How to Prepare Your Shopify Store for Black Friday: 2021 Full Guide
You might be wondering how you can make your Shopify business stand out this year for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. So, let's talk about some excellent ideas and techniques to get your shop ready. Many people are now shopping online due to the fear of COVID-19 and retail closures, which means you must make your store stand out on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. To make the most of the year's greatest shopping event, you'll need to be ahead of the game and start planning early.
Black Friday, one of the greatest shopping days of the year and the start of Christmas shopping, occurs on November 26th. Black Friday is part of Black Week, also known as Cyber Week. Black week begins on the Monday before Black Friday, November 22nd, and finishes on Cyber Monday, November 29th, this year. Some retailers also host Cyber Monday sales that begin earlier and/or conclude later.
We can't be positive about anything these days, but one thing is clear: future purchasing behavior will be greatly influenced by eCommerce. We'll look at what you need to do to make your eCommerce shop ready for Black Friday in this tutorial.
Consumers now purchase online 49% more than they did before COVID-19, with 100 million people doing so, an increase of 8% year over year.
Early offers, which generally began in October, were taken advantage of by 52 percent of customers.
Black Friday internet sales climbed by 22% year over year, reaching $9 billion globally.
In 2020, compared to 2019, the average conversion rate increased by 3.8 percent.
1. Reviews
Before making a purchase, online customers acquire information about the goods they wish to buy. Reading about other people's experiences, as well as product evaluations and ratings, is an important part of the buying process.
Make a request and take advantage of it
You will obtain more honest feedback from your consumers if you ask for input on a product and then indicate that you will post it after it is received. Both the good and the terrible. When you receive feedback, you have the opportunity to act on it and develop. You have the option of receiving no feedback and selling fewer items or receiving comments and selling more items.
Get to know your consumers
Customers will believe reviews are phony if there are no negative ones if a firm receives only positive feedback. Make sure you have a response strategy in place that can manage any type of review. Both good and bad aspects are present. Customers who are dissatisfied and furious are more likely to leave a review than those who are happy and satisfied.
One thing is certain: negative evaluations are not always detrimental to a company's success. If a store answers well, it is common for cautious shoppers to make purchases. It's critical to understand how to transform a poor review into a positive experience.
Offline marketing can benefit from reviews
It's important to remember that your internet reputation is linked to your offline reputation. You just cannot afford to overlook either of them. Take use of the chance to solicit comments at the same time; this demonstrates a desire to learn and grow.
2. Delivery expectations
It's critical to have a simple method for delivering and returning items. If it's not basic enough, it's unlikely to generate a sale in the first place. Home deliveries are more popular than ever, according to Postnord. Instead of picking up their box at a delivery agency, an increasing number of customers choose to have it delivered directly to their home.
Despite this, click and collect/store pickup has expanded significantly throughout the epidemic. This is an excellent choice for businesses who have both a physical and an online presence. Customers may easily place their orders online and pick up their packages a few hours later at the store. It's crucial to have a simple method for delivering and returning items. If it isn't easy enough, it is unlikely to result in a purchase.
Home deliveries, according to Postnord, are more popular than ever. Rather of picking up their box at a delivery agent, an increasing number of consumers choose to have it delivered directly to their home. Despite this, click-and-collect/store pickup has expanded significantly throughout the epidemic. This is an excellent choice for businesses who operate both a physical and an online store. Customers may easily place purchases online and pick up their packages a few hours later.
From a sustainability standpoint, customers place a higher value on production and delivery. Many clients demand more information about the manufacturing process. Provide complete supply chain traceability to your consumers. Customers will be able to see where everything is made, created, and where it originates. This is to match the ever-increasing demands and expectations of customers. The most crucial product category for shopping responsibly is food and beverages/groceries. Clothes and shoes, as well as beauty and health, come in second and third, respectively.
