Black Friday Ecommerce Guide: My 10 Steps For More Sales in 2024

The biggest nightmare for any site owner is your website breaking down just as you get a surge in customers looking to buy. It’s enough to make you wake up in the middle of the night in cold sweats. Downtime on a website is like putting up a sign on your front door inviting your customers to head over to the competition.

Preparing and testing your website for Black Friday and Cyber Monday therefore is essential. The important thing is not to panic: crashing a website usually takes A LOT of traffic. Even so, it’s still worth giving your site a stress test before the big weekend. Think of it as giving your car an MOT before you compete in a Nascar rally event.

What can you do to make sure your store is fighting fit?

• Test the load capacity – You can use tools like LoadImpact.com to see how much activity your store can take before its performance is impacted. If your store is self-hosted and you aren’t satisfied with its current load capacity, consider upgrading your hosting plan to one with unlimited bandwidth.
• Test email marketing in advance – If you’re sending any automated emails over the period, test, test, and test again to make sure they’re delivering properly and that the copy is clear. Sending the wrong email to the wrong customer could affect sales and really damage your brand in the long run by making you look amateur.
• Test your site – By testing different browsers (Google, Firefox, Internet Explorer) and different devices (mobile, tablet, desktop), you can double check that shoppers can access your site from multiple touchpoints and keep your sales intact.
• Test your checkout process – Make sure that it can cope with a large volume of orders all at once. This is particularly important if you’re thinking of running flash deals or time-limited offers on the day.
• Ensure your website is mobile-friendly – A website that doesn’t load or function on a mobile device is the stuff Black Friday nightmares are made of.

Advice From Experts: Infinity Dish

Laura Fuentes

My number one tip for Cyber Monday is to make sure your site can handle the traffic pouring in.

Any tips for handling website traffic on BFCM?

Nothing frustrates a shopper more than slowed screens and glitches. Unless a shopper is intent on purchasing a particular item from your specific business, if glitches happen, they will move on and look for similar deals with your competitors. Use a service like Google to check your site speed and whether or not it is fully mobile compatible. Check these metrics out ahead of time so that you can upgrade your speeds and compatibility well before Cyber Monday is here.

According to a Deloitte study, 39% of consumers value quality in 2024 when it comes to what they purchase during Black Friday or Cyber Monday.

As a result, competition is much higher, and customers becoming more selective, so it’s crucial you give your products every chance of standing out. Below, I’ve listed important actions you can take that’ll give you the edge over your competition.

Optimize Your Product Descriptions

When creating your product descriptions that align with your Black Friday ecommerce strategy, you should instill urgency in shoppers and remind them that they have limited time to bag the bargains on offer. You could use special graphics to highlight the items included in the sale, and add phrases to your descriptions like:

• Black Friday sale ends soon
• Limited time only
• Only one left
• In high demand
• Sold out soon

If you’re stocking products from any well-known brands, make sure the brand names appear in a prominent position – this doesn’t just improve your organic rankings (which equals more traffic and so more sales), it also adds credibility to your store and makes customers more likely to become repeat shoppers.

Conduct Keyword Research

I highly recommend conducting keyword research to see what your target market is looking for on search engines. By utilizing SEO tools such as Google Trends, you can make sure that the products you’re offering are currently popular with specific shoppers, and boost your site’s basic SEO in the progress by adding these keywords to your descriptions.

For example, the top search terms for Black Friday 2022 included Nintendo Switch Black Friday and Black Friday TV Deals, highlighting a need to alter your keyword targeting to be Black Friday-specific in the run up to, and during, the big weekend.

Additionally, if demand for a specific item is high this year, make sure that your product categories and product listings are accurate to avoid overselling. There’s nothing worse than advertising a product you’re not able to deliver.

Consider Voice Search Optimization

With devices like smartphones and smart speakers being commonplace, some shoppers might be using voice search to look for specific products this Black Friday. You’ll want to make sure that the text on your site addresses common verbal queries that a customer is likely to use. There are several ways to do this:

• Use question keywords: Voice search queries are typically longer and more specific than queries typed directly into a search engine. Think about the kinds of questions your audience will be asking.
• See if your site’s language is conversational: When speaking to a device like an Alexa, a customer is likely to speak more conversationally, as if talking to a friend! For voice search optimization, try to avoid using too much technical language or jargon in your blog posts or product descriptions. Keep it more down to earth instead.

