Your Black Friday
Website Preparation Checklist 2022

This year, sales will be stretched out over a longer period due to inflation. 83% of consumers say that they start shopping for the holidays way earlier than Black Friday, and many say they’re also actively looking for deals way later than on Cyber Monday. More than half (51%) said they intended to start holiday shopping before Halloween. Taking this tendency into account, you have to launch holiday-linked promotional offers as early as possible. The end of October is the best time to begin your promo campaigns.

Search Engines form at least 60% of the whole online store traffic. High SEO rankings drive traffic to your site organically and are essential to any eCommerce business. If you aren’t checking yours regularly (at least weekly, if not daily), start doing so now.

SEO audit checklist:

• Structured data markup;
• Crawling and indexing analysis;
• Search Console Data errors;
• Page speed;
• Server response;
• Html code;
• Mobile optimization;
• Traffic drop analysis;
• Backlinks;
• Pop-ups compatibility with Google policy;
• Keywords.

We guess you know that if the site loads more than in 3 seconds the bounce rate grows by 80 %. Have you ever performed performance testing? If not, that’s the right time to do it if you want to provide your customers with excellent user experience and boost your sales on Black Friday.

Performance audit checklist:

• Core web vitals (CLS, LCP, FID);
• Page speed insights;
• Server configuration;
• Background tasks (cron jobs);
• Content delivery network settings;
• Cache settings;
• JS/CSS optimization;
• Third-party extensions, custom modules.

Choose the products you want to promote during the holiday season and check if you have enough inventory. Review what’s been selling since the brunt of your holiday inventory orders were placed. Has a particular product or series of products suddenly taken off?  It’s not too late, though, to add at least a few additional products depending on supplier availability.

Look at inventory and margins to find products suitable for discount. Review products and plan your deals and discounts ahead of time instead of putting on a sale at the last minute. Build up momentum before the arrival of the Black Friday weekend. Generate curiosity in customers, and potential customers with a sneak peek on social media and references in emails.

Every eCommerce business should have at least a few email marketing campaigns for the holiday season that start before Black Friday and the Holiday season. Here’s an example of the easiest campaign you can run:

• One weekly email four weeks before Black Friday
• An email the night before Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
• An email on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Collect email addresses throughout the year from customer orders and place a widget on your website that lets customers request to be added to your promotional email list.

Previous and existing customers are typically more receptive to sales and promotions than someone who has never bought from you. 

By retargeting previous visitors, you’ll reach a significant audience of people who were interested in your products at some point and may not find out about your holiday promotions otherwise.

Holiday shipping periods nearly always require some level of additional fulfillment staff. With the tight labor market, temp employees will be harder to secure, and you’ll likely wind up paying them more than you’re accustomed to. Get these arrangements made well in advance.

Another important function to plan is how you’ll be prioritizing orders. Standard prioritization methods include customer priority (repeat customers shipped first), shipping method, the shipping provider, and product type.

Revisit your shipping strategy, find a balance between affordability, customer popularity, and logistic, rather than adding endless shipping options to your website.

Nine out of 10 shoppers say that free shipping is  one of the most important offers  to win them over. Orders with free shipping run about 30% more in value than others.

Today’s consumers expect shipping to be free and fast, but you can link those to a minimum purchase level or to peak shopping periods such as Black Friday or Cyber Monday.