Hurray! The “Black Friday Sale” is around the corner – whether small or big it is the most important day for any online store and its owners just like the customers. Don’t you think you must reach your customers’ expectations to the maximum during the sale, especially in these times of the pandemic that has hit us? The demand for online shopping is also bound to increase. It is really a daunting task for both physical and online stores to handle sales during these peak times, but still, you can’t afford to miss this opportunity of big sales. Would you like to know how to achieve it?
Why is Black Friday Celebrated?
Before we start with the strategies let us know why Black Friday is celebrated? Black Friday is the informal name for the Friday following Thanksgiving Day which is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. The day after Thanksgiving is considered the unofficial beginning of the Christmas shopping season since 1952. It is a big sale where you can achieve high revenue if planned well. The goal is simple – more sales and happy customers.
Start to prepare your WooCommerce store for the upcoming sale on the 27th of November 2020. This would help you to manage your sales depending upon the current trends/requirements, make adjustments, plan your discount strategies depending on your inventory and also make some precautions for any unforeseen situations.
It is obvious that your customers will be in a hurry as they have a lot of things to be done on Black Friday. Ensure that your store is easily accessible and is attractive to the customer. It is quite important that the customers should be able to purchase more from you in the minimum possible time.
This means to prepare your store to be attractive, simple, and flexible enough(these include – products, discounts, the hype you create, your reliable payment methods, etc.) for your customer’s access.
How to run a Black Friday Deals Campaign on your WooCommerce store
In this WooCommerce black Friday guide, you can learn how to start your Black Friday Campaign earlier so that it is well planned depending on your inventory as well as customers’ expectations. Make a study on your consumers before you start with the plan to know the current trends and requirements.
Black Friday is the perfect opportunity for your business to finish off the year with a big boost in sales. Plan and build your Black Friday campaign that would drive more traffic to your WooCommerce store. Concentrate on your campaign page because that is the initial and crucial step towards your Black Friday sale.
Let me give you some simple suggestions for creating and promoting your campaign page:
- Create your landing page with an eye-catching hero image that grabs visitor’s attention and spurs them to read more.
- The headline of the campaign should be bold enough alerting people, putting numbers in your headline makes the value promotion clear and concrete. (make it attractive and catchy so that it impacts on SEO when consumers look for you in specific.)
- Offer special discounts or bonus points for your visitors which would lead them to convert.
- Use the CTA button on your campaign page in addition to some exciting offers which would increase the possibilities of converting the visitors to your store.
- Promote your Black Friday campaign by posting it on all the social media accounts you manage.
- Don’t forget your subscribers and followers as they are the ones who will be more interested in your store. Consider them special by promoting your landing page through emails. This would also help you gain more referrals for your WooCommerce store.
- Plan for combo offers which would be more beneficial to both, you and your customers (for eg: A customer purchases a lamp Shade from your store offer him/her with suitable Philips Bulb as a combo offer)
When your landing page has reached its maximum hype then chances for your sale increase. Creativity can’t be set, it must be built, so build it to your best and take this opportunity and know better about how to prepare for Black Friday sales to boost your revenue.
Essential Checklists to prepare your WooCommerce site for the seasonal sale
It is always a good practice to start with a checklist in your preparation for the big sale, ensuring that nothing is left out. Now, let us dive into some of the checklists that would help you and your store to prepare for the Black Friday sale.
- Start Early
- Hosting and Website Speed
- Website Design and Mobile Responsiveness
- Landing Page
- Stock Availability
- Make simple deals and optimize your Products
- Keep your customers informed
- Cross-Selling
- Affiliate Management
- Abandoned Cart Recovery
- Analytics report of your store
- Security and Backup
Start Early:
As per the saying “The Early Bird catches the Worm”, start early with your Black Friday deals. A survey says that most of the people start looking for the deals at the earliest. Don’t delay or wait until the Thanksgiving Weekend.
Hosting and Website Speed:
It is very important to maintain the resources of your website and arrange a suitable crew for its technical support. Check your website speed and the checkout process of your website. Lack of speed would turn your customers off. A study says that customers hardly turn up to slow speed websites. Make sure that your website speed is optimal.
