Looking for a Black Friday checklist? Retailers online may have a hard time on Black Friday. It’s better to be ready than to try to wing it since there will be a lot more people and orders than normal. To help you get ready, we’ve created a Black Friday checklist that will show you everything you need to do to make sure your website is ready. 

1. Start your BFCM planning early

An NRF poll claims that 56% of Americans last year engaged in some Christmas shopping before Thanksgiving. That is a lot of folks starting their Christmas shopping early. 

So, start promoting your deals early—even before Black Friday and Cyber Monday. If it makes sense for your business, keep the deals going.

Why early planning is crucial?

Here’s why early planning is a game-changer:

• You can get the best prices from your suppliers.
• You’ll avoid the last-minute rush and mistakes.
• You can make sure you have enough products to meet the demand.
• Your marketing can be more focused and effective.
• Your website will be ready for the extra traffic.

By planning ahead following our Black Friday checklist, you’ll be setting yourself up for a successful holiday season.

How to schedule key dates and milestones?

Here are some of our recommendations for you:

• Set a start date for planning 2-3 months ahead of Black Friday.
• Create a marketing timeline to schedule campaign launches, email sends, and social media posts.
• Inventory deadlines for restocking products and confirming supplier orders.
• The team is ready for training, changes in customer service, and getting ready for shipping. 
• Review your Black Friday checklist to track progress and adjust strategies as needed.

2. Set clear BFCM sales goals and KPIs

Christmas can be a crazy busy time of year. Because of this, SMART goals (specific, measured, reachable, reasonable, and time-bound) are very helpful. Having these goals helps you stay focused and achieve real results.

Here are some examples of SMART goals for BFCM marketing strategies:

• Increase website traffic by 30% compared to last year.
• Get 1,000 new email subscribers.
• Get 15% of people who abandon their carts to finish their purchase.

Once you have defined the SMART goals for your BFCM strategy, identify the KPIs you need to measure.

If your BFCM campaign aims to convert 15% of cart abandoners into buyers, focus on the Cart Abandonment Rate, Customer Acquisition Cost, and Return On Advertising Spend (ROAS).

We have another article that goes into more detail about the 10 KPIs businesses should track.

3. Optimize your website for high traffic

A Deloitte study found that just a 0.1-second increase in site speed can result in about a 10% increase in conversions. That’s why it’s so important to make sure your website is lightning-fast, especially during the busy BFCM season.

Google PageSpeed Insights and Pingdom are two tools that can help you find ways to make your page run faster. 

Your site needs to be fast, but it also needs to be strong enough to handle all the visitors without crashing. One way to do this is to use dynamic server capacity scaling. This means that your website can change on its own to handle more or less visitors. 

4. Make sure your homepage is eye-catching, user-friendly 

Give your website a fresh new look with festive images and graphics. You can use the same design on your website, social media, and other places to create a memorable campaign.

If you’re not a designer, there are builder page tools that can help you create beautiful visuals without code. You can also hire a Shopify expert to help you.

While you’re at it, make sure your product pages are easy to use and encourage people to buy. Include clear calls to action, good descriptions, and lots of payment options.

We suggest carefully adding more deals to the cart and checkout pages to boost conversion rates and make benefits and saves stand out. 

5. Offer exclusive early bird deals

Want to show your best customers some love? Give them early access to your Black Friday deals. This is a great way to reward them for their loyalty and spread out your orders so you’re not overwhelmed during the busiest shopping days.

Take a look at this picture to see how to set up coupons for early birds. 

6. Create scarcity with limited-time offers

People are more likely to buy something when they fear missing out. That’s why creating a sense of urgency for BFCM sales is so important. So, it’s perfect to add to your Black Friday checklist.

One way to do this is to use a countdown timer. It’s a great way to add excitement and encourage people to buy. You can add a countdown timer to your website pop-ups like Priority Bicycles did:

7. Prepare your inventory to avoid stockouts

Online stores may or may not make it on Black Friday. You might lose a lot of money and make your customers angry if you don’t have enough goods to sell or if your orders are late.  

To figure out demand forecasting, look at your sales data from previous years. This will help you predict what products will be most popular.

If you use Shopify, you can use Shopify reports to see your best-selling items. Then, create a holiday sales checklist and make sure you have plenty of the most popular products in stock.

