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It's never too soon to plan your plans prior to Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) which is the largest shopping period in the entire year. The two shopping seasons are experiencing substantial growth over the past year, so you'll have be prepared for increased traffic to websites and more ad rivalry compared to prior seasons.

No matter if you're the first to try organizing Black Friday Cyber Monday sales or you've been there before so you'll need to begin making your plans for the year now ahead of time, and you can use the following Black Friday checklist to get going.

In order to help you prepare for the season to come We've broken down this e-commerce Black Friday checklist into two parts -- the checklist for customer engagement along with the list for managing the back-end systems.

Black Friday list of items Engagement with customers

Let's start with the customer engagement list.

Start earlier

Really?

Start preparations early, so you are able to begin the implementation of your strategies for marketing sooner to improve revenue.

Create a Black Friday counter-narrative

Black Friday sales will start when you'd like them to. The public is beginning to realize that this. Therefore, you should create a anti-Black Friday throughout the days leading up to it.

"Why wait? It's time to buy now Take advantage of these incredible offers and get your purchase done early."

The marketing strategy not averse to Black Friday could promote advantages such as getting an early start on your holiday shopping, checking off your list of items before the crowds, and then laughing in your relaxed contentment through December, despite all the bustling buyers since you've got it all done already.

Add this to an array of ever-changing specials as well as bargains throughout the month that lead up to Black Friday.

Make sure you reach your customers

You can do this with different product lines as well as run multiple advertisements, including the search engine Google as well as different social platforms.

Imagine owning an online retailer that offers health food products.

A specific category of products includes protein-rich breakfast bars. Other categories include dairy-free as well as gluten-free snack products. Another category includes all-natural nutrient-rich products. These products can be marketed using your main brand's language Naturally.

What does the audience of the goods? What is important to them? Include that message into the content you create to create the Black Friday marketing content and your customers will be more active and boost sales.

Choose the products you want to highlight this year

If you're selling a lot of products, don't do blanket Black Friday sales that will reduce your profit. Instead, highlight specific merchandise with great deals to increase sales by using the opportunity to bring customers to your store.

If you're able to encourage additional purchases beyond Black Friday discounts, you'll increase the average value of purchases and make net profits.

If you're looking for items that are overstocked, discontinued or products which can be seasonal, they're great choices for extreme discounts as you'll be required to get them sold out eventually. Make use of items you're capable of producing in a high volume for a discounted arrangement with the supplier, and products that are in high demand, or that earn higher profit.

Additionally, consider designing specific Black Friday sale landing pages to showcase your top products, instead of just your typical product page.

What are the products you can feature that offer the most amazing Black Friday deals this year?

Develop marketing strategies that can be applied to various channels

Multichannel marketing can yield better results than focusing on just one channel. Pick at least three selling channels you intend to utilize this year in you Black Friday marketing strategy.

Channels can include, but don't have to be the sole source.

• SMS
• Social media: all platforms. This includes Facebook, X, TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest
• Direct mail
• Radio and TV
• YouTube, streaming video online and YouTube

Don't forget to design optimized landing pages and track the web traffic you get from your selected channels.

Prepare follow-up marketing strategies for implementation

Another important aspect to make money through Black Friday, Cyber Monday as well as the remainder of the holiday shopping season is communicating with prospective clients who visit your site in the festive season.

Sure, a lot of Black Friday shoppers will come, buy, go, only to never see them again. But you can win some of them. You can then convert these into loyal and repeat customers.

Create a welcome email series. Start sending consistent email marketing. It is important to classify your new customers based on the items they've already purchased as well as any other details you've gathered concerning them based upon their first buying experience. Involve them with new and relevant content throughout the course of the year.

Do you have a plan of action for marketing in place to Black Friday?

Use emails to get your message out early and often

In preparation to prepare for Black Friday this year, create emails to market your business to target your different customer segments prior to the Christmas shopping rush. You want them thinking about your company before many competitors on the internet start to compete for attention. It's important for them to purchase from you. others with small companies are awake and realizing they didn't plan ahead to prepare for Black Friday.