Customers would leave your cart abandoned if your checkout process is not smooth. It is very crucial to cross-check the working of your website’s Checkout page. Try using Pingdom and Gtmetrix to assess the traffic your website can handle and it’s working speed.
In addition, to make it simple and more accessible, we have curated the list of the fastest WooCommerce web hosting providers, including their offers and deal links.
Website Design and Mobile Responsiveness:
During Black Friday, people are in a hurry. As there are thousands of websites waiting with their deals you can’t expect people to spend a lot of time on your website. If your website is working fine with all its pages designed attractively with proper navigation, customers would find it aesthetically pleasing for shopping from your WooCommerce store. Prepare a checklist for choosing your WordPress theme for your store.
Nowadays, more than fifty percent purchase on the go. Which means they make their purchases using mobile instead of desktops. So, it is necessary to optimize your website in a way that it is adaptable to mobile phones. This would eventually add value to your store for saving your customers’ time.
Landing Page:
Create your landing page in such a way that you are noticed in the great sea of sales. Make it attractive with exciting deals with referral bonuses. Let your landing page be user-friendly with the CTA button that would make the visitors convert.
Stock Availability:
It is obvious that the big sale would help you out to clear your inventory. It is to be taken care of that your warehouse is full depending upon the trend and requirements of your customers.
If your inventory is not well maintained it would disappoint your customers which would be the worst nightmare you ever had. An inventory not maintained properly would be a discouragement to your customers, and a nightmare to you.
Therefore it is essential to properly maintain your inventory giving a happy shopping experience to your customers.
Make the deals simple and optimize your Products:
Plan simple deals for your store so that it is easily understandable to your customers. Do not waste your customer’s time by setting deals with complications (For eg: set deals like, Get 30% off on a purchase of $500, any simple BOGO deals).
Try to display your discounts on your homepage so that customers can have an idea of what they could save on the Black Friday sale. Include time banners for exclusive products to add urgency and excitement for your customers. It is quite natural that most of the consumers abandon their cart when the shipping cost is added on the checkout page.
Offer free shipping to your customers to make them feel valued at your store. Implement referral programs (bound points or any particular discount on referring a friend) as Word-Of-Mouth is the biggest marketing tool.
Products in your store must be displayed optimally.
The details and their respective deals should be genuine and understandable. Payment gateways should be secure and firm for a fluid working of your checkout page.
Keep your Customers informed:
One of the marketing strategies is to email your subscribers and followers regarding the Black Friday deals in advance. It is a method of campaigning your website. Likewise, make it a habit to mail your customers even after their purchase from your store.
Send a Thank you mail along with reward coupons to boomerang your customers. Keep them informed about the status of their orders to exhibit your transparency.
Provide customer support for the guidance of your customers in case of any issues during their purchase.
Always maintain a long-lasting relationship with your customers by sending them to deal alerts even after the Black Friday sale.
Cross-Selling:
Do you think your customers will just purchase what they want and just leave? If yes, then you are wrong. Cross-sells play a great role in marketing. Always display related products with the ones purchased especially before the checkout.
For eg: if a customer purchases shoes, let the related products be shoe soles and socks. The concept of cross-sells helps your customers navigate to the related products with no effort. Amazon does a great job in cross-sells.
Affiliate Management:
Using any affiliate management platform for your store gather all influencers and bloggers in your targeted niche. Prepare an affiliate management process by hunting targeted influencers to convince them to promote your campaign deal. With the help of marketing materials guide your influencers and bloggers in creating your site’s campaign for the big sale.
Reward Your Customers:
The concept of rewarding customers by counting on their activities at your store brings in a great customer engagement at your WooCommerce store. Offering points and rewards to your customers for completing a purchase, for submitting a review, or for referring a friend sounds interesting.
This strategy would efficiently increase customers’ loyalty to your store. The eCommerce market comes up with various WooCommerce extensions that help in configuring the reward system in few clicks. Choose the best suitable WooCommerce points and rewards plugin and keep your growth inclined.
Abandoned Cart Recovery:
Customers abandoned their cart for the below common reasons:
- Extra cost too high (Paid shipping, tax, etc)
- Lack of payment options
- Return policy
- Website error
- Delivery too slow
- Credit card declined
- Complicated checkout process
Leaving your abandoned carts at bay is of no use to you nor others. Recover the abandoned carts by sending cart recovery emails to your customers as it is one of the best methods in practice. Send your cart recovery emails with attractive subject lines like (Hey! You left something behind, Your cart is Waiting, Don’t miss out on this deal, etc.) so that they are not ignored by your customers.
