10 tips for maximising sales with your Shopify shop on Black Friday in 2022

Black Friday 2022 is fast approaching!

The Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend is just around the corner once again. With more than $5.1 billion in sales expected to be generated through Shopify shops during the 2020 Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend (compared to $1.5 billion in 2018), it’s time to get ready if you’re in the e-commerce business.

As an online shop, you should therefore prepare accordingly for this weekend to maximise your sales.

When is Black Friday in 2022?

In the United States, Black Friday is always the day after Thanksgiving, which falls on the fourth Thursday in November. In 2022, Black Friday falls on 25 November 2022 and marks the start of the Christmas shopping season. If you’re wondering when you should start preparing, the answer is: right now.

How should you prepare for Black Friday?

Take a look at our top tips for turning your Shopify shop into a bestseller.

1. Ensure that stock levels, order fulfilment and support are in place

Before you even start thinking about your online shop, you should ensure that your back-office processes are up to date. When sales go through the roof thanks to a successful sales and marketing strategy, you need to make sure you have the necessary infrastructure in place to fulfil them. Make sure your processes for stock management, order fulfilment, customer service and returns are robust enough to cope with the influx of orders.

If you expect to run out of certain products, make the most of this opportunity! Use an app in your shop that sends notifications when a product is out of stock, such as ‘Back In Stock – Restock Alerts’ – this allows customers to leave their details if the product they want is no longer available. They will then be automatically notified by email or text message when the item is back in stock, and they can click straight back to the product to complete their purchase.

2. Set aside a sufficient advertising budget for prospecting and remarketing

For most online shops, the Christmas shopping season is the most important time of the year. You should therefore ensure that your online marketing runs smoothly during this period. Nothing is more frustrating than having your credit card blocked or reaching your daily spending limit during the most crucial time of the year. Ideally, you should therefore speak to your bank now to prevent such problems and – if you haven’t already done so – set up a second advertising account with Facebook, for example, so that you can react flexibly as required.

As a rule, around 40–50 per cent of the weekend’s turnover is generated on Black Friday itself, with only around 20–30 per cent on either Saturday or Sunday. It is therefore best to allocate the bulk of your budget to Friday.

As the majority of shoppers are waiting specifically for Black Friday to make their purchases, you may find in the days leading up to it that significantly fewer people are converting into paying customers via your adverts. Don’t let this put you off – keep running your adverts consistently in the days leading up to Black Friday. This will ensure that your remarketing lists are well-stocked, allowing you to target these people again on Black Friday and turn them into paying customers.

Take advantage of the increased browsing activity from customers on the hunt for bargains by using retargeting. This allows you to ‘track’ people who have added products to their basket, viewed a specific item or made a purchase. Essentially, this simply means you can remind them of something they recently viewed on your website or on other platforms such as Facebook, to give them the opportunity to return and complete their purchase or buy something else.

3. Prepare landing pages, images and other creative elements to promote your sales

Once you have planned your processes and budgets, you need to prepare your creative ideas. Which offers do you want to promote, and through which channels? What are the

During the festive season, customers are generally more receptive to advertising, which is a good thing, but there is also much more competition for their attention, so make sure you stand out from the crowd.

If necessary, you can also boost the visibility of your online shop on Google in the run-up to the festive season. As a Shopify SEO agency, we are the right people to contact for this.

We have a team of Shopify designers, web developers and marketers who are ready to optimise your shop in time for the sales season. Do you need a conversion-focused landing page to attract customers? Eye-catching images to make your brand stand out from the crowd? An eye-catching banner to promote your sale? Get in touch and we’ll be happy to help.

4. Optimising the conversion rate

Some of the tips in this blog fall under the heading of conversion rate optimisation (or CRO). That’s why we’ve put together a free conversion rate optimisation checklist, which contains plenty of advice and guidance on how to improve your shop’s conversion rate and turnover. Download it now and get a head start on the festive season.

5. Plan your sales and discounts

Plan your Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales across the whole weekend – will the offers change over the course of the weekend? Can you maximise sales by promoting specific products at specific times? Do you have a great offer to kick off the sale, to grab customers’ attention and keep them engaged?

Don’t forget the power of upselling and cross-selling. Try installing an app such as Cart Convert, which suggests additional products to your customers based on what they’ve shown an interest in. Have they bought a hat? Perhaps they’d also like a pair of gloves to go with it? Or might they be tempted to spend a few more pounds to reach the free delivery threshold? This is a simple way to increase your average order value. Give it a go!

6. Use emails to promote your upcoming Black Friday sale

Encourage your customers to sign up for your newsletter in advance by offering them incentives such as previews of upcoming sales or exclusive discounts. This way, they’ll associate your brand with these offers and will be easier to reach when your sales get underway.

Build a sense of anticipation amongst your email recipients. Use a series of teaser emails to inform your subscribers and former customers about an upcoming sale; perhaps give them a sneak preview of a special offer or let them know when your sale starts so they don’t miss out. Sharing exclusive discounts with your best customers can be an excellent way to boost sales.

If you do not yet have an email sequence for abandoned trolleys, now is a good time to set one up. This allows you to send a potential customer a series of emails to entice them back and make it easy for them to return to their shopping basket and complete their purchase. Please do bear in mind the relevant data protection regulations when doing so.

These emails may include incentives such as discount codes or free delivery to increase the likelihood of a purchase. With an average basket abandonment rate of 69.8 per cent, Black Friday is a good time to send these emails and recoup lost sales.

7. Creating a sense of urgency and (artificial) scarcity

Create a sense of urgency around your sale in your ad copy and on your website. Limited stock or a sale that’s about to end: these factors help encourage your visitors to click the ‘Add to basket’ button. Try incorporating a countdown timer on your product page that shows how many minutes they have left to qualify for next-day delivery. Remember that Black Friday purchases are often impulse buys, and a little persuasion goes a long way towards getting those items into the basket and through to checkout. If you need help installing apps or making improvements and changes to your website, please get in touch.

8. Building customer trust

Even though Black Friday purchases tend to be impulsive, people need to trust the retailer. Including customer reviews on your website helps reassure potential customers that you are a reputable brand, whilst listing trusted payment methods such as PayPal and major credit cards reinforces this sense of reassurance. A well-written ‘About Us’ page also helps to create a sense of trust and familiarity.

9. Make it easy for people to buy

You should make it as easy as possible for your customers to buy from you. Services such as Klarna allow your customers to spread their payments, which increases the likelihood that they will make a purchase. You receive the money up front; Klarna collects the money from the customer over the agreed period. It’s a win-win situation!

10. Tracking, tracking, tracking

If you’ve followed the advice in this article and our conversion checklist, you should be well on your way to a fantastic Black Friday weekend. However, it’s important that you track your key metrics via Google Analytics and your shop’s analytics, as well as through your email provider and any other channels you use, such as Facebook.

Once the sales weekend is over and the dust has settled, you need to understand what went well and what could have been done differently, so that you can make your next sale even more successful!

If you need help getting your online shop ready for Black Friday, please don’t hesitate to arrange a free, no-obligation consultation with us. We’d be happy to help you maximise your sales in 2022.