Black Friday Checklist for Online Businesses (BFCM 2024)

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Black Friday is a crucial day for the ecommerce business year. It presents a huge opportunity for online merchants to increase their bottom line, boost their brand, and gain new paying customers. And while Black Friday may only be one day of the year, or a week depending on your brand’s discretion, it’s an important marker of the start of the holiday shopping season, so you want to get Black Friday right.

Last year, Black Friday generated $9.8 billion in U.S. online sales alone, up 7.5% from the previous year, breaking the record. Nowadays, what started in the U.S. is a global shopping phenomenon, bringing more opportunities for businesses outside of North America.

Because of Black Friday’s crucial significance, we always say it’s never too early to start planning and strategizing. This year, Black Friday kicks off on Nov 29, and to make the most of this busy online selling period, preparation is key. 

With that said, here’s Ecommerce Pro’s practical steps to help you get ready for Black Friday and ensure your ecommerce store thrives throughout the Black Friday shopping craze and even throughout the holiday shopping season.

1. Plan Your Promotions

The very top of the checklist is to plan out your sales and promotions because that’s what Black Friday is all about. Black Friday shoppers are shopping for discounts and attractive promotions and they are quite ready to spend more money and buy more than at any other time of the year. These deals and discounts are what excite consumers about Black Friday, so make sure to plan your sales strategy ahead of time.

Planning for a sale takes time, so don’t wait until the last minute to start organizing. Way before Black Friday hits, you need to decide on products you'll discount and determine whether you want to run special promos that involve things like product bundles or buy-one-take-one. Also, determine the start and end dates for your sales. Some brands opt to do pre-Black Friday sales and even extended sales into the holiday season.

Black Friday discounts typically range from 20% to 25% which helps businesses turn a profit due to the significant increase in average purchase value.

2. Optimize Your Website for Traffic

Black Friday is a busy time defined by a flurry of activity and traffic for online stores. Because of this increase in website traffic, you need to ascertain that your website is capable of handling the surge. Black Friday is the last day that you would want to deal with a site crash, ending you with frustrated customers and a loss of sales.

If you run your ecommerce business on the Shopify platform, you're in great hands, as Shopify’s robust infrastructure is designed to manage high traffic volumes that allow you to coast through Black Friday effortlessly ensuring minimal downtime.

Shopify boasts an impressive uptime of 99.99%, which means your store will remain operational during peak shopping periods. However, it's still crucial to optimize your site by compressing large images, minimizing redirects, and ensuring your checkout process is as streamlined as possible to provide a smooth, fast shopping experience for customers.

3. Update Your Inventory

When conducting Black Friday prep, store owners need to go over their inventory and ask themselves whether they're ready to meet the demands of their customers. Black Friday can come with an unexpected surge and demand for your most popular products, so it’s crucial to update and manage your inventory. To ensure a smooth shopping experience and maximize sales, it's essential to have a solid inventory strategy in place.

Start by analyzing past sales data to identify which products are likely to be in high demand during Black Friday. Use Shopify's inventory management tools to keep a close watch on your stock levels, ensuring you're well-prepared to meet customer expectations. Overestimating demand is better than underestimating it, as running out of stock too early can result in lost sales and disappointed customers.

4. Create a Marketing Strategy

Marketing is crucial and can be done only once you’ve had all your promotions and sales already lined up and planned. Having a solid marketing strategy is what’s going to help you maximize the reach and impact of your Black Friday sales on Shopify.

Start by outlining a targeted marketing campaign that aims to build anticipation and excitement about your deals. Also, consider taking your marketing strategy to a multi-channel level, taking the time and effort to use email marketing, social media, and even paid targeted ads to really max out your reach.

Email marketing is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal, which we talk about in one of our articles How to Increase Black Friday Sales With These 8 Email Campaigns. You can use email marketing to inform your existing customers about upcoming sales, exclusive offers, and any early-bird deals. 

Social media is another essential, non-negotiable component of your Black Friday marketing strategy. Leverage platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok to share teaser posts, countdowns, and engaging content that encourages sharing and interaction.

Paid ads on these platforms can also help you reach a broader audience, targeting specific demographics and interests to drive traffic to your Shopify store.

By going for combined and diverse multi-channel marketing efforts, you can create an effective marketing strategy for the Black Friday marketing campaign's success.