8. Leverage urgency in your marketing copy

People already think that Black Friday is a limited-time event when they can get great deals from their favorite brands. So, playing on their feelings is a great way to get them to buy.

This email from Adidas is a great example. It uses persuasive language and a countdown timer to convince people to click and buy.

9. Create mobile-friendly shopping experiences

When designing your website, think about mobile users first. This means making sure it looks great and works well on phones. It’s all about putting the user first and making sure they have a great experience.

An SMS marketing strategy is one type of mobile-specific promotion you can add to your Black Friday list. This is a great way to get people excited about your deals and send them focused messages. 

10. Optimize checkout to reduce cart abandonment

People can get really impatient during the holiday season, so it’s important to make it as easy as possible for them to buy from you. One way to do this is to offer one-click purchases and a one-page checkout process. This will help people buy faster and reduce the chance that they’ll abandon their cart.

11. Enhance customer support for BFCM traffic

When more people are shopping, your customers will probably have more questions and problems. Our advice is to hire extra staff to handle the increased workload effectively during the busy shopping period.

Another option is to use AI chatbots. These can help answer customer questions automatically and provide live chat support.

12. Use paid advertising to drive traffic

For Black Friday advertising, social media is a fantastic venue. The best way to maximize your advertising dollars is to send the right BFCM target audience. This entails displaying your advertisements to consumers who are considering your products. 

Social networks like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok let you advertise to specific groups of people. So you can reach the people who are most likely to buy your goods.

13. Leverage social media to build buzz

Paid ads aren’t the only way to use social media marketing. It can also be used to get people excited about BFCM tactics before and after the sale. It can also help you keep your social media followers interested during sales. 

Bath & Body Works did a great job of this by posting on Instagram to get people excited. 

14. Offer free shipping to boost conversions

More people will buy from you if you provide free delivery since your things will look more affordable. Offering free delivery with a minimum purchase quantity is one strategy to keep costs down.  

For example, you could say that customers get free shipping if they spend $50 or more. This encourages people to buy more, which can help increasing average order value during BFCM.

15. Send targeted email marketing campaigns

BFCM customer segmentation uses demographics, psychographics, geography, past purchases, and engagement levels to make sure your ads reach the right people.

Using persuasive language and strong calls to action can really help you convince people for high open rates. Tools like Klaviyo and Omnisend can help you create emails that are personalized and exciting.

16. Create BFCM-specific landing pages

Landing pages are specialized pages on your website that have one goal in mind: persuading visitors to purchase a certain item or complete a particular activity. This is particularly crucial on Black Friday when there are a ton of sales and diversions. 

You may facilitate people’s search and purchase by designing a landing page that is focused on a single product or campaign. 

17. Upsell and cross-sell to maximize AOV

To really succeed during the Black Friday campaign, you need to know how to encourage people to buy more expensive products. This is called upselling. 

When you upsell, you offer a customer a better version of the product they’re already interested in. It’s important to choose a product that’s related to what they want to buy and that they’ll actually find useful.

While cross-selling is the process of offering customers products that are compatible with the ones they’re purchasing.

18. Reward loyal customers with VIP offers

It can be hard to find VIP customers if you don’t know where to look. It can be hard to find VIP customers if you don’t know where to look. The recency, frequency, and monetary (RFM) research approach lets you put your new users into groups based on the things they usually buy. 

• Recency– When was your customer’s last purchase of a product or service?
• Frequency– How often did the customer purchase in a year or any other fixed period?
• Monetary value– How much money has the customer spent on your brand so far?

By understanding these things, you can create special offers and deals just for your VIP customers. For example, you could give them early access to sales or send them exclusive discount codes.

19. Provide time-limited bundles and discounts

Bundling products effectively enhances the customer experience, leading to increased satisfaction and long-term loyalty. This is especially beneficial during high-traffic sales periods like BFCM.

This is how SquattyPotty, a company that makes FDA-approved poop items, markets their unique toilet brush and brush holder set, which comes with a new brush.

20. Use retargeting campaigns for abandoned carts

Sending emails to people who abandon their carts can be a great way to increase sales. These emails can also help you understand why people don’t finish their purchases so you can make your website better.

One way to do this is to create a two-step email campaign. Send a reminder email right after someone abandons their cart, and then send a follow-up email within 24 hours.