Advice From Experts: The Converted Click

Dave Nilsson

Our voice search optimization strategy gave us an increase in website traffic of 23.7% and an increase in sales leads of 34.2%.

How does this help your customers?

Our approach is to focus on creating detailed answers to common conversational questions from our customers. For each question, we create content that gives clear and concise answers. Our content framework starts with a headline asking a common question, provides a concise answer in the first paragraph, then elaborates with further details in the rest of the page.

Why did you add conversational technology to your website?

As SEO specialists we have implemented voice search optimization on our website with great success. We implemented voice search optimization on our website to increase our sales leads.

In 2023, Salesforce recorded that the average discount rates in the USA rose to 29% to match up with consumer demand.  So, as part of your Black Friday ecommerce strategy, you do need to think about what exactly you’re offering customers to compete with other brands on the market. For instance, you could consider adding a free gift with your products as a little sweetener, with web builders like Shopify allowing you to add gift cards to your store for free.

You can also get in the holiday spirit and advertise a percentage of sales going to a charity, making shoppers more likely to purchase from your store – a popular holiday marketing tactic that’s effective because it targets shopper emotions.

Expert Advice: Rebate Key

Ian Sells

Ian has been using marketing to grow businesses. He sold an Amazon brand first and is now managing over 10 million in sales.

If you’re going to run Black Friday deals, you want to be strategic.

What is a common Black Friday & Cyber Monday mistake?

A huge mistake a lot of retailers make is to give discounts on everything. When you discount everything, you’ll end up unnecessarily losing profit.

What advice do you have on the lead up to Black Friday?

Try using a high runner strategy to draw more people into your store and optimize for margin. Amazon uses a high runner strategy itself. To build a high runner strategy, all you need to do is determine the most popular products in your store, then discount those products as a way to drive traffic to your shop. Once a consumer is in your shop, they’re less likely to navigate away, which means you have the opportunity for strategic cross and up-sells of complementary products.

When it comes to discounts, the more creative the better. Plenty of retailers will be offering 20% off and featuring it proudly on their product page designs, but how many brands will be offering “50% off for first-time buyers” or “30% off if you buy more than fiver pairs of shoes”? Let your imagination off the leash!

Everything about your store’s design on Black Friday and Cyber Monday should be geared towards making a sale and turning browsers into buyers. Consequently, it’s important to be mindful about the user experience your site provides shoppers, which should enable them to navigate your store, add products, and checkout with ease. Let’s delve into the top ways you can achieve this.

Mobile Optimize Your Site

The first thing to check is that your website is fully optimized for mobile visitors. With 55.3% of shoppers accessing ecommerce sites from their phones back in 2023, you need to keep your site’s mobile view as streamlined and responsive as possible. Your priority is to check that your site layout is properly configured on different screen sizes – without compromising the user experience too!

Making sure all of your content is mobile-friendly not only plays a large part in boosting your sales, but works in tandem with Google’s Core Web Vitals rollout to determine the search engine ranking of your store.

Advice From Experts: The Gray Dot Company

Tory Gray

I recommend testing your site’s mobile compatibility in anticipation of these big-spending days.

What are your mobile and desktop recommendations for BFCM?

It’s more important to target mobile searches than ever before. Mobile makes up a whopping 61 percent of Google’s organic search traffic. Mobile users are also more likely to convert than desktop users, so it’s crucial that you are mobile-ready in the lead up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I recommend testing your site’s mobile compatibility in anticipation of these big-spending days. You should test your site’s responsiveness, loading time, and image sizes to make sure they are mobile-ready. Not only can mobile compatibility make for better user experience, but it can also improve your ranking and visibility on Google.

Don’t Overlook Opportunities for Additional Sales

As well as poor mobile optimization, a sure way of missing out on sales is overlooking key opportunities for cross-selling and upselling.

For example, if you’ve got a great discount on a pair of shoes, you could cross-sell to customers by displaying some discounted socks on the same product page. Or, if you’re wondering how to upsell, advertise a better version of the shoes at checkout and encourage buyers to upgrade. Doing this is easy if you build categories of products that naturally fit together (like socks and shoes).

