The countdown to two of the most lucrative ecommerce days has started, and you must take measures to ensure you’re ready for the upcoming shopping extravaganza. If your online store misses out, many other ecommerce stores will capture the attention of consumers eager to find the best deals.In 2021, the US holiday shopping season experienced the highest retail growth in the last two decades, raking in over $1.221 trillion. Brick-and-mortar sales increased by over 17% to $1.017 trillion, whereas ecommerce sales surged to $204.2 billion. Cyber Monday was the busiest online spending day, with sales surging by 1.1% to $10.9 billion, followed closely by Black Friday sales at $9.03 billion.Since consumers spent nearly $20 billion during Black Friday and Cyber Monday last year, ecommerce stores must prioritize optimizing their digital marketing strategies to generate more sales during these profitable shopping days. Are you ready to skyrocket your Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales this year? Then, schedule a strategy call with our experienced conversion experts and let them help you improve your conversions. Here are some tips to help you optimize your website and ecommerce store and boost sales for the upcoming holiday season.
Optimize Your Site
The goal of holiday sales is increased traffic to your website. To do that, ensure your website is well-equipped to handle sudden spikes in web visitors. Further, your website speed should align with your projected traffic, and your customer support department should be scalable to address any consumer problems or issues.In addition, fix broken links, error pages, and images that don’t load to offer a better shopping experience and encourage consumers to complete their sales. According to Google, page speed is one of the critical indicators in influencing webpage rank. As a result, shoppers abandon slow-loading sites and pages. Further, if Google bots register malfunctioning forms, high bounce rates, and slow loading times, they’ll conclude your website is untrustworthy, adversely affecting your sales and ROI. After all, Google and other search engines aim to deliver the best consumer experience. Besides optimizing your site to ensure it loads faster, you should also ensure it is well-optimized for mobile because most consumers prefer to search the web using their mobile devices.
Pre-sale, Sale, and Abandoned Cart Placements
Pre-sale placements can help you create a pool of loyal followers even before your Black Friday or Cyber Monday sales start. That’s because consumers love learning about products or services that are secret. They want to be the first to capitalize on the information before others know about it because it’s flattering and guarantees a seat at the table. These pre-sale placements can help you generate maximum sales during Black Friday and Cyber Monday:
- Create top bars with a countdown timer a month before your holiday sale starts. These pre-sale placements can be more effective if they’re dynamic, so instead of saying one month before our Black Friday sales start, you can say 4 weeks, 48 hours, 30 minutes, or 10 seconds before our Black Friday sale starts.
- Send notification cards asking current customers if they want to opt-in to stand a chance to get early access when new products launch. State the benefits clearly and concisely on these cards. Otherwise, potential customers will just click the “No Thank You” button.
Also, you should use sale placements to encourage customers to complete their sales. During the holiday shopping extravaganza, incentive-based placements, including welcome opt-ins and cart abandonment reminders, can help you reduce your cart abandonment rates. For these placements to be successful, highlight the benefits. Benefits are crucial because shoppers want to know that spending their hard-earned money is worth it. In addition, web visitors shouldn’t have to wonder if you’re running Black Friday or Cyber Monday deals; instead, they should wonder about what products to buy. So during your holiday sale, your top bar announcement should emphasize the value propositions of your Black Friday or Cyber Monday sale. Besides the ecommerce strategies mentioned above, you can use abandoned cart placements to mitigate the adverse effects of cart abandonment. For instance, you can send push notifications or cart recovery emails. When customers leave their cart, you can still follow up and get them to complete the checkout process. Push notifications or emails reminding potential customers to complete a purchase saying, “Your cart is waiting,” are an excellent strategy to reduce cart abandonment rates. Also, you can attach a call to action leading prospective customers straight back to their cart and checkout process.
What Offers Should I Give for Black Friday?
Consumers love new products. So, leverage the exceptional opportunity you’ll have on Black Friday and Cyber Monday to unveil a new product available during that period. Even if previous customers have already bought something, they might be interested enough to buy your new product. There are two ways to unveil a new product. First, you could add it a few days before Black Friday. For all you know, that could even generate more sales before the big day. The second way is to add the product on the big day. Offer VIP early bird discounts. Here, the early bird gets a deal. Leverage your email list to send an update on products that’ll be discounted on Black Friday. To get your email subscribers hooked on a VIP early bird discount, use phrases like “‘almost sold out” or “limited” to create a sense of scarcity and get more customers to take action. Offer a buy-one, get-one 50% discount offer. Consumers love discounts, and by using a buy-one, get-one 50% off offer, you can increase your conversion rates and ultimately generate more sales. You’re essentially upselling consumers to buy more products than they initially planned. You can also vary this offer by offering 60% off everything on the midday of Black Friday and then a buy-one, get-one 50% off discount in the afternoon. Reward your customers at checkout with coupons. Consumers love surprises, especially those they receive right before checkout. So offering coupons at checkout is a win-win for you and your customers. This simplifies the checkout process and boosts conversions, too.Black Friday and Cyber Monday result in an increased number of online consumers and an increase in how much consumers spend. However, consumers might not spend more at your online store if they still have to worry about shipping fees. By offering free shipping, you can encourage shoppers to spend more at your ecommerce store instead of visiting a physical store, where they’re zero shipping costs. Show your customer appreciation and generosity with a simple marketing tactic guaranteed to generate more positive feedback and boost your sales.90% of shoppers view free shipping as a top incentive to shop online frequently. Yet, with the increased shipping costs, some businesses may not afford to offer free shipping to their customers. While there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy, you can strategically find the perfect balance for improving conversions and not breaking the bank. So, if you can’t offer free shipping, focus on increasing your average order value (AOV) or have a minimum spend threshold. Increasing your AOV can help you pad your profit and afford free shipping. A brilliant way to increase your AOV is by offering memberships, upsells, and bundles. Bundles can help you optimize shipping costs and get more products to your customers’ homes.
On-site Ad Placements to Work with Black Friday/Cyber Monday Strategies
Any effective online marketing strategy needs impactful Black Friday or Cyber Monday display campaigns. When web visitors visit your site, they should see you’re offering excellent deals for a short time, and the best way to do that is through eye-catching sale banners. In addition, potential customers will visit your website using different devices, so ensure your sale banners are optimized for various devices.Pop-ups also leverage fun, novelty, and exclusivity to deliver a memorable experience. As a result, you can leverage them to generate excitement among customers, which can be powerful and lasting. Sumo reports that even a simple pop-up can help convert nearly 3% of average web visitors and have great click-through and conversion rates. Further, with many consumers shopping online and online fraud on the rise, many consumers see security assurance and trust as top priorities. By placing trust labels and badges on your site, you can provide online shoppers with important information, inform them about your safety standards, and improve your conversion rates. Typically, trust badges and labels show your website is reliable and secure.
Final Thoughts
Although online holiday sales are expected to continue increasing, there’s no guarantee your online store will reap the benefits. You need a Black Friday/Cyber Monday strategy that considers everything from site speed to integrated online promotions to free shipping and plans for stockouts and common issues.Do you still have questions about the best strategies to improve your Black Friday/Cyber Monday conversion rates and sales? Schedule a personalized strategy call with one of our reputable conversion experts today.