You can also use retargeting ads to show these people your products again on other websites. We talked about this in section 12 of the paid advertising strategy.

21. Leverage FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) In Your Promotions

The thought that something will be gone soon makes people more likely to buy it. That’s why it’s important to draw attention to deals that are only good for a short time. We suggest using words like “limited stock” or “only a few left” to make people feel like they need to act quickly.

Also, showing people how many products you have left can also be a powerful way to create scarcity. House of Fraser does this on their website.

22. Prepare a post-purchase experience plan

During the holiday season, people are looking for deals. A great way to keep them coming back to your store is to have a customer loyalty program. This will reward them for shopping with you and encourage them to keep coming back.

If you use Shopify, the BON Loyalty app is a great option. This app has everything you need to create a successful loyalty program, including points, rewards, VIP tiers, referrals, and a landing page.

23. Run flash sales to increase engagement

Flash sales can be a great way to get people excited and encourage them to buy. But they take some BFCM campaign planning, especially if you expect a lot of people to be interested.

You could have a flash sale on your most popular product and end it after a few hours. This might be the best option if you don’t have many products to sell.

To get more people to know about your flash sale, you can promote it early on. Build an email and SMS list, and send people countdown messages. You can also post on social media to reach more people.

24. Collaborate with influencers’ marketing and affiliates’ marketing

Giving influencers unique Black Friday promotion ideas is a great way to track their performance and encourage people to buy your products. These codes can also help you give people personalized discounts.

Body Angel Activewear gives each influencer their unique promo code. This way, they can see which influencers are bringing in more sales without using affiliate links. 

Shopify Collabs makes it easy to work with influencers, promote your products, and find new customers. You can also track the success of your campaigns from your Shopify dashboard.

25. Offer flexible payment options

You can sell more things if you give people more ways to pay. You can get what you want more often if people can pay in the way that works best for them. 

In this Black Friday checklist, we recommend you use the Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) solution. You can offer this in your online and physical stores using platforms like Stripe or PayPal.

Make sure to tell your customers about BNPL early on so they know they have this option.

26. Create an exclusive offer for newsletter subscribers

Emails advertising sales and discounts are quite popular. That’s why a fantastic strategy to increase sales is to provide unique discounts to those who subscribe to your email newsletter. 

A good strategy is to add a pop-up to your website asking people to sign up. Make sure the pop-up is easy to read and doesn’t have too many fields to fill out. You should also include a big, easy-to-click “X” button so people can close it if they don’t want to sign up.

27. Optimize your return policy

In the Christmas season, there are so many shopping choices that it can be hard to choose. Also, they could change their minds about what they want to buy. For the holidays, you need clear return policies. 

Many stores offer extended return periods during the holidays, so people can return things they bought between November 1 and December 31 until January 31.

28. Track BFCM performance in real-time

You can learn a lot about your Black Friday marketing from Shopify’s analytics. See how many people are visiting your website and buying your products. Marketing is super important for Black Friday, so make sure you know how to track, measure, and improve your campaigns right in Shopify.

There are heat map apps in the Shopify App Store that can help you answer questions like:

• Where are people clicking on your website?
• How do people read your product pages?
• Which parts of the country are buying more?

In this case, red could mean that there are lots of hits. Blue, on the other hand, could mean that people aren’t interested. 

As you try new things this year, take notes and screenshots to remember what worked and what didn’t. This will help you plan for next year’s Black Friday checklist.

29. Prepare for post-BFCM customer retention strategies

Look over your customer data and figure out how to better target them after Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This will help you send them more relevant texts, which they are more likely to answer. 

When you’re setting up a retargeting campaign, don’t start by targeting a small group of people. Start with a wider audience, like people who visited at least three pages of your website.

Keep it simple. There are a lot of different tools you can use for marketing, but it’s best to stick to one or two. We recommend selecting these tools to let you manage your ads for the web, social media, and email all in one place.

30. Evaluate and learn from your BFCM campaign

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are a great time to learn from your mistakes and celebrate your successes. What you learn can be valuable even if you don’t make a lot of money. That’s why it’s important to track everything and think about what worked and what didn’t.

If this is your first Black Friday, think of it as a learning experience. Stay positive and excited, and most importantly, set realistic goals.

You can refer to our other article: 35 Black Friday Cyber Monday marketing ideas for small businesses.