Black Friday is just around the corner, and you may be immensely pressured to maximize sales and revenue on this biggest shopping day of the year.
Last year was a significant hit to eCommerce industries as it generated $222.1B during Black Friday sales, surpassing the previous year by 4.9% growth.
Are you a WooCommerce store owner planning to boost your sales and revenues during this 2024 BFCM? Well, tick off this Black Friday checklist to prepare your WooCommerce store to increase sales and clear stocks.
Convert Up to 27% of Window Shoppers Into Loyal Customers By Offering Personalized Black Friday Discounts Using Discount Rules.
25 Tips To Prepare For BFCM
The black Friday checklist helps ensure your store’s preparation for the big sales day event.
Check these 25 points to organize your store, from planning Black Friday campaigns to shipping your products.
(A) Start Early
Customers have already begun searching for the best discount sales. Start your plan as early as possible to win the big discount day.
1. Research Your Target Audience
People who have an interest and resonate with your business goals are your targeted customers.
Create a buyer persona to target your customers. This fictional representation will help you plan the right offer to people who need your products.
2. Set Your Goals
You must decide your campaign goals, such as selling products, budgeting for the campaign, marketing strategies, and other business goals.
3. Decide Your Budget
You can rely on organic marketing strategies to increase your sales.
However, paid advertisements are best for reaching new customers quickly. If you have the budget, go for it.
(B) Prepare Your Goods and Offers
4. Check Inventory
Do you have enough stocks to manage huge orders? Supply chain issues are one of the major drawbacks of online business. All retailers prepare for the seasonal shopping day, so ensure that you have all products in your warehouse.
Your suppliers should supply products to meet your store demands without delay.
5. Create Irresistible Discount Offers
You can quickly grab customers’ attention with irresistible offers. Without offering boring and the same 10% off discounts, test and run different discount deals, such as:
- Buy One Get One (BOGO)
- Bulk Discounts
- Bundle Discounts
- Free Shipping Based On Order Value
- First-Time Order Discount
- Exclusive and early access discounts for subscribers or VIP members, and more.
Personalizing discounts based on customers’ needs and purchase history will enhance their shopping experience and loyalty and help them develop a long-term relationship with your store.
You can also download the “Discount Rules for WooCommerce -Pro” plugin to create advanced and automatic discount rules in WooCommerce. This plugin also allows you to create smart and advanced coupons for customized coupon code offers.
Offer Bulk Discounts Or BOGO Deals In WooCommerce Using Discount Rules To Increase Average Order Value.
(C) Revamp Your Website (And App)
6. Test and Optimize Website Speed
Portent reports that eCommerce websites with a 1-2 seconds loading speed have a 3.05% conversion rate and drop for every delayed second.
Hence, confirm your website loading speed, as it impacts the store conversion rate. You can also double-check your website bandwidth to handle enough traffic.
7. Update ‘Featured Sales’
Update the ‘Featured Sales’ section as appealingly as possible and provide the best offer. This is a chance for people who dream of purchasing your products to claim their favorites.
8. Check Product Listings & Details Pages
Product Listing Pages (PLP) list all products of a specific category or are filtered based on users’ needs. PLP leads to Product Details Pages (PDP), an individual page with details about that particular product.
Customers don’t see or feel products in real-time, so product pages are the only way to make them click the “Buy Now” button. Instead of writing a feature sales copy, provide the benefits of how your products will change their life.
9. Redesign Website Visuals
Redesign your website with attention-grabbing banners and offers to inform your customers about the upcoming discount deals.
10. Ease Up Checkout Process
An easy checkout process helps customers with a successful transaction without abandoning their carts.
Look at your checkout process and make sure that you have a smooth and safe transaction process.
Tip: You can also offer checkout order bumps in WooCommerce to increase the order value of the customers.
11. Provide Mobile-Friendly Experience
Almost half of the online shopping is completed through mobile phones. You can create your brand’s mobile app or optimize your website for mobile-based browsers.
Elevating user experience while browsing and ordering products is key for a successful sale.
(D) Craft Creative Marketing Strategies
12. Utilize Social Media Platforms
You must adapt to recent trends and use every possible way to reach your targeted customers, and social media is one of the best platforms for this.
Analyze each social media platform and understand your audience’s needs to provide relevant content.
13. Put Email Marketing Into the Play
Email users check their inboxes to know about exciting discount offers.
Segment customers based on their signup forms or purchase lists to send the exact category offers to those targeted groups.
As a WooCommerce store owner, you can customize your WooCommerce order notification and other emails with Email Customizer for WooCommerce plugin.
14. Create Content Guides
Writing Content guides (blogs) or making content videos (on YouTube or social media) are some of the best content marketing strategies to help you stand out from competitors.
15. Gift and Comparison Guides
For some customers, planning gift packs can be a challenging process.
Also, some people will still need clarification about choosing the right product between the two.
Steal this opportunity to create gift ideas and product comparison guides that help people choose the right product for their loved ones.
