12 Tips to Get Your E-commerce Store Ready for Black Friday/Cyber Monday (2022)

Alexis Damen | October 30, 2020

Image source: Burst

Black Friday is one of the busiest shopping days of the year. And as more people opted for online shopping, Cyber Monday was created as a way to conclude the Thanksgiving-Black Friday retail holiday shopping weekend in the US, but this trend has gained popularity in Europe too.

Online sales numbers were up in 2021 for this busy shopping weekend. Let's look at a few data points from Shopify:

Total BFCM sales globally amounted to $6.5 billion, up from $5.1 billion in 2020
The average order value globally was $100.70, up from $89.20 in 2020

According to Adobe, consumers spent $10.7 billion on Cyber Monday 2021. Spending was down 1.4% when compared to 2020, but Cyber Monday is still one of the biggest online shopping days of the year. During peak hours, consumers spent $12 million every minute.

In Spain, the most popular Black Friday Cyber Monday consumer payment trends in 2021 were credit cards (77%), Bizum (14.7%), and PayPal (7.7%). MONEI merchants saw a 113.3% increase in sales volume during BFCM and an average shopping cart value of €133.82, up from €106.72 in 2020.

Preparing your e-commerce website for Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2022 is crucial. Use this article as a guide to make sure you’re ready for an influx of site visitors and sales. Read straight through or skip around to topics that are relevant to you.

Getting your e-commerce store ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday

We’ve compiled a list of tips to help you capitalize on this year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday holiday shopping weekend.

1. Start early

It’s key to start your preparation for the holiday season early. This includes making sure your website is updated, setting up a BFCM marketing strategy, and ensuring you have inventory to fulfill an influx of orders. You can also start advertising your special offers early to avoid getting lost in the crowd.

2. Update your products and online inventory

Getting inundated with site visitors and sales isn't a bad problem to have. But, before this happens, it’s key to make sure your website is up to date with all your products and inventory counts. Consider spending a few hours reviewing your product descriptions to make sure your product details are clear and concise. This can help reduce the number of questions prospective customers may have, making it easier for them to make a choice and complete their order.

Further reading: 15 E-commerce Conversion Rate Tips to Help You Sell More

3. Optimize your website for mobile

According to our data, from November 2021 through August 2022, payments via mobile devices account for nearly 60% of the transactions processed by MONEI. Mobile shopping (along with mobile payments) is still growing in popularity among consumers.

In 2021, 72.9 % of all e-commerce was generated via m-commerce, up from 58.9% compared to 2017. According to Statista, emerging e-commerce markets in mobile-first economies are a large driver of this trend.

According to eMarketer, in the US, m-commerce sales hit $359.32 billion in 2021, up 15.2% from 2020, and by 2025 m-commerce sales are projected to more than double to reach $728.28 billion and account for 44.2% of e-commerce sales in the US.

Improving the user experience (UX) for mobile shopping is an obvious must-have. Optimize for mobile devices by:

Making sure your navigation menu is clear
Having clear and easy-to-find call-to-action (CTA) buttons
Removing popups and sidebars
Providing a frictionless mobile payment process

4. Audit your checkout page

Before you get an increase in online orders it’s important to test your e-commerce checkout page experience and improve it if necessary. It’s key to make the checkout process as easy as possible for customers to avoid them abandoning their shopping carts. This includes making sure it’s secure, easy to navigate, and doesn’t require the shopper to take too many steps to complete their purchase.

Further reading: Black Friday Cyber Monday Payment Trends (2021)

Image source: MONEI merchant, Gobik

📌 Pro Tip: With MONEI, you can customize the appearance of your checkout page with your branding, logo, and domain. Use the Hosted Payment Page integration to build brand awareness and increase conversions.

Having a social media presence is crucial to building brand awareness, increasing website traffic, and promoting your products. Consumers may no longer be skeptical about in-person shopping, but we can assume people are still browsing through their social feeds to learn about BFCM deals. Work on growing your community so you have a larger audience and reach once Black Friday and Cyber Monday roll around.

Spend time creating thumb-stopping content and use social media as a way to offer additional customer support. Do this by telling people they can send you a DM if they have questions.

