator such as LambdaTest.

Although you may not be able ensure that your website looks and works flawlessly across all devices and platforms, you can make use of tools such as Google Analytics in order to discover what browsers and devices your visitors are using. You can then concentrate your efforts on testing and revising your site to work best on those specific platforms.

Are your websites mobile-friendly and running on as many devices as is

Make sure you know the primary functions on your website.

Set up your scheduled sales and coupons

It is possible to reduce the stress and anxiety of the most hectic shopping season of the year by doing everything feasible in the weeks leading up to it.

A simple task is setting up coupons and planned sales ahead of date. After you've determined which items will be discounted as well as the timeframe for certain flash sales and special deals, as well as how the price will fluctuate over time, you can create coupon codes and additional back-end support systems to guarantee sales success. If you're offering a free present with purchase, make sure that you've got the gift on hand.

Make sure you highlight Black Friday deals on your website

It is impossible for customers to benefit from an offer if they don't know about it. If your visitors come to your site naturally or bring them to your site through email marketing and paid advertising it is important to discover your sales quickly.

There are many ways to do this:

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

Create your customer support system

While you may have to hire more people to help your sales or your customer service department on Black Friday, onboarding and the training of temporary employees can be challenging and time-consuming. There are many other methods to boost customer support aside from employing temporary employees.

Below are three customer service strategies to implement this year.

Give a range of choices for support services to customers

Apart from direct line phone support -it is something you should provide when you can afford it -- here are some alternatives to assist customers find answers to their questions.

• FAQs or knowledge base. Help customers help themselves by providing a easily navigable and accessible FAQ page or knowledge base
• Make use of a customer service contact form. Let people get in touch with the customer service team by an email via a contact page. Use conditional logic based on the user's question type to route questions from customers to the appropriate email address.
• Start putting AI chatbots in action.Filter out some of the most commonly asked inquiries such as "How much will shipping cost me?" or "Do you ship to my country?" by using an AI chatbot. This will save your customer service team valuable time and provide customers with rapid answers to the most basic of questions.

Utilize a Customer Relationship Management tool (CRM)

CRMs can help you track the customer's interactions with your company and quickly resolve support tickets, qualify leads and increase sales to your customers.

Jetpack CRM is a slim and user-friendly tool that is able to integrate directly into your dashboard. There are no contact limits and it's also among the most affordable CRM options for stores.

Check that your customer instructions and FAQs for service are up-to-date

Review your procedures to assist customers and be sure they're up to date. If there are any specific methods or special offers that your staff should be aware of in preparation for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, document them and ensure your team has access. A quick meeting to discuss your procedure one week or two before you launch any Black Friday deals may help to keep these processes in the forefront for your staff.

When you've streamlined your customer service experience for both your visitors as well as your staff It's possible that you still need to add more people to assist you during the holiday season. However, maximizing your staff's effectiveness will reduce the number of seasonal hires you have to bring on.

Are you prepared for the holiday shopping season?

This Black Friday checklist may seem to be a bit of a hassle to plan for a sale that only lasts a few days, but these suggestions aren't designed only for the duration of one weekend.

When you've put them in place, the systems and methods can continue to help strengthen your online business every day. If you keep on top of these things on your checklist all through the year, you'll not need to put in a lot of effort when the holidays roll around next year.