9 Cyber Monday & Black Friday eCommerce Strategies

DynamicWeb

1. Join the Party

Committing to the holiday spirit of Cyber Monday and Black Friday holiday sales is the first step to your eCommerce strategy. Make your participation loud and proud on your website because customers intentionally seek these sales. When customers enter your website, let them know they are in the right place by clearly communicating and displaying your deals. Make the shopping experience enjoyable, smooth, and efficient to show customers that they should buy from you and not a third-party seller or competitor. 

2. Create a Holiday-Specific Landing Page

Take the party to another level by launching a Black Friday or Cyber Monday-specific landing page. This suggestion goes beyond adding a simple border or top banner on your website that promotes your top deals. Consider centralizing the sale on your site with a dedicated Cyber Monday or Black Friday page. Showcase all the discounts you are offering and do not display anything that does not have a deal attached. The goal is to give customers looking just for sales a single place to browse discounted products. Eliminate the guesswork for consumers who may not know what is on sale and what is not. This method can help you keep customers focused and accelerate conversions. If customers are new to your brand, have never purchased with you, or are looking for a gift, a landing page can provide a warm welcome and appreciated guidance. 

3. Extend Discounts Beyond the Holiday

Let’s talk about the timing of the sale. We traditionally think of Black Friday and Cyber Monday as single-day events. However, that does not have to be the case. Why have just one or two record-breaking sales days when you could have 10? 

Rather than limiting your sales event to a 24-hour window, extend the discounts beyond the holiday itself. This strategy allows you to use the scarcity selling tactic, leverage the well-established reputation of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and elongate the promotional time period to take full advantage of the hype. Many companies, including leading retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy, are promoting Cyber Week to extend the buzz and increase sales volume. 

Additionally, B2B businesses can take advantage of this approach as it is unlikely that companies are placing many orders the day after Thanksgiving. Consider extending the sale even as much as a month in advance or a month past Black Friday and Cyber Monday to allow your customers to make discounted business purchases when they are in the office. Furthermore, this tactic enables businesses to capitalize on sales they can pass on to their customers during single-day events. 

4. Offer One-Time Only Product Variants

Another strategy to consider is offering a one-time product variant for this time of the year. However, this strategy does not apply to every brand. It works best for certain product-based companies with high customer loyalty and visibility, like apparel and fashion brands or national coffee chains. For example, Allbirds released a limited edition of shoes just during Cyber Monday that customers could only buy at that time. The special products sold out very quickly and created a buzz. Barnes and Nobles leveraged this strategy by selling book editions signed by the authors available specifically on Cyber Monday. Really any consumer goods company can create a unique version to offer as a part of their Cyber Monday or Black Friday eCommerce strategy. 

5. Get Listed on Shopping Sites and Coupon Apps

Today there are more shopping sites and coupon apps than ever before, and consumers are relying upon these sites at increasing rates. These shopping behaviors highlight the importance of omnichannel Cyber Monday and Black Friday ideas for eCommerce. Essentially, you want your brand to show up wherever people are shopping. Make sure your brand is included on comparison shopping sites like Google Shopping or Amazon and discount apps like RetailMeNot and Groupon. These apps are always surfacing details that apply, but you can also submit promotions or partner up with the companies to increase visibility for your brand and featured products. Utilize shopping sites and coupon apps to get more exposure and increase conversions. 

6. Display a Countdown Timer

Consider adding a countdown timer to your website in one of two ways. First, it is clever to use a countdown timer ahead of time as you are leading up to the Cyber Monday or Black Friday eCommerce sale. Insert a highly-visible countdown timer on your website’s home page or banner. Countdown to when the sales begin and hyperlink the countdown to the promotional landing page. On your holiday-specific landing page, consider providing customers with previews and the ability to add items to their wishlist for expedited purchasing when the sale begins. 

On the flip side, you can use a countdown timer once the sales begin to let customers know now is the time to shop and complete purchases. Consider including the countdown timer throughout the website, giving customers a sense of urgency.

7. Offer Dynamic Promotions

Promotions are always great, and dynamic promotions are even better because they allow you to specify the targets and optimize your losses on the promotion. You can encourage customers to purchase certain products that, for example, are on the home page when they visit the site. Additionally, you can offer exclusive discounts or complementary products. You do not have to give the offer to everyone who visits the website. You can show the promotions to people who have bought a certain product from you before. That feature is built right into your DynamicWeb system. 

8. Provide Free Shipping

Not every business can offer free shipping. This proposition is conditional upon your product, logistics partner, and margins. You certainly do not want to throw all your margins out the window with free shipping, but many companies offer free shipping for orders over a certain amount. If your business already offers free shipping for orders over a certain value, perhaps you could consider lowering that amount for a limited period of time to appeal to your customers during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. If you do not offer free shipping, consider doing so for even a small amount of time. This strategy is a large driver of eCommerce sales thanks to massive retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Target that almost always offer free shipping. Free shipping is a very big part of the evolution of eCommerce, and if your brand can participate in that, it might be something to consider. 

9. Send Abandoned Shopping Cart Emails

Abandoned cart emails can be a delicate subject, as customers may feel annoyed if the emails are too pesky. However, when it comes to limited-time offers like Cyber Monday and Black Friday, a reminder that a customer has left some items in the shopping cart is sometimes all someone needs to purchase. The email reminder may be much appreciated in the holiday season when customers are commonly jumping from site to site looking for different things and possibly getting sidetracked. It is certainly possible to jump to another site and realize you forgot to place that other order. Tactful abandoned shopping cart emails could really come in handy for customers trying to get all their shopping done in one or two days. 

If you need help building lifelong customer relationships, increasing revenue, and growing your brand during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and every other day of the year, consider partnering with us at DynamicWeb. We offer customers an industry-recognized, award-winning cloud business platform that enables stellar customer experiences and scaled eCommerce success through best-in-class eCommerce, Content Management, Product Information Management and Digital Marketing solutions. To learn more, contact DynamicWeb today. 

LEARN MORE: Why you need more than a shopping cart (free white paper)