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Black Friday Ecommerce: How to Prepare Your Online Store for Holiday Sales

Black Friday Ecommerce

Black Friday sees *everyone* on the lookout for amazing bargains each year. This shopping rush just keeps growing. The National Retail Federation states, “about 180 million Americans shopped online or in stores during Black Friday weekend in 2021.” With such vast participation, it’s hard to miss.

For eCommerce brands, Black Friday and Cyber Monday can be a make-or-break moment. A successful holiday season can mean the difference between a strong year and a record-breaking one. But with so much competition, how can you make sure your online store stands out? The answer is simple: PLANNING AND PREPARATION!

If you’re an eCommerce business, it’s time to start preparing your online store for the year’s biggest shopping day. Whatever platform you’re using—Amazon, Shopify, eBay, Etsy, or your website—follow these tips to ensure you’re ready for a surge in traffic and sales.

In this guide, we’ll run down the most important things you need to do to prepare your online store for Black Friday and how our product photo editing team can help.

In this Guide:

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How to Create a Black Friday eCommerce Strategy

From your product images to your website copy, everything about your online store should be geared toward conversion. That means creating a clear and concise Black Friday eCommerce strategy that covers all the bases.

Your Black Friday eCommerce strategy should answer the following questions:

  • What are you selling?
  • Who is your target customer?
  • What are your Black Friday sale goals?
  • What kind of discounts or promotions will you offer?
  • When will your sale start and end?
  • How will you promote your sale?

Answering these questions will help you develop a clear action plan for your Black Friday eCommerce sale. It will also ensure that your team is on the same page and that everyone knows what needs to be done to make the sale successful.

Now let’s take a closer look at each of these questions and how you can use them to create a winning Black Friday eCommerce strategy.

How to Create a Black Friday eCommerce Strategy

What are You Selling?

This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s important to have a clear understanding of the products you’ll be selling during your Black Friday sale. After all, everything else about your eCommerce strategy—from your marketing campaigns to your website design—will be based on the products you’re offering.

To get started, list the products you’ll be putting on discount during your sale. Are you going to do product bundles? Which items do you plan to bundle? Do you have new products you want to push? Be as specific as possible.

Who is Your Target Customer?

Your target customer is the key to a successful Black Friday eCommerce strategy. To create an effective marketing campaign and website design, you need to have a clear understanding of who your target customer is.

What are your Black Friday Sale Goals?

Setting clear and attainable goals is essential. Without specific goals, it will be difficult to measure your success and determine whether or not your sale was a success.

Some of the key metrics you should be measuring include:

  • Increasing website traffic
  • Boosting conversion rates
  • Generating revenue
  • Increasing average order value (AOV)
  • Reducing cart abandonment
  • Building your email list

What kind of Discounts or Promotions will you Offer?

When it comes to Black Friday discounts, there are a few things you need to keep in mind. First, you don’t want to discount your products so much that you’re not making a profit. Second, you don’t want to discount your products so little that it’s not worth the customer’s time and effort to buy from you.

To strike the perfect balance, start by evaluating your margins. How much can you afford to discount your products without losing money? Once you have an idea of how much wiggle room you have, start planning your discounts and promotions.

Some Black Friday sale ideas include:

When will Your Sale Start and End?

The timing of your sale is also important. You want to start your sale early enough that you’re able to generate a lot of buzz, but not so early that customers get burned out before Black Friday even arrives.

As for the end date, you’ll want to extend your sale through Cyber Monday. This will allow you to capitalize on the post-Black Friday shopping frenzy and boost your sales even further.

How Will You Promote Your Sale?

Your promotional strategy should be based on your target customer. Where do they hang out online? What kind of messaging will resonate with them? Your promotional campaigns will be much more successful once you have a clear view of your target customer and their online behavior.

Developing a clear understanding of what you’re selling, who your target customer is, and what your goals are will lay the foundation for a successful Black Friday eCommerce strategy. Once you have this foundation in place, you can start working on the details of your sale—from the discounts and promotions, you’ll offer to how you promote your sale.

How to Prepare Your Online Store for eCommerce Black Friday

How to Prepare Your Online Store for eCommerce Black Friday

Black Friday is one of the busiest shopping days of the year. If you’re not prepared, it can be a disaster for your online store. But if you take the time to prepare and plan, you can turn Black Friday into a bonanza for your business. Here’s what you need to do to get ready:

1. Review Your Site Performance

Before Black Friday, it’s important to review your website’s performance and make sure it can handle the influx of traffic that comes with the holiday shopping season. There are a few tools you can use to check its speed and stability:
  • Google’s PageSpeed Insights: Enter your URL and see how your site performs on mobile and desktop devices.
  • Pingdom Tools: Use this tool to check your site’s load time, find out what elements are taking the longest to load, and get tips on improving your site’s performance.

