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You can never start planning earlier than Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) which is the largest shopping period during the calendar year. Both seasons have experienced an increase in sales year over year and you'll have be ready to anticipate more web traffic as well as increased advertisement competition as compared with previous years.

If you're the first to try conducting Black Friday Cyber Monday sales or if you've already done it then you'll need to start developing this year's strategy right now, and you'll be able to utilize the following Black Friday checklist to get going.

For you to plan your plans to prepare for the coming season to help you plan for the upcoming season, we've divided this e-commerce Black Friday checklist into two parts -- the customer engagement checklist, and the checklist to help you manage your back-end systems.

Black Friday check list: Customer engagement

We'll start by completing the checklist for customer engagement first.

Start earlier

Really?

So, start your plan early so that you are able to implement the strategies you have planned earlier and increase your sales.

Develop an Black Friday counter-narrative

Black Friday sales will begin when you'd like them to. People are starting to understand this. Therefore, you should run a campaign that goes against Black Friday during the months preceding it.

"Why wait? Now is the time to shop and you can take advantage of these fantastic deals and get your shopping done early."

The anti-Black Friday marketing slant would push benefits like having a head start on your holiday shopping, checking off your wish list ahead of the rush, and enjoying your time in a relaxed state through December with all the shoppers in a rush because you got yours done already.

Combine this with an assortment of constantly changing specials and deals in the weeks prior to Black Friday.

Make sure you reach your audience

You can do this for multiple product lines too and make several ads that include Google and various other social media sites.

If you run an e-commerce store selling health food.

One product category features protein-enriched breakfast bars. A different category includes gluten-free and dairy-free foods. Another category includes nutritionally rich all natural items. They can be advertised with your main brand language obviously.

However, what is the ideal audience for each of the products look like? What matters to them? Use that same language into your Black Friday marketing content and you'll see more people interested and increase sales.

Identify products to feature this year

If you have a lot of items, you shouldn't run general Black Friday sales that will hurt your profits. Instead, highlight a few merchandise with great deals to increase sales by making use of them to bring an increase in customers to the store.

If you're able to encourage more purchases beyond the Black Friday discounts, you'll increase average order value as well as net profit.

If you've got overstocked items, discontinued items, or seasonal items, these make great options for extreme deals because you need to dispose of them in the event that you need to. Make use of items you have at a high volume for a discounted agreement with the supplier as well as products that are huge demand or generate higher profits.

And consider creating dedicated Black Friday sale landing pages for your most important items, rather than just your usual product page.

What products are you planning to feature in the face of extreme Black Friday deals this year?

Make sure you are prepared to market through multiple channels

Multichannel marketing can yield better results than focusing on just a single channel. Find at minimum three channels that you intend to employ this year to implement the Black Friday marketing strategy.

Channels include but are not restricted to:

• SMS
• Social media - all possible platforms including Facebook, X, TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest
• Direct Post
• Radio and TV
• YouTube, streaming video online and YouTube

Don't forget to design optimised landing pages, and keep track of the traffic to your website through your various channels.

Prepare follow-up marketing strategies to go

The other key to profiting from Black Friday, Cyber Monday and other days of the Christmas shopping season is to follow up with potential customers who discover your store online in the coming year.

Yes, many Black Friday shoppers will come, buy, go, only to never return. However, you could win some of them and turn these into loyal and repeat customers.

Start a welcome email sequence. Start sending consistent email marketing. Try to segment your new customers based on what they have already purchased, and any additional details you've gathered about them from their first shopping experience. After that, you can engage them with new and relevant content throughout the new year.

Are you following-up with a strategy for marketing in place to Black Friday?

Utilize email to send your message to the masses early and frequently

For Black Friday this year, develop email marketing campaigns in order to reach your various customer segments prior to the rush of holiday shopping. They should be thinking of your brand before other online stores start vying for attention. They should be buying from you when the others with small businesses are simply waking up and realizing that they haven't planned beforehand for Black Friday.