Make Your Site Easy to Navigate

A customer should arrive on your store’s homepage and be in no doubt of where to go to get their discount fix.

Because of this, consider building distinct Black Friday and Cyber Monday pages to clearly signpost where your customers need to go to get the deals. Ultimately, you want your customers to get to your discounted products in as few clicks as possible.

Clearly Convey a Sense of Urgency to Shoppers

Just like your product descriptions, your whole site should convey a sense of urgency when highlighting Cyber Monday and Black Friday ecommerce discounts. Here are two steps to create a sense of urgency in the same time it takes to eat your dinner:

• Display discounts clearly on the homepage – This may sound obvious, but it’s easy to get so caught up in your product pages that you forget to sort out the shop window.
• Add a countdown banner – A timer that ticks down to Black Friday and Cyber Monday can really help build excitement. Tools like Powr (fully integrated with BigCommerce) can help you do this for free in a matter of minutes.

You might think, “my checkout is working fine, if it isn’t broken, why try and fix it?”

That would be a mistake.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday shoppers are fickle – they’ve got thousands of stores to visit and a limited amount of time, and so won’t think twice about leaving you hanging at the checkout.

Taking some time to improve and optimize your checkout process could pay off on the day. In November 2023, cart abandonment rates reached 71.14%, so there’s always room to improve your customers experience at checkout.

An effective way to do this is by adding extra payment options like digital wallets, buy now pay later schemes, and even bitcoin at checkout. The more strings added to your ecommerce bow the better, because you’re giving your customers more opportunities to give you their money.

With 36% of American’s now having at least 3 digital devices to their name, a single online transaction can span multiple devices before completion. Tying shopping carts with accounts means your customers don’t lose their orders if they switch device, and you don’t risk losing out on almost a third of your revenue. It’s a win-win!

Running campaigns on social media sites like Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram can be a great way to grow your business and get eyeballs on your ecommerce site; but it’s not enough to just push ads out there, you have to push those ads to the right people. When using social media and creating and circulating your ads for the sales period, I recommend:

• Using hashtags to your advantage – By looking for hashtags that are relevant to your brand and audience, you can reach newer audiences and increase your conversion rate. 
• Making sure your site is well-integrated with social accounts – Whether you’re using an ecommerce website builder or an open source platform like WordPress, you can use additional plugins to make it easy for shoppers to jump between your social media channels and ecommerce site.
• Creating high-quality ad imagery – When creating a social ad, choose a professional product image that’ll make your offer look enticing. You’ll also want to add your logo somewhere so shoppers are aware of your brand. 
• Circulating your ad in advance – Make sure you start circulating the ad at least a few days in advance to build excitement. Leave it to the last minute and customers may only see your ad once, which means they’re unlikely to click through, given how many retailers will be demanding their attention.

Advice From Experts: Dark Horse Schooling

Tracy Brinkmann

Start working on your social media presence now to gain traction for those all important big sale days!

How do you leverage social media in this holiday season?

When it comes to social media there is a recipe to this – you cannot just be throwing random content out there and expect people to react. I mean it is social media, after all, so you have to be social, so put up some R&R content (i.e. jokes, funny stuff, throwbacks). Then some enlightening content (i.e. tips, trivia, etc). From there, toss in something to strike up a Conversation (i.e. polls, surveys, ask advice etc), as well as some Invigorating and Inspirational content (i.e. quotes, client success stories).

What is the outcome?

Once you’ve done that, hit them with a Promo (eg. show customer reviews, give a discount, invite them to a webinar). Finally, show off your Endeavour (i.e. show behind the scenes, let them see behind the curtain). Your spending time being social before you hit them with a ‘Buy My Stuff’ message.

For many of us, Black Friday and Cyber Monday can feel overwhelming. With an email marketing strategy, you have the chance to cut through the noise and provide a really personal offering to your customers that inspires them to make a purchase.

When we asked 65 business owners which channel was the most effective for marketing, 24% of them said email marketing! So, make sure you start your email campaign at least a week in advance, allowing you to whet your customers’ appetite for the sales you’re about to offer them.

