The end of the year marks not only a drop in temperature but also a massive drop in online shopping prices, thanks to sales extravaganzas like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Customers wait all year round for these events, filling their carts with long-awaited deals while businesses brace themselves for a chaotic yet rewarding season ahead. For any e-commerce store, this season can help make record-breaking profits.
However, this success doesn’t come by chance, and it is the proper planning that can help you make your way through. From ensuring that you attract the right customers to having a website that runs seamlessly, the most minor details are what will make quite significant differences. So, if you are a new business owner who wants to stay ahead of the game, we have got you covered. This checklist not only will help you survive the chaos and shopping frenzy of the season but will ensure you thrive in it. Keep on reading!
A Checklist Guide to a Successful Black Friday and Cyber Monday
There’s a lot that goes into planning a successful Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale kickoff. Hence, it is essential to consider all of this before the season starts. Here is a list of things you need to check off to ensure that your holiday season comes bearing excellent sales and profits for your e-commerce store:
Plan Like a Pro
The holiday rush isn’t the time to adopt a ‘go with the flow’ approach; instead, it’s about planning your strategy. Set your goals and prepare your marketing calendar to stock up on your inventory – the earlier you have everything covered, the smoother your season will be.
However, does being late means it’s a doom on your wish to have a successful season? Well, certainly not. Being slightly late is better than never showing up. With innovative moves and focused effort, even a last-minute strategy can help you pull off a surprisingly successful season. So, lock it in and plan like a pro.
Learn from Last Year
Last year’s sales numbers aren’t a history on your business account, but a roadmap to success. Before the season starts, review your analytics and note down your top-selling products, as well as identify areas where you believe you might have lost customers. Use all this information to make more informed decisions this time around.
Ask yourself questions like, ‘What is your top-selling product year-round?’ Be sure to stock up on extra. Was your website acting up last year? Ensure the bug is fixed to improve customer interaction. All these nitty-gritty details can undoubtedly help make the holiday sale stories a success.
Keep an Eye on the Competition
You didn’t believe you were the only one cooking up for a perfect sale season, right? Well, because your competitors would be right on your heels, it is also essential to keep an eye on them. Pay attention to their offers, promotions, and shipping perks.
Knowing all these essential details will help you analyze what you are competing against in the market and introduce deals that will help you stand out from the crowd. However, avoid being a copycat too, and have your own uniqueness while ensuring you get an edge in sales. This might sound hard, but with the right approach, nothing will stop you from having a great season.
Unleash Creative Promos
Discounts are offered all year round, so the holiday sales won’t cut with just boring discounts. You need to think outside the box with tactics such as flash sales, mystery deals, bundles, and even small gift-with-purchase offers. The better and more unique your promotion offers are, the harder it will be for the customer not to tap the purchase button
Remember, creativity will help add fun to their shopping experience, turning them into loyal customers. Plus, if you ask us, we love it when a surprise deal pops into our carts at checkout, so your targeted audience will too.
Polish your Website
As an online business seller, your website is essentially your storefront and your holy grail. Hence, ensure it represents you well. Before the season starts, review any bugs and broken links that need to be fixed and test the speed of your website’s load. A slow and glitchy website will only put off your customers, causing them to tap on the back button, and no business wants to lose customers to glitchy websites, right?
Additionally, it’s a smart idea to give the website a festive touch in line with the seasonal sale.
Make it Mobile-Ready
Most people shop online directly from their phones. Hence, it is important to ensure that your site looks good and works smoothly on these pocket-friendly devices. Start by testing every button, page, and form for a seamless mobile experience, and get things fixed wherever you feel like they may be lacking. Remember that a thumb-friendly design, easy-to-scroll pages, and quick-loading product websites are the key to winning better sales in this modern era of technology, and you need to make the best use of them.
Simplify Checkout and Shipping
No one likes complicated websites and hard checkout processes. Hence, it’s advisable to keep the last step on your shopping website sweet and simple too. Add multiple payment options for users to choose from and offer other benefits like free or fast shipping services if you can.
Moreover, make the checkout process rather effortless because the fewer hoops the customers have to jump through, the more likely they are to go through wth the purchase. Also, always give your customers the ability to track their orders. This will help them keep coming back to the website again and again, anticipating their orders.
Master the Emails and Social Buzz
If you promote better and keep the anticipation building up, your audience will likely visit your website when the season arrives. So, keep dropping in those reminders. Build excitement through teaser emails, sale countdowns, and sneak peeks into what you have to offer through your social media handles.
Make it creative so that when the sale season launches in full swing, your brand becomes impossible to ignore for the customer crowd out there. Remember, there are multiple brands that will be flooding customers with similar deals around this time. Hence, it is important for you to master the art of emails and creating the art of social buzz and eye-catching visuals to stand out in the crowd.
Think Global, Sell Global
Who said the holiday deals should only be for your local audience? It is a time of celebrations, and everyone should be included in it. So, if it is possible for you, start by offering international shipping for your overseas customers. Ensure that your website displays the prices of products in multiple currencies to make online shopping easier for them too. A global audience allows a global boost in sales, and hence it is recommended to include them in the holiday spirit whenever you can.
Keep Shoppers Coming Back
Do you think that once a customer has purchased from you, your relationship with them ends? Well, no. Online shopping is much more than just a goodbye at checkout. Send thank-you emails to your customers for the new purchase and offer loyalty rewards from time to time. The Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals might bring customers in, but a good follow-up will keep them with you. So, make sure to plant the seed just right to benefit from it even after the blossoming of the season’s sheds.
NextSmartShip – Your Secret Weapon for Black Friday and Cyber Monday
If there is one thing businesses can’t afford during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping frenzy, it is delays, errors, and shopping chaos. Hence, in such times, NextSmartShips comes in as a saviour with its ultimate 3PL secret weapon. From inventory management and streamlined order fulfillment to quick and reliable shopping internationally, NextSmartShip has your logistics off your plate for you so that you can focus on other important aspects of sales.
NextSmartShip uses technology-driven solutions and incorporates them into flexible warehousing and smooth last-mile delivery. All of this helps ensure that the customers get their orders quickly and accurately despite the busiest seasons of the year. So, if you are a new business or running an e-commerce business in the market that wants a support system on your backend, we highly advise that you check out NextSmartShip today.
Wrapping Up!
If you are someone who is planning on making the most of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, then we hope this checklist was helpful for keeping you on the right track. For any additional help, we highly suggest that you check out NextSmartShip, a 3PL service, which helps keep a stock of your goods and ensures that they are delivered on time anywhere across the globe.