Your first email marketing campaign should probably start in October. The email inboxes begin to overflow in late November. So if you can use email to begin planting seeds and offering the best deals before the rush, you'll improve sales as well as build your brand's recognition and loyalty to customers.

Create eye-catching visuals

Whether on your product pages as well as the landing pages or pages for the products you choose to feature it is essential to use pictures that are high-resolution to draw attention and allow your audience to feel the item within their fingers.

Send emails to abandoned carts

Getting these set up prior to Black Friday will give you an opportunity to evaluate your strategies and determine which marketing strategies and offers work best for your online store.

Divide your campaign into three pieces

You have a lot of things on your Black Friday checklist, and it's easy to become overwhelmed. To help organize your work and figure out what priorities to put in place, you can break the entire campaign into three essential components.

It's the first step in the run-up prior to Black Friday. The process begins at any time you'd like it to start, and will end the day prior to Black Friday.

Next comes the actual day. It could include weekends or the next week, if doing the full Cyber Week. It is up to you to define the 'day'.

Last, everything after your Black Friday period is the phase that follows your marketing plan.

Black Friday is only one of the days. The strategy you use to market should be encompassing the whole period.

Are you breaking up you Black Friday promotions campaign into three parts?

Update or create your return policy

If you've had your ecommerce company for some time it's likely that you have this. However, if not it's moment to start creating one. Or, if you do have one, maybe you've realized from experience yours needs to be updated.

• An option for returning shipped items. Do you need the original packaging, exact item condition, etc. ?
• The policy of refund. Do customers get their money back either in store credit, another option?
• Clear deadlines. How long can they send items back for refunds or credit?
• An address for shipping. Where will they send returned products?
• Contact information. Which way can customers get in touch with additional concerns?

Your return policy must be made public frequently as is necessary. The policy should appear on the email notification for orders which is sent after the purchase is made. It should be printed and included in the package. The information should be posted on your website and be easily accessible like in the footer of your website, on the FAQ page, and on your product pages.

Have you updated your Return policy?

Offer faster shipping alternatives

The time for shipping can be extended when the sales are in high demand during the holiday season and customers often expect speedy shipping services.

Based on the findings of a 2021 Baymard research the study found that 19% of carts that are abandoned result from delivery times getting too long. Offering more efficient shipping options will reduce these lost sales and is a great method during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

In addition, speedy delivery methods incentivize customers, they ensure that your items arrive in time during a season when shipping times may be slow due to the large quantity of orders that carriers have to process.

Consider the possibility of offering Purchase Now and pay later

It is possible to make this feature available right on the checkout page. However, you could also highlight it on the product page, the home page, on your landing page, and anywhere else you believe it could aid customers to overcome a price objection and keep buying.

Use the chatbot

Chatbots aid in customer service and increase sales. A lot of times clients have concerns that chatbots are able to help them with. If they can just get one or two issues clarified, they'll complete their purchase.

If they are forced to search for an email address, wallow through help forums, or sit and wait for live chat support to reply, they're likely to abandon the procedure and go to a different site.

If you can make it happen the chatbot can help make buying easier without the need for an increase in customer service.

Check out last year's Black Friday sales data

There's a tendency to approach every year as a brand fresh venture. We start from scratch and reinvent the wheel without any advantage of experience.

But if you've had an online store for any amount of time, and you've conducted Black Friday marketing campaigns before, you have some experience. You have some prior data. You've probably done some things in the past probably worked very well.

If you are getting too far into your planning for the year ahead, take a look back at the results of last year. What went well? What didn't?

Are you able to replicate the success from the previous year? Can you improve by focusing on the things that failed?

Black Friday checklist: Backend systems

Now, let's move on to the Black Friday checklist items that consumers don't see every day, but that you depend on customers to complete purchases and enjoy a wonderful Black Friday shopping experience.

Make your website faster

90% of customers abandon a site when the website loads too slow. Site speed should be the top priority all times of the year and is particularly important in times of increased traffic. Here are some simple things to do in the event of a slow website.