3. Black Friday Influencer marketing
Influencers may help you build your brand, improve sales, and reach out to your target audience directly. This has an impact on your eCommerce conversion rate.
It's nearly hard to keep track of everything and handle your merchandise in real-time. Your merchandising must be extremely automated in order to respond to this influence. The more relevant your items are, the higher your sales will be.
You must think thoroughly before you begin working with influencer marketing. What kind of brand are you, and what kind of value do you bring to the table? You won't be able to explain it to influencers if it's confusing, and they won't be able to pass it on to their followers if it's unclear.
What is the demographic of your target market? The more accurately you can define them, the easier it will be to determine which kind of influencers you should collaborate with to reach your target audience.
What is the campaign's objective? Is it to raise the number of clicks to your online store or to boost the number of sales of a certain product? Or are you looking for something totally different? These criteria will impact the organization of the partnership, as well as the influencer selections and evaluation of the results. Influencer marketing is a powerful strategy for increasing conversion rates. Use one-of-a-kind links for each influencer, as well as discount coupons for limited-time deals.
Involve influencers in the development process
Nelly.com has been working with Bianca Ingrosso, one of Sweden's top influencers, for the past year and a half. Several collections that Bianca was engaged in creating were published throughout this relationship, resulting in a significant profit for Nelly.com.
During their initial collaboration, 80 percent of the collection was sold out on the first day. The most recent collection was just released a few weeks ago. The site failed within five minutes due to excessive pressure. There were at least 30 thousand people in line, ready to see the collection. As a result, ensure sure you have enough server capacity.
4. Emails
Utilize your clients' online behavior to give them more relevant email product suggestions, which will increase your click-through rate, conversion rate, and income. Make your newsletters more personalized. Add customized email product recommendations based on each user's particular behavior, such as the things they've viewed or purchased, to increase relevancy. Incorporate suggestions into your transactional emails.
Add a block of appealing product recommendations to your 'order confirmation' and 'abandoned basket' emails to increase interaction. Create the suggestions as soon as the consumer reads the email to acquire the most up-to-date collection of personalized goods possible.
5. Customer experience
As the popularity of eCommerce rises, so do customer expectations and needs. To be able to expand and develop an eCommerce site, you must provide your clients with the greatest possible customer experience. Make sure your website is prepared for everything.
Whether you and your eCommerce business perform well during Black Friday will depend on how well you provide the greatest possible client experience. A positive client experience is essential. Customer service is no longer a nice-to-have; it's now a need for successful sales. Make sure your customer care department can answer all of your clients' inquiries regarding your products or services.
Chatbots
For online shoppers, chatbots are a handy tool. They can, for example, assist in informing clients about out-of-stock items and suggesting alternatives. They may also be used to notify consumers about delivery, order status, or even provide product recommendations based on what they're looking for.
Another advantage of utilizing chatbots in eCommerce is the ability to remind clients about shopping carts that have been abandoned. Some consumers may not leave their carts on purpose, but if they do, a chatbot can alert them of their shopping cart status and assist them in completing their purchase.
6. Automation
Automate your online commerce to increase productivity and save time. Make sure you're not advertising sold-out items on your homepage at any time. A manual merchandising strategy will not suffice. Manually performed online merchandising will never generate the sales increase necessary to justify merchants' significant investments in attracting high-quality visitors to their websites. It has much too many restrictions.
There are just not enough merchandisers or hours in the day to efficiently analyze the massive volumes of consumer and product data necessary to optimize product exposure in real-time across tens of thousands of items catalogues. Of course, increasing sales isn't the only way to succeed in retail; cost and resource efficiency are also important factors. This is especially tough for online businesses who still rely on manual merchandising, because scaling up employees to do more of the same is costly.
In reality, most of the day-to-day merchandising work entails data crunching, which is an activity that computers excel at. The nature of merchandising has entirely changed as a result of AI and automation. The day-to-day choices are made by computers, which react in real-time to vast volumes of client data.
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