The first marketing email is likely to be sent to subscribers by the end of October. Inboxes of emails begin to fill up by the close of November. Thus, if you make use of email to begin with seeds and provide the most attractive deals before the peak, you'll increase the sales of your business, as well as improve the brand's reputation and build loyal customers.

Create eye-catching visuals

On your product pages and page that you'll use to attract customers or the landing page will be designed for the items you've chosen to show off it is essential to use photographs that have high resolution to attract the attention of your visitors and enable them to touch the product with their hands.

Make the abandoned cart email addresses

Setting up these in advance to Black Friday will give you the chance to try out your strategies and determine which marketing strategies and offers are most effective for your online store.

Your ad campaign can be broken down into three components

There's a number of items you need to cross off from the Black Friday checklist, and it's easy to get overwhelmed. To help you organize your activities and knowing which items to prioritize, you can split the entire event into three fundamental components.

This is the very first stage before Black Friday. It begins when you wish it to start and will end at Black Friday.

Next comes the actual day. It can be a long weekend or in the next week if you're doing the whole Cyber Week. The definition of "day'.

Everything that follows following what happens after the Black Friday period is the following stage in your marketing plan.

Black Friday is only a single day. Marketing strategies will need to cover the entire time.

Have you broken down your Black Friday promotions campaign into three segments?

Update or create your return policy

If you've managed your e-commerce company for some time then you've probably got this. If not, now is the perfect right moment to create an account. In case you already have one, perhaps you've discovered that the model you've got is outdated.

• Return of products that have been delivered. Do you need original packaging with the item in perfect condition, or. ?
• The policy of refund. Does the customer receive their refund either in store credit or something else?
• Clear deadlines. How long can they be returned for complete refunds or credits?
• The shipping address. What address will they utilize to ship back the items?
• Contact information. How can I best make it easier for customers to contact you regarding additional issues?

And, your return policy needs to be publicized as frequently as relevant. It should be within the confirmation email for orders which is sent after the purchase is made. It must be printed and placed in the product that is delivered. It should be placed on your site, and should be easily accessible, such as on the footer of your website, on the FAQ page or on products pages.

Have you updated your Return policy?

Offer faster shipping alternatives

The time for shipping can be extended during the season of shopping, as shoppers typically demand speedy delivery services.

Based on an 2021 Baymard study from 2021, 19 percent of the carts lost are because delays in delivery. Offering quicker shipping options could decrease the amount of sales. It is a particularly effective approach during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Fast delivery methods incentivize the customers and guarantee that they receive their products on time during a season where delivery times may be delayed due to the huge amount of orders that carriers have to process.

Consider offering the possibility of buying Now or pay Later

The option is available on the checkout page. But you can also mention this option on the product page, the home page, on your landing page or wherever else you believe it will assist customers in overcoming any objections to pricing and keep them buying.

Utilize the chatbot

Chatbots help with customer service and can boost sales. Many times, customers have questions that a chatbot can solve. If they're able to solve a few problems resolved, they'll be able to complete the purchase.

If they have to look up the email address of an individual, look through forums for help, or sit and wait for live chat agents to contact them, they're likely to leave the whole process and look other places.

If you're able to achieve it the chatbot can help ease the buying process without more customer service staff.

Check out data from the calendar year before. Black Friday sales data

It's commonplace to look at each year as a new project. It is a new beginning and we make a new start without the benefit of the hindsight.

But, if you've operating an online business for a long time and have run Black Friday marketing campaigns before then you've probably gathered some information. There's some data you've gathered before. Certain of the things you've tried in the past may have performed well.

Before you go too far in your plans for the year ahead, take a look back at your last year's results. Was it a good year? What was not?

Do you have the potential to replicate your successes in the past year? Can you improve the areas where you failed?

Black Friday list Black Friday checklist backend systems

Now, let's move on into our Black Friday checklist items that people don't often see but you can count on for customers to make purchases, and to have an pleasurable Black Friday shopping experience.

Improve the speed of your site

90% of users are likely to leave the site if it is loading quickly. Site speed should be the top priority all year round however it is especially crucial when you anticipate the growth of traffic. There are a few simple actions to follow if your are experiencing slow loading on your website.