6. Bundle products and offer special discounts

Help your customers make choices by bundling your products. For example, if you sell beauty products, you can bundle a face cleanser, face mask, and face lotion. This can help your customers find a gift (or treat themselves) hassle-free. And, it can help you increase your average order value (AOV). Give prospective customers an incentive to choose your holiday bundles by promoting a special offer like free shipping or a discount on purchases during BFCM weekend.

7. Create a gift guide and publish it on your blog

You can find gift guides all over the Internet during the holiday season. Help guide your customers to choose your products by creating a gift guide that features various products and gift bundles that you’re selling. You can pick three to five themes, create relevant content, and share your gift guide via email and social media.

8. Offer curbside pickup and buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS)

If you have a brick-and-mortar store — in addition to your e-commerce site — you can offer curbside pickup. According to Retail Brew curbside pickup is now a must-have for customers (and retailers).

Shopify’s 2021 retail data also revealed that 41% of merchants plan to invest further in buy online, pickup in-store options like curbside pickup and click and collect, and 58% of consumers say flexible blended shipping options like BOPIS are important to them.

Some of your customers may want to avoid shipping fees and curbside pickup and BOPIS are appealing alternatives to shopping in-store.

9. Offer free shipping

Offering free shipping exclusively during BFCM weekend could help you increase your conversion rate. In fact, according to Baymard Institute, extra costs from shipping is one of the top reasons why shoppers abandon their online shopping cart.

Image source: Baymard Institute

Pass the savings on to your customers to improve customer satisfaction and compete against similar businesses that aren't offering this incentive.

10. Add more payment methods to your online store

Accepting a wide range of online payment methods can help you reach more customers (locally and cross-border), improve the checkout experience, and ultimately make more sales.

But adding additional forms of payment to your e-commerce store can feel like a daunting task. That’s why we help you accept and manage all major and alternative payment methods from a single platform.

Configure multiple payment methods including credit and debit cards, digital wallets such as Google Pay, Apple Pay, and PayPal, and offer local payment options like Bizum(Spain), Cofidis 4xcard (Spain), Multibanco (Portugal), iDEAL (Netherlands), and more to accept cross-border payments.

Further reading: 7 Reasons to Add Buy Now, Pay Later Options to Your E-commerce Site [+6 Examples]

11. Set up your abandoned cart email automation flow

According to Baymard Institue, on average, 69.80% of online shopping carts are abandoned. That’s a lot of money left on the table. As you can see in the chart above the reasons range from extra costs to a complicated checkout to not enough payment methods. Whatever the reason is, you can set up automated email flows to recover abandoned carts.

An abandoned cart email is used to remind prospective customers who leave your website without buying the items in their shopping cart. Sending a gentle follow-up message can help you recover up to 10% of lost revenue.

Your abandoned cart email automation can be a series of emails (two to three). Or you can start small with one email that gets triggered a few hours after someone abandons their shopping cart.

12. Experiment with in-person selling

Consumer behavior drastically shifted during the pandemic, but now that life has resumed, shoppers are eager to get out there. In fact, according to Shopify’s 2021 retail statistics, 32% of consumers are looking for engaging in-store experiences, and 32% of brands intend to test pop-up and in-person experiences.

Bringing your online business offline can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. You can start small by participating in pop-up events or markets. And accepting payments in-person doesn’t require investing in expensive POS hardware and software.

Instead, you can accept payments from your phone using a mobile payment app like MONEI Pay. All you have to do is:

Download the app to any mobile device (Android or iOS)
Generate digital QR code payments
Have your customer scan the QR code payment with their smartphone
Your customer can complete the transaction in real-time with the tap of a button

Getting ready for BFCM 2022

Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2022 will be here before we know it, and getting ready ahead of time will help you succeed at marketing your e-commerce business and increasing sales. Pay attention to your customers and their needs to get more creative and targeted in your BFCM strategy.

Alexis Damen

Alexis Damen is the Head of Content at MONEI. She loves breaking down complex topics about payments, e-commerce, and retail to help merchants succeed (with MONEI as their payments partner, of course).

#Online Selling #E-commerce Trends #Marketing

12 Tips to Get Your E-commerce Store Ready for Black Friday/Cyber Monday (2022)

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