• Test your website performance. Discover which parts that need to be improved through a speed test. Instruments like Pingdom and Page Speed Insights will let you know the speed at which your site loads as well as how well it performs in particular zones.
• Implement a content delivery network (CDN). A CDN serves your site's files from high-speed, dedicated, and geographically-distributed data centers. Visitors will be served caching content from the CDN closest server this reduces loading time, and also reduces bandwidth and load on your server. Jetpack comes with the option of a no-cost CDN, and unlike other network providers, you can install and set up Jetpack CDN with just one click.
• Improve your image. Even if you're employing an CDN that optimizes your files to your specifications, it's best practice to upload the smallest files that you can while maintaining the highest resolution. Exporting for web with Photoshop and using free image resizing and optimization tools such as ImageOptim are easy ways to prepare your images for use on the internet.
• upgrade Your hosting account. If you're on shared servers the site could experience lower load speeds, in particular if other sites that are on the server experience significant spikes in traffic. You should consider a virtual server (VPS) or dedicated server.

Here are some more ways to increase the efficiency of your store.

Does your online store run at the speed it should be?

Sync inventory with product pages

Simplify and speed up your checkout process

Your checkout process may work but, is it fast and intuitive? You want to keep the checkout process as easy as is possible with minimal distractions in order to motivate your customers to finish their purchase. A few things you can do to improve can be improved, including:

• Eliminate visual clutter. Eliminate header and menus for footers, widgets in the sidebar as well as other distractions from your checkout page so your customers remain focused on completing their purchase.

Make sure you are ready to complete orders and have them shipped on time

Do your dropshippers and suppliers ready to handle increased sales? Do you have the capacity to increase production if demand exceeds your expectation?

While this is a good situation to face but you shouldn't squander the opportunity to increase the revenue of your business and gain new customers because the supply chain becomes overwhelmed.

If you are looking to boost production in advance of the holiday season, make sure to place orders at the earliest opportunity with your supplier of material. This is especially true for the products you sell are made by another company -- especially if those items are created overseas. Many other companies are taking orders from sellers in order to get ready to prepare for Black Friday sales as well So, make sure to lock your orders in well prior to the date. In the event that you do not, you might be facing high prices or no stock items.

If you're working with an outside logistics company (3PL) to deliver your products, look over the historical data on shipping and sales for your products and ask them to move stock to warehouses close to areas in which you tend to do the most transactions. This will speed delivery for your customers. If speedy delivery is important to you Ask your 3PL to send shipments more frequently and use providers that have the most rapid time for delivery.

Also, you may have to recruit more workers or expand hours in order to cope with the expected rise in production over the Christmas time. This is especially important when you're making handmade products or making products on your own. However, even if production is outsourced, you may still have more demand for customer services or order fulfillment, marketing, and many more.

Gather customer details for follow-up marketing

Earlier, we discussed preparing to follow up when your store is visited by customers who may not have visited your ecommerce store before.

You can't contact them in the absence of the information of your customers.

If you're sending products you're bound to get the address of their postal service. However, direct mail marketing and follow up costs significantly higher than marketing via digital, so you want to be able follow-up using email and possibly SMS as well.

To do that, the purchaser should be offered an opportunity to sign up. One of the best places to do this is right at the bottom of checkout. On that page, solicit their email address as well as phone number. Be certain to obtain permission to communicate with the customer via email or text. However, make the phone number non-contingent so that the customers who do not opt-in to SMS marketing don't become confused.

Some people won't but that's fine, as some might. And for those who will, it's time to start your follow-up strategy for marketing.

Are you prepared to collect emails and numbers?

Convert tracking can be set up

It's important to track customer behavior as well as how your marketing efforts perform during Black Friday and the rest of the festive season so you can make improvements the following year.

Make sure your website is safe

A simple and effective way to improve your website's security is to set up an security plug-in. Jetpack offers free brute force attack protection which stops an attack that is one of the more common forms of hacking in addition to two-factor authentication to safeguard your login method. And Jetpack's WordPress security plug-in includes automated backups, malware scanning and monitoring of downtime for spam prevention as well as other.

