Let me tell you quickly why and how the popular Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales season came about.
Black Friday is the widely known sales holiday where online shoppers get to get their hands on discounted products towards the end of the year.
Black Friday is a sales event that happens the day after Thanksgiving in the US. This holiday is a gift-buying period where people prepare for Christmas. Sorting the items they want to give out to loved ones.
However, in recent years due to the growth experienced in the e-commerce industry, this hot sales season has extended into many days post-Black Friday.
In order to respond to shoppers’ increasing demands regarding sales events and also to influence their buying habits, Black Friday has extended beyond a day into weekend holiday sales.
That is how we have Cyber Monday joining the sales league. Although the holiday sales extend beyond the Monday after Black Friday into 5 other Cyber sales days called Cyber 5 sales holidays.
Table Of Content
1. BFCM Stats
2. BFCM Trends You Should Know About As A Shopify Merchant
– Run A Multichannel Store
– Mobile Shopping
– Order Fulfillment Demands Are High
– Social Media Marketing
3. BFCM Stats To Facilitate Planning
4. BFCM 2022 Checklist For Your Shopify Store
– Site Speed
– Prepare For Traffic Like Never Before
– Set Your Product Sales On Urgency Mode
– Inventory
– Order Fulfillment Process
5. Wrap
BFCM being the end of the year sales in preparation for a major festive celebration of the year, one thing to note and expect for sure is that a hefty proportion of shopping will be done.
Before the expansion of eCommerce, people usually had to do their festive shopping from physical outlets. However, we can see that since 1969, when people could buy items online from their comfort zones, e-commerce grew rapidly.
Therefore, BFCM is a holiday sales event that merchants should prepare well for. In 2021, BFCM sales rose to $6.3 billion, a 23% increase from 2020. If the sales you’ve had on your Shopify store have not been impressive, BFCM is a sales season you should grab with all you have.
I will help you in this post to create a checklist of what to prepare your store with in anticipation of Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2022.
BFCM Trends You Should Know About As A Shopify Merchant
1. Run A Multichannel Store
To increase sales for your store considering the competitors in your product niche, you might need to expand beyond selling to a limited area.
Having a single-channel business does not cut it in today’s e-commerce world where the internet can help you sell far across your border. Shipping globally was recorded to capture about 15% of all the 2021 BFCM orders.
This is an online shopping phenomenon that is here to stay. If you really desire to capture that massive sale for BFCM 2022, you need to open up your business to markets outside your local area.
2. Mobile Shopping
The quickest and fastest way to help customers stay in your store is to make your website usable on mobile. People shop on the go which they find very easy to do using their mobile phones.
It is quite easy for me to shop on mobile during the work hours of a holiday sales period. It’s faster than doing the same on a desktop.
The 2021 sales recorded about 71% shopping from mobile phones while 29% were from desktop shopping.
Therefore, stay ready to optimize your website for easy use and navigation on mobile phones.
3. Order Fulfillment Demands Are High
The increasing number of orders e-commerce merchants get during the holiday sales season is beyond what their existing fulfillment process might be able to handle. Using local delivery might not help you reach your fulfillment goals.
Curbside pickup and local delivery were used to fulfill orders in the US in 2021. Therefore, delivery costs increased and the demand for fulfillment services increased.
Enhancing your fulfillment team to prepare for this period can help you ease the delay in order fulfillment. If as a small business you use a third-party fulfillment service, you might want to engage a reliable service provider or still work with more than one fulfillment service.
4. Social Media Marketing
This is also about owning multiple sales channels where you make your products accessible to customers.
Social media was said to be one of the core sales points, especially for small and medium Shopify store owners in 2021.
Platforms like those are not what you want to undermine during a major sales season. Having a social channel that replicates the products in your store is a sales point. Customers can browse through your products right from a social channel like Instagram.
BFCM Stats To Facilitate Planning
In 2020, 56% of orders were made using mobile phones. Leaving 44% for orders made via desktop. However, the conversion rate was higher for desktop orders than for mobile. In 2021, orders via desktop increased by 4%.
Cyber Monday in recent years has taken the lead when comparing the revenue, online sales as well as conversion rate, and traffic generated on the giant holiday sales.
Revenue
BF – 14%
CM – 25%
Traffic
BFCM – 21%
Average Orders Value
BF – 11%
CM – 12%
BFCM 2022 Checklist For Your Shopify Store
1. Site Speed
Many sales would be running on a timer which might be limited. And some sales will be flash sales which are once-in-a-lifetime chances for online shoppers.
This implies that online shoppers have limited time to grab all the sales they want. A crawling site will discourage visitors from visiting or purchasing from it.
It is recommended that you audit your site to know whether the average load time for your website is quick enough not to make a visitor close their tab.
By improving your site speed, customers will be able to navigate your store very quickly and browse most of the listed products on your store.
Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) 2022: How To Increase Sales Incredibly
2. Prepare For Traffic Like Never Before
Top of your list should be preparing your store to handle the type of traffic you will be getting. Why?
Customers have to gain access to your store first before they can interact with other marketing strategies you want to put in place.
Because of the immense amount of traffic e-commerce stores receive during the giant sales season, you must be prepared to provide the best user experience and customer experience possible.
Improving the engineering aspect of your website to accommodate lots of traffic without slowing down site speed or making the site inaccessible to customers is very vital when preparing for Black Friday.
The good news for Shopify store owners is that Shopify prepares extensively for BFCM. This means you have fewer worries about the flooding traffic your store will get during this period.
3. Set Your Product Sales On Urgency Mode
You can create sales urgency to inspire your customers or visitors to buy the products you are trying to sell.
In general, customers do not want to miss out on any tasty offers and deals they can get during Black Friday. Having flash sales on products with a prior broadcast about the item will surely help you sell out pretty quickly.
E-commerce retailers leverage the fear of missing out (FOMO) to boost sales and average order value for their stores.
There are numerous ways to create a sense of urgency. This post discusses these measures extensively.
6 Ways To Create A Sense Of Urgency In Sales
4. Inventory
This is a time when the demand you might get on BFCM days might be more than what your inventory can handle. This is to be expected even after planning for the excess demand you will receive.
What you should do is ensure that your supply chain is capable of helping you meet your demand. A glitch in the supply chain would make it difficult to deliver products to customers.
Also, forecasting your demand can help you prepare efficiently for this peak season. This way you have more than enough to fulfill your orders and also have enough to sell post-holiday sales.
In this post, I mentioned how product analysis can help with deciding what products you want to promote for BFCM. Popular, frequently bought or searched items, and trendy items should make this list.
Carrying out product analysis will help to know which products would need to be stored more in preparation for BFCM.
5 Black Friday Cyber Monday Tips For Shopify Store Owners
5. Order Fulfillment Process
Know that you are expecting to process multiple orders during this period. It will be quite different from an average business day, where there are fewer orders to be filled or a smaller order as compared to sales day orders.
Restructuring your order management team to meet the demands of this time is vital. If need be, you can increase the number of people handling this department or integrate a third-party app that can help you track and monitor orders to avoid mix-ups.
Create a priority list where you have orders that need to be sent first based on shipping preferences.
If you are a Shopify merchant, you can integrate various order-tracking software into your store to help you address this point.
Wrap
Having a multichannel e-commerce store as a Shopify merchant will double up your sales during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Knowing that different channels can reach different audiences and using that information to strategize for this holiday sales will boost your revenue.
If you run your store only on Shopify, you can extend your marketing activities to social media platforms to reach a wider audience.
Shopify ascertains that store owners who included social media sales during 2021 BFCM were able to increase their sales and revenue by a feat.
