7 Most Common Black Friday Cyber Monday Questions From Shopify Merchants

We have officially entered the busiest time of the year to be selling online.

It’s a stressful time for big merchants.

But with the rise in ecommerce in 2020, there are 1,000’s of first time Shopify Merchants getting ready for their first Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

So yesterday, I sat down to host a live Q&A with a handful of merchants:

Here were the 7 most common questions they asked.

We get this one a lot.

There’s a balance between running a sitewide sale and collecting emails.

But last Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend, Privy customers captured over 1 million email addresses.

In only 4 days.

So we suggest continuing to capture emails during this time.

You’re going to be seeing a spike of traffic this weekend.

But despite the deals, not everyone will be ready to buy. Make sure that you can at least capture their email so you can continue selling to them after the weekend is over.

One tactic we’ve seen work well for customers in the past has been running sweepstakes to future sales.

Unfortunately there’s no one size fit’s all discount. It’s different for each brand.

Products with a lower order value might be better off increasing their normal discount rate from 5-10% to 20-30%.

Whereas if you’re a high-end, luxury brand, you’re probably better off keeping your prices the same and offering an accessory or free shipping with each purchase.

And if you want to avoid simply discounting your products, you can always get creative with your Black Friday offers.

In the past, we've seen merchants buy today and get a $20 gift card for future purchases. Or even offer a free limited-edition product with each purchase.

Website conversion rates are all about trust. During Black Friday it’s no different.

We recommend bringing customer reviews to the forefront of your product pages.

One great example is Native Deodorant.

You don’t need 15,000 reviews to begin. Try downloading a customer reviews app to help first-time buyers build trust in your brand.

And if you’re looking for another idea, you can offer flexible return and refund policies to give first time shoppers more confidence in their order this weekend

The easiest way to keep selling after this weekend is through email.

We recommend an automated email type like the Order Follow Up.

You can schedule these emails to send a certain number of days after the order has been received.

These emails are great for driving repeat customers, who are 9x more likely to convert and 20% more profitable.

Scheduling these emails for 3-4 weeks after you received an order is a great way to automatically boost cross-sells even after BFCM is over.

You don’t want to change anything too dramatically, especially if your ads are already performing well. But tweaking ad text is an easy way to promote your offer without the shopper having to visit your site.

You can also tweak the creative to include a holiday theme.

Here’s a great example from West & Willow where all they do is change the copy to promote their offer to their target market.

If you do, I’d recommend only changing the first 1-2 emails!

Creating a 2-email series that focuses on bringing the customer back to your site before your biggest sale of the year is over.

Here’s a preview on one you can copy.

If this is your first Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend, just remember:

It gets easier.

Having an audience to launch your discounts and promotions to is the easiest way to run a massive sale.

Taylor Sicard, founder of Homesick Candles, recently tweeted this:

So focus on selling as much as possible this weekend.

And for the rest of the year, just remember to build an audience over email that you can use for future sales.

Special thanks to our friends at Privy for their insights on this topic.