2. Make Sure Your Site is Mobile-Friendly

More and more shoppers are using their smartphones and tablets to do their holiday shopping. Last year, over 60% of Black Friday online sales were made on mobile devices. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, you will likely lose out on potential sales. To make sure your site is ready for mobile shoppers, use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool. Enter your URL and see how your site stacks up.

3. Make Sure All Stock Information is Accurate

This is a good time to stock up on your most popular items and plan special deals or offers to eliminate slower-moving products. More customers visit your store on Black Friday than any other day, so the shopping experience must be as smooth and easy as possible. Make sure product pages include all relevant information, such as size, weight, and materials, to avoid any confusion or hesitation. Make sure each product has photos and videos of high quality, as well as customer reviews on the page. Believe it or not, even one review can prompt a 10% increase in sales!

4. Prepare your Product Images

Your product pages are where shoppers will make their final purchase decisions. Make sure they’re up to the task by including high-quality product photos, infographics, and videos. If you don’t have the resources to create new visuals, now is the time to hire a product photo editing company like Pixel by Hand. We have highly skilled image editors and illustrators who can help you produce as many as 100 photos per batch.

5. Create a Sense of Urgency

When it comes to Black Friday, shoppers expect deals and discounts. One way to create a sense of urgency is to offer time-sensitive deals, such as “Free shipping for the first 100 orders.” You can also use countdown timers on your product pages to let shoppers know how much time they have to take advantage of your deals. This sense of urgency will encourage them to purchase before it’s too late.

6. Optimize your Checkout Process

The holiday shopping season is the perfect time to streamline your checkout process and make it as smooth and easy as possible for customers. Start by ensuring that all your payment options are working properly. Next, look at your checkout forms and ensure they’re short and easy to fill out. The fewer fields there are, the better. Finally, make sure your “Thank You” page is optimized for conversion. This is the last page your customers will see before they complete their purchase, so make sure it includes a strong call-to-action (CTA), such as “Sign up for our newsletter” or “Follow us on social media.”

7. Set-up Abandoned Cart Emails

It’s estimated that over 70% of online shopping carts are abandoned before the purchase is complete. Common reasons for this are high shipping costs, long delivery times, and complicated checkout processes. To recover as many lost sales as possible, you need to set up abandoned cart emails. These are automated emails sent to customers who have started the checkout process but have not completed their purchase. In your abandoned cart email, include a CTA such as “Click here to complete your purchase” and a link to their shopping cart. You can also offer a discount or coupon code to sweeten the deal.

8. Review Your Shipping and Returns Policy

‘Tis the season of shipping snafus and returns galore. Make your policy clear as rum punch, so customers know what to expect. If you offer free shipping, be sure to list any restrictions, such as minimum order size or delivery time. For returns, indicate who pays for return shipping and how long customers must return.

9. Get on Social Media Marketing

Social media is a powerful marketing tool, especially during the holidays. Use it to drum up excitement for Black Friday by running contests, giving away prizes, and sharing exclusive deals. Your product images will be valuable in attracting potential customers from your social media ads to your store. But with the time crunch of the holidays, you may not have the bandwidth to produce them yourself. Outsource your product photo editing to a company like Pixel by Hand, and we’ll help you create multiple variations of your existing product images. For example, using our background removal service can help you create lifestyle images that show your products in use. We can remove the background from your current images and change it to something that better suits the purpose—whether it is for marketing or for optimizing your product listing. We can also help you color-correct your product photos for social media ads like Facebook carousels and Instagram Stories. Color correction ensures that your images look their best and that the colors are consistent across all platforms.

10. Plan for Post-Holiday Sales

Just because Black Friday and Cyber Monday are over doesn’t mean your holiday sales have to end. In fact, many retailers see a surge in sales after Christmas as people take advantage of post-holiday sales. To stay ahead of the competition, start planning your post-holiday sales now. This way, you can hit the ground running when the holidays are over. Post-holiday sales are also a great time to clear out old inventory to make room for new products. So don’t be afraid to offer deep discounts on items close to expiration or that have been sitting on your shelves for a while.

Pixel by Hand eCommerce Product Photo Editing Services

The holidays are a make-or-break time for many businesses. By following the tips in this guide, you can ensure that your eCommerce store is ready for the holiday rush. With the help of Pixel by Hand, we can help you ensure you’re prepared ahead of time with beautiful product photos that will make heads turn. We understand how busy these times get. By outsourcing your image editing services to us, you can free up your time to focus on other aspects of your business.

We offer a range of eCommerce photo editing services, such as background removal, color correction, and image retouching. To learn more about our services or to get a free quote, say Hi to us in the chatbox below!

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