In 2022, market research predicted the most extended Black Friday sales season ever seen — starting four weeks before Thanksgiving and lasting a week afterward.

This trend could be the same in 2023, as consumers are looking for deals earlier and making a more strategic game plan for spending amid economic uncertainty.

It’s essential to be on the pulse of all the Black Friday trends to stay ahead of the competition. So here are five Black Friday e-commerce tips to help you make the most of this holiday season.

Black Friday Shopping Tips for Brands

If you’re running a brand, setting yourself up for the most success you can have this season is essential. Unfortunately, there is much information to sort through, from marketing tactics to markdowns, with so many different steps.

It’s easy to become overwhelmed with the work you should be doing to prepare for this busy time. 

Luckily, we’ve got a few simple tips to help make Black Friday and the holiday shopping season easier for your brand.

1. Check Your Site’s Load Speed — and Consider Giving It a Boost

The first thing you need to do to prepare for Black Friday is checking your site load speed.

Ideally, your website should load between 2 to 3 seconds. The bounce rate for sites that take 3 seconds to load is 32%. That means if it takes 3 seconds for your site to load, 40% of your customers will leave your site before ever looking at your products.

If your bounce rate is 5 seconds, meanwhile, that bounce rate skyrockets to 90%.

Customers are willing to return immediately, and if they have a good user experience, they will likely not return. 

You can use many tools to test your site’s load speed. Google’s Page Speed Insights and Pingdom are two places to check your site speed. If you see that your load speed is too slow, there are some ways to correct it:

• If you’re using an e-commerce platform handling your hosting: Look at your images. If you have a lot of pictures or videos on your homepage, consider removing some of them or changing them out for lower-resolution images like JPEGs instead of PNGs.
• If you’re using a platform that requires you to get your own hosting: Contact your host and see if you can upgrade your plan or increase your load speed.

2. Offer Discounts

Everyone is looking for a discount on Black Friday and the weeks surrounding it. However, it would be best if you offered at least a 15% or 20% discount to get noticed. You can provide this storewide or on select products. 

There are many benefits to offering discounts:

• Attract new customers that have never purchased from your brand.
• Encourage purchases not pre-planned, incentivizing people to take advantage of unexpected great product deals.
• Encourage past customers to make a repeat purchase from your brand.

Advertising your discount(s) on social media, emails and your website are great ways to grab customers’ attention. 

3. Offer Free Shipping

In addition to offering a discount, customers often expect free shipping when shopping online.

When shopping online, a staggering 80% of consumers expect free shipping when ordering a specific dollar amount of products, according to a 2021 Consumer Trends Report. Moreover, 66% of consumers expect free shipping on all online purchases. 

But how are you, as a brand, supposed to afford free shipping? Won’t that mean less profit?

There’s a simple solution to offer free shipping on every single order: Ensure that you‘re adding the cost of shipping into the retail price of your products.

For example, say you charge $20 for a shirt plus $3.99 for shipping. Then, change the cost of the shirt to $23.99 — plus free shipping. 

Your customers get a perceived deal, and you’re not losing any profit. So it’s a win-win for you both.

4. Social Media Blasts

Be bold and post more than usual on social media during your sale. You never know when followers miss content, especially with unpredictable algorithms.

While it’s a great idea to post more frequently, it’s also important to note that you don’t want to blast the same post all day long — or completely spam your followers’ feeds with posts every 5 minutes. 

Be sure to switch up the content, all with the same call to action to shop your holiday sale. For example, highlight a different product that is a part of your sale each hour. This way, you’re adding new content — reminding them about the current deal and expanding your chances of grabbing someone’s attention with something fresh on their feed. 

Using your social media platform’s stories is a great place to make these kinds of posts. You can easily add links and post multiple times without overcrowding your or your customer’s feeds. 

5. Capture Email Addresses

Email capture is critical for staying in touch with past, present, and future customers.

It’s easy to think that email marketing is dated and dead, but you’ve likely already checked your emails today and will do so multiple times. And even though you may not have opened an email from a specific company, you likely, at a minimum, read the subject line and know the content of the email.

Email marketing is one of the most effective tools for connecting with potential customers.

In addition, email marketing still has the highest return on investment (ROI) of all channels, at about $36 earned for every $1 spent. 

Email marketing is crucial because you can:

• Turn one-time shoppers into repeat customers.
• Turn window shoppers and bargain hunters into first-time buyers.
• Keep communicating with past, current, and future customers and growing your community throughout the year.

But how do you get people to give you their email addresses? Exchange it for something in return.

For example, with Black Friday deals, don’t automatically put the discount on all items on your site. Instead, ask that they sign up for your mailing list in exchange for the value. You can also leave a static registration form on the footer of your website. 

These are great ways to grow your mailing list. However, if you’re looking for a platform to help you with emails, consider Mailchimp. It’s a fan favorite and has excellent free options for anyone starting. 

You can also check with your e-commerce platform to see what email services they already have or can quickly work with. 

Use Black Friday Tips To Boost Holiday Sales

With some planning and the right strategy, the holiday season can go from an overwhelming time to an exciting season to boost your brand’s bottom line. We hope you found these Black Friday tips to boost e-commerce sales helpful and feel more prepared for the holiday season than ever!