(Untitled)

The best time to begin planning is too early for Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) as they are the largest shopping period during the calendar year. Both shopping periods have seen an increase in sales year over year and you'll have be ready for the potential of more site traffic and increased marketing competition, compared to the prior years.

If it's your first time conducting Black Friday Cyber Monday sales or you've been there before then you'll need to start formulating your plan for the year today, and you can use the following Black Friday checklist to get to work.

To help you plan for the upcoming season to help you plan for the upcoming season, we've divided this e-commerce Black Friday checklist into two components: the customer engagement checklist as well as the list for back-end systems.

Black Friday list of items: customer engagement

Let's begin with the customer engagement checklist first.

Begin earlier

Really?

Therefore, begin your preparations early, so that you'll be able to begin your marketing strategies earlier and increase the sales.

Develop a Black Friday counter-narrative

Black Friday sales will begin when you'd like. People are starting to realize this. Therefore, you should run an anti-Black Friday in the weeks prior to the event.

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

A marketing strategy that doesn't promote Black Friday would push benefits like making the most of your holiday shopping, checking off your wish list ahead of the crowds, and enjoying your time in a relaxed state throughout the month of December watching all the shoppers in a rush because you got yours done earlier.

Pair this with an array of constantly-changing special offers and deals in the weeks that lead up the day of Black Friday.

Try to connect with your targeted customers

It is possible to do this with multiple product lines too and make several ads that include Google and various other social media platforms.

Suppose you have an ecommerce store selling health food.

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

However, what is the ideal audience for each of these items sound like? What are their priorities? Use that same language into the content you create for 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 items, you shouldn't run general Black Friday sales that will impact your profit margins. Instead, feature select merchandise with great deals to increase sales by using them to draw many more people to your doors.

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

If you're in the market for overstocked, discontinued items, or seasonal items, these are great choices for extreme discounts because you'll need to sell them out anyway. Make use of items you have abundantly for a great arrangement with your supplier or products that are in huge demand or generate higher profits.

And consider creating dedicated Black Friday sale landing pages for your most important items, and not only the typical product page.

Which products can you feature in the face of extreme Black Friday deals this year?

Prepare marketing for multiple channels

Multichannel marketing is a good way to achieve better results than focusing on only one channel. Choose at least three different sales channels that you plan to employ this year to implement the Black Friday marketing strategy.

Channels include but are not limited to:

• SMS
• Social media - all possible platforms, including Facebook, X, TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest
• Direct post
• Radio and TV
• Video streaming online, such as YouTube and YouTube

Don't forget to design optimized landing pages as well as track the web traffic you get from each of your chosen channels.

Have follow-up marketing plans ready for use

The other key to profiting off Black Friday, Cyber Monday as well as the remainder of the shopping holiday season is to keep in touch with new customers who find your online store during the holiday season.

Yes, many Black Friday shoppers will come and buy items, then leave 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. You should try to categorize new clients based on the products they already bought, in addition to any other data you've collected about them from their first purchase experiences. After that, you can engage them with additional relevant content during the coming year.

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

Utilize email to send messages out quickly and often

For Black Friday this year, make email marketing campaigns that reach your various customer segments ahead of the Christmas rush. They should be thinking of you before all the competitors on the internet start to compete for their customers' attention. It is important that they buy from you when the smaller business owners only waking up to the fact that they did not plan ahead to prepare for Black Friday.

The first marketing email campaign will likely be sent out by October. Email inboxes start to overflow at the end of November. So if you can use email to begin with the seeds, and offer the best deals before the peak, you'll increase sales and also build brand awareness and customer loyalty.

Create eye-catching visuals

On your product pages or the landing page or pages you'll create for products that you'll feature it is essential to use photographs that have high resolution to attract attention and allow your audience to experience the product within their fingers.

Create abandoned cart emails

Getting these set up prior to Black Friday will give you the chance to try out your strategies and determine which methods of marketing and deals work best for your online store.

Your ad campaign can be broken down into three parts

There are a ton of items on the Black Friday checklist, and it's easy to get overwhelmed. For help in organizing your efforts and know what to prioritize, you can break the campaign down into three essential parts.

The first is the build-up prior to 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. It could include the whole weekend or the following week if you're taking on the entire Cyber Week. You can define what constitutes the 'day'.

Then, anything that happens after the Black Friday period is the phase that follows your strategy for marketing.

Black Friday is not just one of the days. The strategy you use to market should be encompassing the whole period.

Did you break down you Black Friday promotions campaign into three segments?

Update or create your return policy

If you've been running your online business for a while then you're probably familiar with this. But if you don't it's moment to start creating one. Or, if you do own one, perhaps you've realized from experience it's time to update yours.

• An option for returning shipped items. Will you require an original package, in perfect item condition, etc. ?
• The policy on refunds. Are customers able to receive their money back either in store credit, another option?
• Clear deadlines. What is the maximum time they can be returned to receive full credits or refunds?
• An address for shipping. Where will they send returned items?
• Contact information. Which way can customers be able to contact the company with further questions?