It is quite important that your customers’ inbox is not filled up with noises. Try providing them discounts in their cart recovery email so that your cart may be recovered at a faster phase.
Analytics report of your store:
Analyze your site’s traffic with the help of the website analytics tool. It is important to analyze it beforehand as you can make arrangements to tackle the hard situations during the sale. It is an essential criteria to be followed to measure the entire progress of your campaign.
Security and Backup:
Ensure security for your store’s website and backup everything from site code to product images. The great sale comes once in a year and don’t let your sales drop due to some inconvenience that occurred in your store. The backup will help to recover the store in no time. Having a backup is like having insurance for your store.
How to setup WooCommerce Black Friday Deals Campaign on your WooCommerce store
The Black Friday deals can be set for your WooCommerce store using some of the best WooCommerce black friday plugin that would help you to have a great experience during the Black Friday sale.
- Discount Rules for WooCommerce
- Retainful
- WooCommerce Loyalty Points and Rewards
Discount Rules for WooCommerce
Discount Rules for WooCommerce is one of the best Black Friday WooCommerce plugins for setting up various deals for your store based on your inventory. Both simple and complex deals can be set using this plugin. As mentioned earlier it is advisable to set simple deals for your WooCommerce store as customers can’t spend a lot of time on your store.
Let me give you an idea of the deals that can be implemented in your store.
- Quantity-Based Discount Rules
- Price Discount rules
- Cart Discount rules
- Store-Wide Bulk Discounts
- Bulk Discount based on a specific category
- Price Discount (in bulk discounts) for a specific Product
- Bulk discount for a specific product
- Bulk discount based on cart quantity
- BOGO deals (PRO version of discount rules is required)
Retainful
Make sure that your cart is not abandoned during the sale by checking the site’s stability to handle the traffic. In case anything unfortunate happens, you can recover the abandoned cart using the Retainful plugin. It is one of the best features of “Abandoned Cart Recovery” that the plugin has – automatically follows up with your customers to recover the cart and also to reduce cart abandonment in the WooCommerce store.
The plugin also deals with the feature called “Next Order Coupon” where you can provide coupon codes for your customers through emails (These coupon codes can be used for their next purchase). Exit-Intent popups detect the visitors who visit your store and leave without purchasing. This feature in the retainful plugin helps you to recover the abandoned cart and converts visitors into customers.
Loyalty Points and Rewards for WooCommerce
A Reward system is an effective way of attracting more loyal customers, especially during the season sale. The time can be utilized to bring in more sales and customers to your WooCommerce store. Loyalty Points and Rewards for WooCommerce, plugin is one of the best and reliable extensions for configuring a reward system to your store.
The plugin comes up with the below features,
- Rewarding customers with points for their signups.
- Incentivizing customers with redeemable points for completing a purchase and submitting product reviews.
- Offering rewards for referring a friend through which you can turn your existing customers to brand advocates.
- The awarded points can be redeemed by the customer whenever required.
- The customizable launcher widget in the plugin lets your customers find their rewards easily. The feature is mobile responsive and is customizable using WordPress Customizer.
What to do next?
The very next process is to re-check the created checklist to find out any missouts. This would help your WooCommerce store be well prepared for the Black Friday sale using WordPress top plugins.
Gather all your influencers and bloggers to the target niche and convince them to promote your deal campaign. Guide the targeted influencers and bloggers with the marketing materials in creating the deal campaign for your store.
It is essential to post your deal campaign just before the sale begins on social media as it would help you to reach a vast number of customers. Make it as a reminder to notify your subscribers and followers through email with some special concerns.
To maintain a long-lasting relationship with your customers keep notifying them regarding the status of their orders. As a sign of gratitude notify your customers with a “Thank You” email after their purchase from your WooCommerce store.
Is your WooCommerce store ready?
Plan, prepare, and start early for a successful Black Friday sale. Make sure you cover the checklist that puts you in a better position to succeed this season.
Happy Selling. Enjoy the Big Sale!
Wishing you Good Luck.