• Test your website performance. Determine the areas that require to be improved by conducting the speed test. Applications such as Pingdom and Page Speed Insights will show the speed at which it loads and the performance it has in certain areas.
• Implement a content delivery network (CDN). A CDN serves your site's files from high-speed, dedicated, and geographically-distributed data centers. Content will be cached from the CDN server nearest them that minimizes load time and decreases capacity and burden on servers. Jetpack offers the possibility of having a free CDN in addition, and in contrast to other providers, users are able to setup and install your Jetpack CDN with just a single button.
• Improve your image. Even if you're making use of the CDN that optimizes your files to your specifications, it's an ideal practice to upload the smallest quantity of images you require while maintaining a high-quality resolution. Exporting for web with Photoshop and using the free images resizing tools and optimization software such as ImageOptim are easy ways to prepare your photos to use online.
• Switch the hosting company you use. If you're on shared servers, your site may be slower to load, especially when other websites which are hosted connected to the server receive large volumes of traffic. It is recommended to consider using an online server (VPS) or dedicated server.

There are many other ways to speed up the speed of your store.

Are your eCommerce websites operating as fast as they should be?

Create synchronized inventory and pages for products.

Speed up and simplify the checkout process

The checkout process might be working, but is it efficient and user-friendly? It is your goal to make your checkout process as simple as is possible with minimal distractions in order to encourage customers to finish their purchase. Some things you could implement to make your checkout more efficient include:

• Remove visually cluttered. Eliminate header and menus for footers and widgets on the sidebar and any other distractions on the checkout page, so that customers remain focused on completing the purchase.

You should be ready to fulfill orders and get the items shipped by the deadline

Do your dropshippers and suppliers equipped to handle the increased demand? Are you able to increase production when the demand exceeds your expectations?

Although this can be an issue that you should face, you shouldn't waste the chance to boost your profits and attract new clients since the supply chain gets overwhelmed.

If you're looking to expand production ahead of the holiday season, be sure to get your order in with the suppliers you use for your materials in advance. This is particularly important if the products you manufacture by another firm -- in particular, when they are manufactured overseas. Some companies are taking orders from retailers in preparation for Black Friday sales as well Make sure that you make sure you secure your purchase prior to the date. If you don't, you may be faced with higher prices or be out of stock things.

If you're using a third-party logistics provider (3PL) to ship your goods, review historic sales and shipping trends for your items and ask for them to move your inventory into warehouses located near to locations where you tend to do the most commercial business. This can speed up delivery to your customers. If speedy delivery is essential for your business, ask your 3PL to deliver frequent shipments and choose companies that provide the most rapid delivery time.

In addition, you could need hire more employees or make additional hours to accommodate the anticipated increase of production during the holiday season. This is particularly important when it comes to production of hand-crafted products or at your facility. But even if your production is outsourced, you could require more the customer service and fulfillment of orders Marketing, customer service and much more.

Gather customer information to ensure that they are followed-up by marketing

In the past, we talked about preparing to follow on if you're able to attract new clients this year that haven't previously visited your e-commerce store in the past.

You can't do that without collecting the information of your customers.

If you're shipping items then it's likely they'll give you their mailing address. Direct mail marketing, and follow-up costs significantly more than digital marketing and follow-up and, consequently, you must be able follow-up by email or perhaps SMS as well.

To do this customers should be given the chance to decide whether they wish to. The best place to make this happen is on the checkout page. On the checkout page, you will be able to request their email address along with their phone number. It is important to have their permission to contact the customer via SMS or email. Make the phone number non-negotiable so to ensure that people who haven't signed up for text messages will not be confused.

However, not everyone is willing to agree this is perfectly fine, as some might. In the event that they agree, immediately begin your follow-up marketing campaign.

Are you prepared to collect email addresses and phone numbers?

Convert tracking can be installed

It's important to track customer behavior and how well your marketing strategies perform over Black Friday and the rest of the holiday season in order to be able to make changes next year.

Make sure your website is safe

An easy and efficient way to enhance your website's security is to set up your security plug-in. Jetpack offers free protection against attacks using brute force which can stop the attack, which is one of the most popular kinds of hacking techniques as well as 2-factor authentication to safeguard your login method. In addition Jetpack's WordPress security plugin offers routine backups, regular malware scans and monitoring of downtime for spam detection, among various other options.