5. Enhance the Checkout Process

Before Black Friday comes around, go over your checkout process from the perspective of the shopper, and try to pinpoint ways in which you can make checkout more streamlined and quick. Any friction during the checkout process needs to be done away with because any moment of friction can hamper the customer journey, leading to abandoned carts and lost opportunities.

If you are running your online business on the Shopify platform, they’ve got you covered on the checkout process, because Shopify happens to have the best-converting checkout in the online shopping world. Shopify checkout converts up to 36% better than other ecommerce platforms, having fine-tuned the checkout process to be as quick, streamlined, and intuitive as possible.

6. Prepare Your Customer Support Team

With the surge of customers on Black Friday comes an even higher instance of customers reaching out with questions and concerns. Because of this, it’s important to make sure that your customer support team is ready to handle the increased volume of questions regarding returns and any other issues.

Make sure to provide customers with easy access to support over various channels, including live chat, email, and live calls. You may even want to consider hiring an extra hand over the holiday shopping season to carry you through.

Alternatively, you can make use of an AI chatbot, which is a solution ever-increasing in popularity as the technology evolves.

Besides having various channels for customers to contact you, make sure to brush up on your FAQ page before Black Friday hits, making sure to include the questions and answers that customers are going to be more likely to ask during the rush.

7. Update Your Homepage

Update your homepage to reflect your Black Friday sale with the appropriate “theme”. Doing so will allow you to capture the excitement Behind Black Friday and immediately draw customers' attention to your special offers and discounts, making it easy for them to navigate your deals and start shopping right away.

Consider using bold, high-contrast colors to highlight your deals, utilizing them across banners or hero images featuring product showcases or discounts. Incorporate imagery that conveys the holiday shopping spirit, like festive decorations or dynamic sale countdowns, to create a sense of urgency.

If you wish to come up with creative designs yourself, consider using Canva or hiring a graphic artist. You can also make use of Shopify’s theme editor to then make changes to your online store.

8. Include Buy Now Pay Later Payment Methods

Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) solutions are increasing in popularity, with over 37% of shoppers having used a BNPL payment option to make purchases. The reason behind the growing popularity of BNPL is that it allows your customers to manage their funds and still make their needed purchases.

BNPL allows customers to split their purchases and pay in installments over time. With trusted and widely recognized services like Klarna and Afterpay growing in popularity, BNLP financing is becoming easier and more accessible to all Shoppers.

Shopify also has its own native buy now pay later solution through Shop Pay Installments.

9. Polish Your Post Sale Strategy

After every sale you make comes the opportunity to build long-term relationships with the customers who made purchases—this is why post-sale strategies are so important, they’re filled with customer relationship-building opportunities.

Begin your post-sale strategy by sending automated, yet personalized thank-you emails, which can include strategies to keep customers loyal, like an attached discount code for their next purchase or a recommendation for complementary products.

Additionally, you should also analyze the sales data from Black Friday to identify any trends, like customer preferences and top-selling products. You can use this data to refine next year’s strategy so you come back better every time.

Gathering feedback and reviews are also part of the post-sale strategy. User-generated feedback or UGC is valuable, not only for your brand’s improvement but also as a tool to influence the purchase decisions of future potential customers, swaying them towards a purchase decision.

10. Test Everything

Before Black Friday comes along, it’s crucial to test and make sure that everything is going smoothly before the day arrives. You can begin by reviewing your website’s performance and checking for any potential issues with loading speeds, mobile responsiveness, and the overall user experience. Remember that slow websites that are difficult to navigate undoubtedly lead to abandoned carts— especially during high-traffic periods like Black Friday.

So make sure to test out every link, and button, and refine the checkout process to be sure that everything is running as smoothly as can be. Don’t forget to test your marketing emails and promotional codes, verifying that they apply correctly. Finally, conduct a mock purchase from start to finish, so you can recognize and remove any potential roadblocks to the buying process and remove them.

Conclusion

Black Friday is just around the corner and it signifies more than just a day of sales—it’s a day that poses a significant opportunity for all ecommerce merchants to attract new paying customers and set the right tone for the entire holiday shopping period.

By following some of the tips we mentioned above, you can be better prepared to minimize and face some of the challenges that come with Black Friday. From planning your promotions to refining your post-sale strategies each step is designed to ensure that your Shopify store thrives during the Black Friday rush.

Don't miss out on Black Friday 2024! Let Ecommerce Pro—trusted Shopify Expert Agency, help you craft a winning strategy. Contact us today.

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