Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) 2021 is right around the corner, with many brands already launching their site’s deals. The biggest shopping event of the year is expected to compete with last year’s record-breaking numbers as Shopify merchants made a whopping $5.1 billion USD in sales during BFCM in 2020, up 76% from 2019.
“In 2020, desktop orders were at 49%, while smartphones accounted for 43%, and experts don’t see those numbers dropping this year.”
Experts are anticipating this year’s holiday shopping experience will dominate in the ecommerce space again. Shoppers are likely to do the majority of their shopping through digital, with the state of the global pandemic still lingering. In 2020, desktop orders were at 49%, while smartphones accounted for 43%, and experts don’t see those numbers dropping this year.
Is your business prepared for this year’s rush of traffic to your online storefront? We’re sharing best practices to ensure a seamless experience to your users and your business for this year’s BFCM event.
1. Prepare for incoming traffic
- Ensure your site’s servers are prepared for the peak amount of incoming traffic to avoid any site crashes.
- Restock inventory to avoid long wait times and frustrated customers.
- Update any third-party integrations.
- Prepare your mobile storefront and user face. Make sure if you have primarily mobile users that you’re optimizing landing page images and functionality to ensure a seamless experience.
2. Create a stress-free customer experience
- Test your site’s speed. Holiday shopping can be a stressful experience for shoppers and they do not want to feel like they are wasting time on your site.
- Keep the user experience simple. Allow users to click through their shopping experience before asking them to provide any information for your database.
- Personalize the experience. Give customers a unique and memorable experience on your site for customer retention purposes. (Ex. Live chat feature to offer real time assistance, offer product recommendations based on what the customer has purchased in the past, different discount codes, etc.)
- Have a clear return policy. Save your customer service team the hassle down the road and clearly state your return and exchange policies on your online site prior to the customer completing their purchase.
3. Optimize the checkout experience
- Simplify checkout to one page. Have all checkout related forms on a single page to make the process easier and quicker for the shopper - rather than having to load a new page for each checkout form.
- Enable guest checkout or simple login for returning customers. First time customers may not feel comfortable giving all their information upfront while returning customers want a quick and seamless checkout without having to add all their information in every time.
- Offer several payment options. The last thing customers want to see is that you don’t offer their preferred choice of payment method.
- Offer a variety of shipping options. Ensuring this selection at checkout will help make the purchase decision easier for shoppers, especially when they include estimated delivery dates, prices, BOPIS offers, etc.
4. Prepare your marketing strategies and efforts
- Plan your email marketing strategy. Sending promotional emails is a key part of getting your deals out there to your customers. Get the word out early about what your business is going to be offering so customers are ready to shop immediately once it starts.
- Lean on social media. Provide engaging, high-quality content with the use of product tags, hashtags, and a shoppable link in bio to create an easy shopping experience.
- Leverage paid advertising. Paid advertising can boost visibility to your target audience - making purchases more likely. This strategy can also help drive traffic across all channels.
If you haven’t done so already, prepare your business with these top-level practices to ensure your business is ready for this year’s holiday season. Stay tuned as we will be recapping this year’s BFCM event later this year.
