Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the holiday season are all closing in on us yet again.
Most E-commerce store owners are asking themselves: How can I prepare my online store for Black Friday/Cyber Monday? (BFCM)
If you’ve been alive for at least a year, you know that BFCM week has a massive impact on the whole world of E-commerce. This is a great period of time for just about any business to thrive and reap the rewards of all the hard work done in the previous 10-months of the year.
In this post, I’ll share some quick suggestions so that you can boost your sales in a quick period of time with some easy wins.
1.) Website Speed
First things first, I think you might wanna get your website speed straight. If you have noticed that your store’s speed is low, it may not handle the traffic the right way. Shopify stores generally cannot pass the minimum speed test, hence the increase in the bounce rate and decrease in the conversion rate. There are loads of apps you can benefit from to boost your website speed.
2.) E-commerce Store Security
With your website functioning well, make sure you have the proper security measures in place too. More people than ever will be spending money on your website with their private information.
Look into setting up a content delivery network (CDN) such as CloudFlare to not only give your website an added layer of security, but a boost to website performance as well!
3.) Create and Update your Content
Creating new content based on trending topics might prove useful due to two basic reasons: First, Google loves trends. Any trending news around the world tends to appear faster than other content. Second, by creating new content, you are helping the SEO of your website in the long run.
Do not forget to update your content! It is a proven fact that old but updated content is so much stronger than brand-new content because Google ranking works on backlinks and the more backlinks a website has, the faster it will rank. If you have relatively old content, it’s time to update it. By doing that you not only create new content but you also benefit from the backlinks you created in the past.
4.) Be Aware that You are in a Competitive Marketing Environment
Especially after the COVID19 outbreak, e-commerce stocks have skyrocketed. Giants like Shopify and Amazon have recorded nice figures this year. According to a Deloitte report, e-comm has increased its already growing numbers by an unprecedented amount.
It looks like people are and will be buying online for quite a long time. This of course is a nice thing for you as an online retail store owner but make no mistake, there are and will be loads of competition.
Launch Paid Ads if you can afford it. With blog posts or content, you will reap the benefits of paid media on platforms like Google and Facebook. This is a great time of year to make your brand visible, so I’d recommend establishing brand awareness. With a good strategy, it is low hanging fruit.
Speaking of Facebook/Instagram, update your social media accounts by creating fresh content and preparing some marketing campaigns. There is no point if you pay for ads and then just don’t engage through organic social media. Hire an influencer to help you generate content like videos or blog posts promoting your content.
Implement an email marketing strategy. There are great themes and tools out there to help you set up email marketing, newsletters, automated marketing campaigns, and email subscription pop-ups. Make sure you advertise your deals and campaigns through email too. Nowadays, everybody checks their email on a daily basis and love getting good deals, especially with BFCM and the holiday season approaching.
5.) Structured Data (Schema)
Do your products favor and implement structured data (schema) so that their rich snippets such as star ratings, review count, stock availability, price, product description appear on the search engine upfront! This will greatly improve the visibility of your products and the organic rank of your website in general. After all, schema is actually a part of the SEO of your website.
There are a bunch of schema applications that you can find on the Shopify store. If you’re not using any of them, chances are the products you’re seeing are giving warnings or errors because Shopify theme schemas tend to fall out of compliance.
6.) Stock and Product Functionality Apps
Last but not least, download more functional apps for your store. Every successful e-comm store takes advantage of these types of apps.
These apps help you abide by Google’s standards. Speaking of Google standards, you can use Google Search Console to check any errors that you might have, and if you do, request a clean-up by contacting their customer service. I always recommend educating yourself on Google products such as GSC, Analytics, Keyword planner, Rich Results, and Mobile-Friendly test, since it allows you to diagnose what’s going on in your store quite easily.
Review apps are highly recommended as well. User comments and reviews greatly change the way buyers’ decisions. Integrating a review app with a schema application is a great way to leap up and stand out on the search results, while the former makes customers share their thoughts and comments, the latter boosts the visibility on SERPs.
BFCM season is big BIG, so it’s likely that you will have some stock-related or shipping problems. You may be out of stock already. It’s a good idea to set a back-in-stock notification reminder to make sure your customers come back and buy what they looked for. Engaging with your customers is essential.
Similarly, set up an abandoned cart app? Visitors on your website come and go. From a UX (user experience) standpoint, it’s in fact reasonable to use an abandoned cart recovery facility in your store. Let people see what they considered earlier and make it easy for them to navigate through your website.
In terms of stock issues, make sure to add a stock-level indicator to your store. If you indicate that there are, let’s say, only 3 items left in stock on a particular product and that same product happens to have some nice star reviews by your customers, That’s a great opportunity to make that sale!
Prepare your E-commerce Store for Black Friday and Cyber Monday
In summation, all these tips I have shared with you are completely doable between now and BFCM. I know that this upcoming season is not only super important in the U.S. but it has also become a worldwide event over the last few years!
Need help dotting your i’s and crossing your t’s? Give us a shout here at Frasca Digital and we’ll give you a free website performance audit!