A simple but effective email campaign might include:

• One weekly email from four weeks until Black Friday
• An email both the night before Black Friday and Cyber Monday
• An email on Black Friday and Cyber Monday

You may even consider offering your long-standing customers a special VIP offer over email. For example, you could give them a sneak preview of your Black Friday and Cyber Monday ecommerce discounts and offer them an early chance to buy them. This can be a great way to build up brand trust; because repeat customers are more valuable to you, it also makes commercial sense.

Advice From Experts: USA Wholesale

Alexis Frankel

In the past, the best campaigns I've produced have been for Black Friday/Cyber Monday ($10,000+ in a single day from email campaigns).

Is email marketing valuable during the Black Friday season?

Leads are in the mindset to buy and will do so if they see what they like. Give them what they want! Use data from their previous purchases, abandoned cart items, and average order value to target specific promotions that they will be interested in. Make sure to tweak and test for the best results.

Even if you do all of the above, you’re not done.

Once the Cyber Monday and Black Friday ecommerce period is over, make sure you follow up after with your buyers. This is an optimal time to ask for feedback, so you can improve next year’s deals, and invite them to revisit your store or leave a positive testimonial if they’re happy with your service.

Additionally, creating an automated abandoned cart recovery email is a great way of stopping customers slipping through the net. If a customer gets all the way to the checkout but then fails to purchase, they’ll get a follow-up email allowing them to go straight back to their cart. This is a useful tool for your customers and a potentially profitable one for you!

Black Friday and Cyber Monday online shoppers are ruthless, but with so many retailers competing for their attention, they can afford to be.

If your store is even remotely slow to load, many shoppers will simply vote with their feet and close the tab. Big, colorful product pictures and homepage banner images make your site look good, but they can also affect page load times and hit your conversion rate and rankings in Google.

The simple way to solve this issue is by optimizing images. Thankfully, there are tools you can use to compress your images into smaller versions without affecting the dimensions or the quality. Website builders like Shopify has its own tool to help store owners resize and optimize images, while you can find tools like Kraken.io which also work well.

Determining how much your shipping will cost is almost as important as determining how much the product itself costs. Typically, high shipping costs can be off-putting to shoppers, especially those looking for big bargains. In fact, many Black Friday and Cyber Monday shoppers will be expecting free delivery. 

It’s up to you to weigh up the cost of free shipping against the discount you’re offering. For example, WooCommerce recorded how almost 49% of stores plan to offer shipping discounts, whereas only 11% want to offer a special refund or return window during the holiday period. Ideally, the shipping method you choose should appeal to your customers and still give you enough wiggle room to make a profit.

Still debating whether to offer free shipping or not? A survey conducted by Finances Online found that almost half of all Black Friday shoppers back in 2022 stated shipping rates as their primary influencer for making a purchase, also mentioning that they could be swayed into making an order if they were offered free shipping.

Advice From Experts: M&I

Brian Deschesare

Use a loss leader product, and offer free shipping on expensive orders.

What are your thoughts on shipping costs during Black Friday?

A ‘loss leader’ is a product sold at a loss to bring in more customers. You might be wondering why you would ever sell a product at a loss, but the idea is simple. You want to make it cheap enough to get them shopping. That way, they’ll start taking a look at the rest of your products, and they’ll buy even more.

Is using a loss leader too risky?

Without first using a loss leader, your customers might not even start shopping with you. There needs to be that ‘initial push’ that gets them browsing your store. The next step is to introduce free shipping over a certain amount.

Now that they have one cheap item in their basket, they’re going to start browsing through the rest of your selection. This is when you advertise that you offer “free shipping on orders over $50”, for example. Your customers are now a lot more likely to find items that they like.

With Walmart and Amazon dominating Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, you might feel like a small fish in a big pond. But the trick is to turn this to your advantage.

One way to do this is by providing personal and quality online customer service. If you haven’t already, write a detailed FAQs page or section specific to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so any questions your customers might have can be dealt with as seamlessly as possible. Make sure you cover key areas such as:

• Your refunds and returns policy
• How long your sale lasts for
• Expected delivery time

If you employ any staff to help you run your store, make sure you give them a brief pep talk on the importance of being polite and helpful. You could provide them with certain customer service phrases or advice on how to respond to negative reviews, to ensure all customer interactions end on a positive note.