And, your return policy should be presented as often as relevant. This should be included on the email notification for orders sent out following the purchase has been made. It should be printed and placed in the product that is shipped. The item should be displayed on your website and be easily accessible for example, at the footer, the FAQ page, or on product pages.

Are you aware of the latest Return policy?

Give faster delivery choices

Shipping times can increase during the busy holiday sales season and customers often expect faster shipping choices.

Based on the findings of a 2021 Baymard study the study found that 19% of carts that are abandoned were due to the delivery time not being fast enough. Offering quicker shipping options could help reduce the loss of sales, and can be a particularly effective strategy for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Fast delivery methods incentivize customers and ensure your products arrive on time during a season when delivery times might be a little longer due to the huge volume carriers are processing.

You might consider selling Buy Now or Pay Later

You can make this option available right in the check-out page. You can also include it on the product page, home page, landing page, and anywhere else you think it might assist customers in overcoming an objection to price and stay buying.

Employ a chatbot

Chatbots assist with customer support and can increase sales. A lot of times clients have concerns that chatbots are able to solve. If they can just have a couple of things clarified, they will follow through on their purchase.

However, if they must find an email address, wallow through help forums, or sit and wait for live chat support to reply, they're likely to leave the procedure and go to a different site.

If you're able to make it happen Chatbots can make buying easier without the need for more customer service staff.

Take a look at the the previous calendar year's Black Friday sales data

The tendency is to view each year with a new venture, where we start from scratch and reinvent the wheel without any benefit of hindsight.

But if you've had an online store for a amount of time, and you've run Black Friday marketing campaigns before, you have some experience. You have some prior data. A few of the things you've tried previously may have worked effectively.

If you are getting to far in your plans for next year, review the results of last year. What went well? What didn't?

Are you able to replicate the success from the previous year? Can you improve the areas that fell short?

Black Friday checklist Checklist for Backend Systems

Let's get into our Black Friday checklist items that consumers don't see every day, however, you rely on for customers to make purchases and have a great Black Friday shopping experience.

Make your website faster

90percent of customers will leave a site if it loads slowly. Site speed should be a top priority at all times of the year and is particularly important when you are expecting increased traffic. Here are some easy things you can try in the event of a slow website.

• Test your website performance. Determine which areas of your website require improvement through a speed test. Software such as Pingdom as well as Page Speed Insights will tell you how quickly it loads and the performance of 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 load times and reduces bandwidth and load on your server. Jetpack comes with the option of a no-cost CDN that is, unlike other providers, you are able to setup and install the Jetpack CDN with just one click.
• Optimize your images. Even if you're using the CDN that can optimize your files to your specifications, it's best method to upload only the minimum files that you can while maintaining a high-quality resolution. Exporting for web in Photoshop or using no-cost tool for image resizing and optimizing such as ImageOptim is a simple way to get your photos ready to be uploaded on the internet.
• Change your hosting plan. If you're on a shared server you may see slower load times, especially in the event that other websites that are on the server experience spikes in traffic. Consider a virtual private server (VPS) or dedicated server.

There are many more ways to improve the speed of your shop.

Does your online store run as quickly as it can be?

Synchronize inventory and product pages

Make it easier and speedier to complete the checkout process

The checkout procedure may be working however, is it effective and user-friendly? It is important to make the checkout process as easy as you can, and with the least distractions to help your customers to finish their purchase. Some things you could implement to make your checkout more efficient are:

• Eliminate visually cluttered. Eliminate header and menus for footers, widgets in the sidebar, and other distractions from your checkout page so that the customer is completely focused on their transaction.

You must be prepared to fill orders and have them shipped on time

Do your dropshippers and suppliers ready to handle increased sales? Can you ramp up production when demand surpasses estimates?

This is an excellent problem to have but you shouldn't waste the chance to grow your revenue and win new customers because your supply chain gets overwhelmed.

If you are looking to boost production prior to the holiday season, make sure that you make your purchases to your suppliers of materials early. This is especially true for your products are manufactured by a different company, especially when the products are created overseas. Many other companies are placing larger orders from vendors to prepare to prepare for Black Friday sales as well Make sure that you make sure to secure your purchases prior to the date. Otherwise, you could face higher prices or be out of stock products.

If you're working with an outside logistics company (3PL) to ship your merchandise, take a look at the past sales and shipping trends of your goods and request them to move stock to warehouses close to areas in which you are likely to make the majority of business. This helps speed the delivery process to your clients. If fast delivery times are paramount to your business Ask your 3PL to send regular deliveries and to use providers that have the most rapid time for delivery.