Make sure your site works on every device and all browsers.

Your online store must be displayed correctly on desktops devices, tablets, mobile phones and the most popular browsers. You can check this using your personal devices quickly, however you'll need to check the way your website displays when you use a computer and browser emulator like LambdaTest.

Even though you might not be able to guarantee that your website's appearance and functions flawlessly on every device and platforms, you can utilize tools like Google Analytics for you to find out which the browsers and platforms your users are using. It is then possible to concentrate your efforts on testing and revising your site's performance on the platforms you have chosen.

Are your websites mobile-friendly and working on as many devices as possible?

Verify the key functions of your site

Schedule your sale and coupon codes

You can reduce the panic and stress of the busiest shopping season of the year by doing as much as possible in the months beforehand.

One easy task is to set up your coupons and planned sales ahead of time. When you've figured out which products are going to have sales, the timing of certain flash sales and special discounts, as well as the way price will fluctuate over time, design the coupons and the additional back-end support systems to guarantee sales success. If you're offering a free gift with purchase, make sure that you've got the gift available.

Highlight Black Friday bargains on your website

The customer can't benefit from an offer if they don't know about the sale. Even if your clients visit your site naturally or get them there through email marketing and paid advertising, you'll want them to discover your sales easily.

There are a variety of ways to do this:

• Implement pop ups announcing your sales that include a call-to-action and button that takes them directly to the sale.
• Add a banner to your home page to promote your sales.
• Include an "Black Friday Deals" menu item on the navigation of your website.
• Feature sale items in your shop page sidebar.
• Show sale icon in your thumbnails of products.

Create your customer support systems

Although you might require more employees to assist your sales and customer service staff in the days leading up to Black Friday, onboarding and training temporary workers can be challenging and time-consuming. There are other ways to increase customer service support aside from the hiring of temporary workers.

Below are three customer-service techniques to be implemented this year.

Provide a variety of options for support services to customers

Alongside direct line phone support -that you must provide in the event that you are able to provide it, there are alternatives to assist customers get their questions answered.

• FAQs or knowledge base. Help customers help themselves by providing an quickly accessible and easy to navigate FAQs or knowledge bases
• Use a customer service contact page. Let people get to the customer service team by email using a contact form. Utilize conditional logic, in response to the question type to route queries from customers for customer service to the appropriate email address.
• Get AI chatbots working.Filter out some of the most frequently asked questions like "How much does shipping cost?" or "Do you offer delivery to my location?" by using an AI chatbot. This will save your customer service staff valuable time and provide customers with quick answers to basic questions

Make use of a customer relationship management tool (CRM)

CRM software can assist you in tracking your customers' interactions with you and help solve support issues, identify leads and even upsell your customers.

Jetpack CRM is a lean and accessible tool that integrates directly with your dashboard. It doesn't have any contact limitations and it's one of the least expensive CRM solutions for retail stores.

Make sure your customer service procedures and FAQs are up-to-date

Check regularly the procedures for customer service and ensure that they're accurate. If you have any special methods or special offers that your staff need to be aware of for Black Friday and Cyber Monday Document them, and make sure your team can access them. Meetings to discuss your procedure about a week before you launch your Black Friday deals may help keep these new processes top-of-mind for the staff.

When you've streamlined the experience of customer support for both your visitors and your team, you may find that you're still required to recruit more staff members to assist you during the holiday season. While maximizing your existing team's performance will decrease the amount of seasonal employees you'll have to hire.

Are you prepared for the Christmas shopping time?

The Black Friday checklist may seem like an overwhelming task to get ready for a sales that only lasts a few days, but these suggestions don't just apply to only one weekend.

After you've implemented them some of these methods and strategies are able to improve your online presence every single day. If you stay on top of these items on your checklist throughout the year, you'll not have to make extraordinary efforts when the holidays roll around the next time.