Black Friday and Cyber Monday Checklist 2022 for eCommerce Businesses

For many eCommerce brands, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are their biggest sales days of the year. If that’s the case for your brand, then keep reading. The 3PL team is about to tell you the things you need to know to make 2022’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday your best ones yet!

When are Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2022?

First, and most importantly, you’re going to want to make sure you don’t accidentally miss these crucial sales days… So, when exactly are they?

• Black Friday this year is on Friday 25th November.
• Cyber Monday this year is on Monday 28th November.

Add these dates to your calendar now, and make sure that your team is aware of them. Ask your team to schedule rotas and annual leave accordingly so that you have sufficient people on hand to deal with a surge in sales.

The ultimate Black Friday and Cyber Monday eCommerce checklist

Okay, now that we’ve nailed down the dates of these two important sales events, we’ll take you through a checklist of all the things you should be doing ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Prepare your online store for increased traffic

If you’re expecting a particularly high volume of sales across Black Friday and Cyber Monday, then you need to make sure your website is able to handle it.

Make sure that you’re using a platform that’s able to maintain 99%+ uptime, and which also has the server capacity to handle large surges in visitors.

What you certainly don’t want to happen is for your website to crash, resulting in lost sales.

Optimise your site for mobile

Talk about Black Friday and Cyber Monday with many people, and they’ll think of people sitting at desktop PCs browsing the web.

Whilst this used to be the case, things are changing.

According to research conducted by DataReportal, a staggering 79% of smartphone users say they use their phones to make purchases through apps or websites.

So, you need to make sure that your website is optimised to create a truly intuitive, easy-to-use mobile experience.

Fail to do this, and you’ll lose customers to eCommerce brands that do.

Check your checkout process

It’s all very well preparing your website for large numbers of visitors, and ensuring mobile visitors have a good experience if they struggle to check out.

At least a few weeks before Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you want to thoroughly test the checkout process on your website. Try placing test orders and look for errors regarding shipping, tax or other errors.

You should also pay particularly close attention to the payment processing part of the checkout experience. Test how easy it is to add cards, remove cards, and update billing addresses/delivery addresses etc.

Research from Drip has found that the abandoned cart rate across all eCommerce sites is an alarmingly high 69.57%. So, any improvement you can make to your website’s checkout process is likely to lead to fewer abandoned carts and thus increased sales.

Use retargeting to bring old users back to your website

If you’re able to reach people who have previously been exposed to your brand, you stand a far better chance of turning them into paying customers.

But, how can you do this?

By using retargeting campaigns.

Good quality retargeting campaigns use the cookies which your website drops into the browsers of your visitors. This cookie is then used to show adverts from your brand on other websites that the visitor goes to.

They are effectively ‘chased’ around the web by your adverts. According to research conducted by Outgrow, retargeting campaigns can result in a 1 to 5% increase in sales.

Ensure your customer service team is ready

Dealing with a large surge in customer enquiries is never easy. That’s particularly the case during Black Friday and Cyber Monday when your customer service team could potentially be overwhelmed with enquiries.

If having looked at previous years’ sales data, you think you’ll be receiving a particularly large surge in sales during these days, then consider scaling up your customer service team with temporary hires.

The key to getting this right, however, is to ensure that the temps are fully trained and integrated with your existing team.

Customers don’t want to speak to people who aren’t able to provide them with answers quickly and easily.

Communicate in a clear, transparent, honest way

Related to the point above about customer service, it’s essential that you communicate with customers in a clear, transparent and honest way.

If a customer’s order is going to be delayed, then tell them that. Don’t try to avoid it.

This is especially important in 2022, as Google has introduced new algorithm changes centred around customer reviews.

If you fail to communicate honestly, which results in negative Google reviews (and reviews on other sites such as Trustpilot), the organic performance of your website is likely to suffer as Google prioritises similar businesses with better reviews.

Get your fulfilment up to speed!

One of the most overlooked – yet crucially important parts of preparing your eCommerce brand for Black Friday and Cyber Monday – is fulfilment.

Fulfilment refers to everything that takes place from the moment a customer places an order on your website, to the moment they receive said order in their hands.

As you’ve probably gathered, that encompasses a huge range of processes, from inventory and warehouse management to order processing, picking and packing, and delivery.

Unless you have a large, highly-experienced in-house fulfilment team, managing all of these processes during the busiest trading days of the year can be an almost impossible endeavour.

So, what’s the solution?

Consider outsourcing your fulfilment to a specialist third-party provider. These companies are known as 3PLs, and they do nothing else but carry out fulfilment for other brands.

Because they do nothing else but fulfilment, they are experts at it. Not only that, but because they take care of fulfilment for multiple brands, they are able to benefit from economies of scale and unbeatable shipping rates – passing the savings on to their customers, like you.

Want to find out more? Then speak to the 3PL team today to find out how outsourced fulfilment could boost your eCommerce brand this Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Find out more about 3PL’s eCommerce fulfilment services now

For more eCommerce fulfilment, logistics and shipping advice, read the 3PL blog…

Top 10 Tips for Planning for eCommerce Peak Season 2022 | How to Choose the Best eCommerce Fulfilment Service for Your Business | When to Make the Switch From In-House to Outsourced Fulfilment?