Black Friday / Cyber Monday (aka the Super Bowl of online shopping) is the biggest shopping week of the year. As of today when I am writing this, we are 95 days away. It may seem like a lot of time, but it will be here much much faster than you think. We recommend starting to put a plan in action sooner than later. It may be overwhelming to think about, but here are a few quick things to get started with.

Give Your Customers a Sweet Deal

Black Friday is all about getting the best deals, at least for the customers. Take a look at what your sales are like right now, determine what products sell the most, and what kind of deal you can make that will be beneficial to you but also make your customers think they are getting a steal. This might look like 30% off select products or 25% off the entire shop. Whatever deal you come up with, make sure it is still beneficial to you. Black Friday is about making money, not breaking even.

Do Some Marketing

This is probably the most important part of your Black Friday prep. You have to let your customers know what deal you’re offering so they can fit you into their budget. Put together a marketing strategy that promotes your sale and generates interest in your online store. Use social media to your advantage and schedule some posts a few weeks in advance. There are brands that also like to keep their sale secret until the day of. If you go that route, you still need to put together a marketing campaign to promote that you are doing a sale on Black Friday. Be sure to hype up that the sale is amazing and that your customers would be crazy to miss out on it. It would also be a great idea to put a little bit of money behind this campaign and promote this to potential new customers.

Don't Be Shy With Emails

Reach out to your existing customers and let them know you’re going to be running a sweet deal. Get strategic with it and target customers that have shown interest in specific products and include them in your email. Promote products that are your big sellers and get some interest going early. Include your Black Friday / Cyber Monday promotions in your regularly scheduled emails to keep your sales on the radar of your customers.

Test Your Website

Don’t be that site that crashes on Black Friday / Cyber Monday because you didn’t test to make sure you could handle a large hike in traffic. If you’re using shopify, you won’t have to worry about this because they provide scalable bandwidth to ensure your site handles every customer that visits your site.