16. Give a Chance to Paid Ads
Since you are competing with big brands for this bargaining Friday sale, paid ads are a good investment for your business as they quickly reach your target market compared to organic marketing. However, you must ensure that paid ads are implemented within your planned budget.
17. Retargeting to increase sales
With new people arriving at your store, use this chance to build brand awareness and encourage them to subscribe to your newsletters or follow up on social media.
After the end of holiday sales, you can use a retargeting strategy to bring the visitors back to your website.
(E) Recheck Post-Purchase Process
18. Optimize Shipping Process
Delivering products on time is crucial to increase customer loyalty toward your brand. Even if you are tired of having more orders to ship, have a separate delivery team to smoothen your shipping process.
Nowadays, big online companies assure customers of quick delivery. Though you may not compete with popular brands, remember to deliver your products on time to increase trust.
19. Improve Return Policy
Return policy is one of the main factors influencing a buyer’s decision.
While people can try products in a physical store, it is impossible with online store products. So, the return policy encourages them to try your product at once, and if it is not satisfied, they can get their money back. It will influence them to buy your product in no time.
During the Black Friday WooCommerce campaign, extend the return policy date for even more days, as people can return their gifts if they want to. However, you can provide the best products (as per the user’s wish) and try to reduce return rates.
20. Follow Up on Abandoned Carts
Every WooCommerce store owner hates abandoned carts; you’re no exception. You can find many abandoned carts during holiday sales.
Customers leave their carts for many reasons. They could be unhappy with an offer, face issues during the payment process, find the best deals at different websites, or forget to purchase the products in their carts.
With a simple email notification, send a reminder about their cart abandonment.
Tip: Learn the 7 proven ways to convert abandoned carts into revenue.
(F) Prepare Your Team
21. Arrange Your Customer Service
Customer service should be on your to-do list during the sales day. A dedicated and kind customer service team will increase your sales.
You can use Live chat tools on your website to connect with your customers immediately. Chatbots are also handy tools to automate customer support processes, but human chat is the best option of all other software.
22. Train Your Team
Every employee of your business is a part of the big bargaining sales.
All should take equal responsibility to complete the campaign without issues. Train your team members to handle long traffic on the big day.
(G) Have a Backup Plan
Be prepared for the unexpected!
Plan A only wants to be successful occasionally. Moreover, have a Plan B to continue your campaign without worries.
Having a backup plan for different situations will simplify your selling process. For example: Maintaining excess stocks on best-selling products, Combining fast-selling and slow-selling items for bundled offers, and more.
23. Plan for Technical Problems
Problematic situations may occur where traffic is too heavy for your website to handle, visitors can opt for the same request, website crashes, or people may face issues with the checkout process.
Arrange a dedicated development team to solve technical issues on sale day.
24. Plan for Long Lines
A good sale is defined by more customers, increasing average order value, and getting more orders to your store.
When people are rushing the line to claim their offers, you have to be ready to handle them without any issues in terms of the supply chain and communication.
25. Follow-up campaigns
Continue engaging customers with post-Black Friday promotions. Also, evaluate sales performance to identify trends and areas for improvement.
Update your strategy based on the results to maintain long-term relationships with customers.
Finish this Black Friday checklist to increase your WooCommerce store sales.
Finish this Black Friday checklist to increase your WooCommerce store sales.
Offer personalized discounts only to specific customers or create discounts over the amount using Discount Rules to increase sales.
Wrapping Up
Implement these Black Friday checklist steps to prepare your WooCommerce store for the big sale day and increase your sales and revenue.
Also, use digital marketing tools like Google Analytics, Search Console, and heat map software to analyze the performance of your WooCommerce website and app during shopping day sales.
Also, don’t forget to customize your discount strategy using the “Discount Rules for WooCommerce -Pro” plugin, as personalized discounts create a path for enhanced customer experience and increased sales.
Also Read:
- Black Friday Marketing: How To Prepare Your WooCommerce Store?
- 7 Actionable Tips to Retain WooCommerce Black Friday Customers
The first Friday after Thanksgiving in the United States is celebrated as Black Friday, which starts the year’s holiday shopping season.
The Friday sales extend till Monday (the Cyber Monday sale) or for a week (the Cyber Week sale).
For all businesses, especially e-commerce businesses of all sizes and industries, Black Friday has become one of the most profitable days in Cyber Week sales.
Black Friday is coming on 29th November 2024 (Friday).
A Black Friday (marketing) strategy helps online sellers create business and marketing goals to increase sales for the big sale day.
Here is a quick step guide to increasing Black Friday sales:
1. Start planning early for your sales campaign.
2. Check your inventory
3. Revamp your website
4. Build a dedicated customer support team
5. Create attractive discount offers
6. Provide a smooth checkout process and deliver products on time as promised.
7. Implement different marketing strategies to boost your average order value and sales.
Usually, Black Friday sales start on Friday. But nowadays, online store owners begin sales on Wednesday, called the Black Week sale, to grab the audience’s attention.
Also, products and marketing preparation can start from October to run a successful promotional event on Black Friday.