Make sure your site works across all devices and browsers.

Your store's website must appear correctly on desktop devices including tablets, mobile phones and the most popular browsers. You can check this with the devices you have, however you'll also need to check what your store looks like using a browser and device emulator, such as LambdaTest.

Although you may not be able ensure that your site looks and performs flawlessly across every platform and device You can utilize devices like Google Analytics to determine which the browsers and platforms your users use. Then, you can focus your energy to test and modify your site to make sure it functions on your chosen platforms.

Does your site's mobile-friendly and accessible to as many devices as is

Verify the key purposes of your site

Set up your scheduled sales and coupons

It is possible to reduce stress and anxiety that comes with the biggest holiday shopping time of the year through doing all you can in the months before.

It's straightforward to establish your sales and coupons ahead of time. Once you've decided which products will have sales and when you'll be able to offer particular flash sales or deals, and also what the prices will be with time, you'll be in a position to make coupons and other backend support systems that will ensure that sales are successful. If you're providing a free item with purchase, make certain the products are in stock.

You should make sure that you mention Black Friday bargains in your online shop

It is impossible for customers to benefit from sales without knowing about it. If your visitors come to your website naturally, or bring them to your site through emails or paid advertisements, it is crucial to be aware how much sales you've made.

There are many ways for achieving this:

• Make pop-ups to announce the sale, and an invitation to action as well as a button that takes direct to the sale.
• Add a banner to your website to advertise your sale.
• Incorporate your "Black Friday Deals" menu item in your website's navigation.
• Include sale items on the shop's sidebar.
• The icon for showing sales is on the thumbnails of your items.

Create your Customer Service Software

Even though you'll have to hire more people to support your sales and your customer service department in the weeks that lead up on Black Friday, onboarding and the education of employees on temporary contracts can be difficult and lengthy. Other ways are available to boost customer support as well as the hiring of temporary workers.

Here are three customer service methods to try this year.

Give a range of choices for the customers

In addition to direct line assistance - which you are required to provide in the event you can provide it, there are other ways for customers to find answers to their questions.

• FAQs or knowledge base. Help customers help themselves by providing a quickly accessible and easy to navigate FAQ pages or a knowledge base
• Utilize a customer support Contact form. Let people get contact with the customer service team by email with a contact form. Make use of conditional logic dependent on the inquiry type, to direct questions from the customer to the correct email address.
• It is possible to put AI chatbots into action.Filter out some of the most frequently asked inquiries for example "How much does shipping cost?" or "Do you deliver to my country?" by using or "Do you deliver to my country?" using an AI chatbot. This will save your customer staff valuable time and provide customers with rapid solutions to even the most basic of queries.

Utilize a customer relationship management software (CRM)

CRMs can help you track the interactions of your customers with you and help deal with customer support issues, check leads and increase sales to your customers.

Jetpack CRM is a lightweight and user-friendly tool that is capable of being integrated directly into your dashboard. There are no contact limits and it's one of the most cost-effective CRM options available to store owners.

     Be sure that your customers service procedures and FAQs are current.    

Examine the guidelines for customer service, and make sure they're up-to-date. If you have any particular processes or offers that employees should be aware of during Black Friday and Cyber Monday Make a note of them and certain that your employees have access to them. In a casual gathering for a review of your processes approximately a week before the announcement on your Black Friday deals may help to keep these procedures in mind for your staff.

After you've simplified your customer service experience for guests as well as for your staff, it's likely that you require additional help from you during the holiday season. But maximizing your current team's efficiency can reduce the number of seasonal staff you'll require.

Are you prepared for Christmas shopping time?

It's a Black Friday checklist may seem to be an effort to plan for a sale that only lasts a few days. But, the guidelines weren't meant to be only for a single weekend.

When you've put them in your place, a lot of these methods and systems are going to help you keep your company's online presence every single day. If you stay on top of all these items on your checklist all through the year, then you don't be required to do lots of work as the Christmas season approaches next year.

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