February 22, 2023
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The Black Friday and Cyber Monday gold rush is over, and post-sale, we can reveal the tips and tricks our clients used to make the most of the BFCM opportunity.
Now that the seasonal shopping bonanza weekend is over, it’s estimated £1.4 billion was spent online on Black Friday in the UK alone, that is an 11.7% increase on Black Friday 2016. Shopify reported $1billion USD in sales from Black Friday to Cyber Monday, which equates Shopify merchants processing a whopping $1,138,574 a minute.
In the run up to BFCM, we helped our clients prepare by implementing tweaks and changes to their store to maximise the opportunity and increase conversions. Here are few of the trends and common changes we saw.
We saw a shift away from all additional content, as our clients went for the less is more approach to their homepage. This included removing newsletter signup popups, links to a blog and any additional promotional content. Large sale graphics and animations linking to Black Friday collections dominated homepages, focusing customers attention on products and discounts.
As we shift into the festive season, creating a gift guide was a priority for many brands. Curating collections, usually in the “For Him / For Her” categories, allowed shoppers to fill family and friends stockings easily and combined with a Black Friday offer, helped to increase our clients overall AOV. We also built in gift wrapping functionality to a number of stores, making it even easier for shoppers to complete their festive gift buying in one weekend.
Tuning into the indecisive giver, gift cards are a great way to build revenue for shoppers who love your brand. The e-voucher was a popular choice this year and it’s easy to activate from the admin panel of any Shopify store.
To activate the gift card feature go to Products and then Gift Cards. Simply click ‘Start selling gift cards on my store’. Gift cards can be redeemed using: Online Store, Buy Button, Pinterest, Facebook (when you use Shopify's checkout), Messenger (when you use Shopify's checkout) and in person with the Shopify POS.
If you are offering massive discounts, it’s important for customers to realise how much they’re saving at a glance. By displaying the original price with the sale price plus the total discount on top, customers are left with no doubt about the bargain on offer. This is displayed on the collection page, showing the group of discounts, and on the individual product pages.
A nice incentive to increase AOV is to offer a free gift with purchase. The qualifier can be a set spend, a newsletter signup, or even a targeted product. We worked with Commodity to implement a free gift with any 100ml fragrance or candle. It was especially important for Commodity to have a successful weekend, as they donated 50% of their revenue to the victims of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria through a partnership with Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund.
Whilst the BFCM rush may be over, there is still a month of festive shopping, rolling into the Boxing Day and New Years day sales. There is still time to implement our top 5 conversion tweaks and increase your AOV and revenue, and the top tip is to strip back your homepage to the bare essentials, focusing shoppers attention on your products and sale.