If you aren’t using AI as part of your ecommerce strategy, Black Friday and Cyber Monday make for the perfect excuse to get started. During Cyber Week 2023, $51 billion of global online sales were influenced by AI. In fact, AI can streamline your ecommerce store’s operations, be it through chatbots or tailored offers and product recommendations. Here are two key ways you can use AI to enhance your Black Friday and Cyber Monday efforts:

Add an AI Chatbot to Your Site

AI chatbots are a fantastic form of conversational commerce and will enable you to bolster your store’s customer service efforts. If a user has a pressing question during the sales period, they can ask the bot for answers – even if you and your team aren’t around to respond!

Not only will it foster better relationships, but it’ll drive sales, too – with business leaders estimating that chatbots result in a 67% increase in sales.

Tailor The Shopping Experience

You can also use AI to improve customer experiences by providing shoppers with personalization. If you’ve collected customer information through tracking cookies, online forms, or analytical tools like Google Analytics, you can use AI to generate tailored offers or item recommendations that customers will be interested in. Just think of Netflix. When you’re looking for a new TV show to binge, the platform will show you multiple options related to what you’ve previously seen.

If you’re still not convinced, 17% of all end-of-year holiday orders were influenced by AI in 2023, due to its ability to connect shoppers with products they’re interested in. This convenience, then, can provide your site’s visitors with exactly what they’re looking for, when they want it.

Touch wood, you’ll be receiving more orders than usual across Black Friday and Cyber Monday. A lot more orders, hopefully.

It’s crucial to make sure your shipping process can cope with this additional consumer demand. The aim is not failing to deliver orders if they’re coming through thick and fast, and not selling out too quickly and end up failing to meet demand.

To deliver on your shipping, I suggest that you take these four key steps:

• Contact your supplier – Be an effective communicator and make sure that your supplier is aware of the sharp increase in demand beforehand.
• Test your order fulfillment process – Whether you’re using a dropshipping supplier, a manual system, or a fulfillment app like ShipStation, make sure that everything’s working smoothly.
• Set up a smooth and optimized returns process – Black Friday and Cyber Monday may result in a lot of sales, but they can result in a lot of returns too if customers aren’t happy with the items, or regret their purchase made in a haze of discounts and deals. Give them the option to return their goods.
• Plan your returns process in advance – Check that it’s easy to find the relevant information on your website, and don’t keep customers waiting for a refund. Good returns management, and an easy returns process, can help to ensure they return to your online store in the future.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday Best Practices

Go to the top

Many retailers get caught up in the competitiveness of Black Friday and Cyber Monday and risk damaging their brand with unethical practices. Here are a few rules of thumb to bear in mind:

If your resources are already stretched, your marketing budget is tight, or you’ve had limited time this year, don’t panic. There are still actions you can take to prepare your website for Black Friday and make the most out of the season. For some easy ecommerce wins, you could:

1. Engage with pre-existing customers – Instead of stressing over reaching new audiences, this is the perfect time to engage with loyal customers you might already have. Via email, you could make them feel special by sending over an exclusive Black Friday discount code or an early access link to deals, rewarding them for their loyalty.
2. Add interactive elements – To add an element of fun to your site this Black Friday, you could add an interactive element to your landing page. For instance, a spin-the-wheel game that will land on a limited-time only deal.
3. Offer free gifts – Adding a free gift to any orders over a specified amount is a great way to entice people to buy more. 
4. Use referrals – During the holiday period, you could set up a referral program that rewards shoppers for recommending a friend! The reward could include a discount or store credit.
5. Create a separate landing page – Don’t already have a separate landing page for your Black Friday deals? To make the occasion seem unmissable (with little effort), you could add a new page to your site with an enticing hero image and links to your best offers.

With the tips above, you should now be feeling prepared for the Cyber Monday and Black Friday ecommerce season! However, since shopping trends are always evolving and changing, you need to keep yourself in tune with consumer habits and industry developments. The more awareness you have, the better experience you’ll be able to provide shoppers in the coming years.

Additionally, once your Black Friday sale is live, you can’t stop there. You need to keep tracking your store throughout the holiday season, and be prepared to analyze your progress once the sales are over. That way, you can find ways to improve and streamline your store, putting you on the path to becoming an ecommerce success story.