Additionally, you might have to recruit more workers or increase hours to handle the expected increase in production over the Christmas season. This is particularly important in the case of hand-crafted goods or manufacturing products in-house. However, even if manufacturing is outsourcing and you're still in more demand for customer services or order fulfillment, marketing, and more.

Prepare to collect customer information to send follow-up emails

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

But you can't follow up without collecting their information.

If you're shipping items, then obviously they will give you their mailing address. However, direct mail marketing and follow-up costs significantly more than digital marketing and follow-up, therefore you should be able follow-up using email and possibly SMS, too.

For these, the buyer must be provided with the opportunity to opt in. The best place to do this is right in the page for checkout. On that page, solicit their email address as well as phone number. Be sure to get permission to talk with the customer via email or text. Make the phone number non-contingent so that the customers who do not opt-in to messages via text won't be confused.

There are some who won't be, and that's okay, since some people will. For those that are, now is the time to commence with your follow-up strategy for marketing.

Are you prepared to collect email addresses and phone numbers?

Set up conversion tracking

It's important to track customer behavior and how well your marketing strategies perform over Black Friday and the rest of the Christmas season, to make adjustments this year.

Be sure that your website is safe

One of the easiest and most effective ways to enhance the security of your site is by installing a security plugin. Jetpack offers free brute force attack protection which stops an attack that is one of the more common types of hacking methods as well as the two-factor security for security of your login method. The Jetpack WordPress security plugin also offers automatic backups, malware scans as well as spam prevention downtime monitor as well as other.

Check that your website works across all devices and browsers

The website you're selling on must be displayed correctly on desktops tablet, smartphones, and all leading browsers. It is possible to test this on your own devices very easy, however, you'll need to check how your store displays on a device and browser emulator, such as LambdaTest.

Even though you might not be able to guarantee that your website's appearance and performs flawlessly across 100% of devices and platforms, you could make use of tools such as Google Analytics to determine which web browsers and gadgets your customers use. It is then possible to focus your energy in testing and adjusting your site's performance for the specific platform.

Does your site work on mobile devices? and working on as many devices as feasible?

Check your website's key functionality

Set up your scheduled sales as well as coupons

It is possible to reduce the stress and stress of the busiest shopping season of the year by doing everything possible in the months beforehand.

One easy task is setting up coupons and scheduled sales prior to date. When you've figured out which products are going to have sales, the timing of specific flash sales or special discounts, as well as the way prices will change over time, you can create coupon codes and other backend support systems that will ensure the success of sales. If you're planning to offer a free present with purchase, make sure that you've got the gift on hand.

The highlight Black Friday bargains across your ecommerce store

It is impossible for customers to benefit from an offer when they aren't aware of the sale. If your visitors come to your website organically, or bring them to your site through email marketing and paid advertising it is important to be able to find your sales quickly.

There are several ways to do this:

• Use pop-ups to announce your sale and a call to action and a button that will take you directly to your sale.
• Add a banner to your home page to promote your sales.
• Add an "Black Friday Deals" menu item to the navigation of your website.
• Highlight sale items in the shop's sidebar.
• Make sale icons visible in your thumbnails of products.

Set up your customer service systems

While you may have to hire more people to help your sales or customer service staff in the days leading up to Black Friday, onboarding and training temporary workers can be challenging and time-consuming. Other ways are available to improve customer service as well as hiring temporary staff.

Below are three customer service methods to try this year.

Offer several options to support customers

Apart from telephone support via direct line- which you should offer in the event that you are able to provide it -- here are some other ways to help customers get their questions answered.

• FAQs or knowledge base. Help customers help themselves by offering an quickly accessible and easy to navigate FAQ pages or a knowledge base
• Use a customer service contact page. Let people get to the customer service team by email with a contact form. Utilize conditional logic, based on the user's question type to route customer service inquiries to the right email address.
• Get AI chatbots in action.Filter out some of the most frequently asked inquiries such as "How much is shipping?" or "Do you deliver to my country?" by using an AI chatbot. This will save your customer service staff 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 your customers' interactions with your company and quickly resolve support tickets, qualify leads, and upsell your customers.

Jetpack CRM is a slim and easy-to-use tool that can be integrated directly into your dashboard. There's no limit on contacts and it's among the most affordable CRM options for stores.

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

Check regularly the procedures for customer service and be sure they're correct. If you've got any particular processes or offers your representatives should be aware of for Black Friday and Cyber Monday Document them, and make sure that your staff is aware of them. An informal meeting to discuss your procedure about a week before you launch the Black Friday deals may help to keep these processes in the forefront to your employees.

After you've improved the customer support experience for your customers and the team members You may discover that you're still required additional staff to assist you during the holiday season. But maximizing your current team's performance will decrease the number of seasonal recruits you'll have to hire.

Are you ready for holiday shopping season?

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

After you've implemented them the systems and methods are able to improve your online business every day. If you're at the top of these checklist items throughout the year, you won't need to put in a lot of effort when the holidays roll around next year.