The Ultimate Black Friday Guide for E-commerce Sites

From the beginning of November, even the end of October, an intensive advertising campaign begins to be seen on television, websites, social media, billboards, and bus stops. These announcements, which offer great advantages to internet users and are carried out for the period referred to as Black Friday, herald the great discounts offered by companies. This is usually the part of the business that is visible to consumers.

However, Black Friday is an important and valuable period not only for consumers but also for commercial enterprises. Entering this period prepared, conducting targeted promotional activities, and organizing eye-catching campaigns can significantly increase your sales.

When is Black Friday 2024

If you are wondering when is Black Friday, Black Friday 2024 will be on Friday, November 29.

What is Black Friday?

Black Friday, or Kara Cuma in Turkish, historically defines the first Friday after Thanksgiving. This day marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping season, a tradition in American culture since the 1930s. We are already familiar with how important this shopping is for Americans from the movies or TV series we watch.

The term Black Friday was first used in 1961. That year, people who went shopping in Philadelphia, USA after Thanksgiving caused a very heavy amount of pedestrian and vehicle traffic. This term emerged when the city’s security forces defined the chaos created by this density as Black Friday.

This term, which initially defined a negative event, gained the meaning we know today over time due to many retail companies embracing this situation and turning it into a campaign form.

The discounts made, such as stores opening much earlier than normal, paved the way for this tradition to develop and spread. This date has been recorded as the day of the most shopping in America since the early 2000s. A shopping tradition that started in this country inevitably turns into a kind of craze that affects the whole world.

Black Friday, which will be held on November 29 in 2024, is a tradition that emerged in the field of traditional retailing, but it has also become very important for e-commerce in today’s conditions where digitalization is extremely effective.

This process, which has gone beyond its classical patterns, has expanded to include shopping sites. So, in what ways is Black Friday important for e-commerce companies?

Why is Black Friday Important for E-Commerce?

In a period when shopping over the internet has become so widespread, it was of course inevitable that the Black Friday tradition would spread to the field of e-commerce. Now, shopping sites have become one of the most active actors of this period. The Black Friday discounts to be made by these platforms are a subject that is eagerly awaited by customers months in advance.

In this context, the data that emerges also confirms that e-commerce has become a very important part of this campaign period. The figures given in an article published in Digitalcommerce clearly show that the amount of Black Friday shopping made over the internet has increased steadily every year.

With the emergence of this concept, this discount period has spread to exactly four days. These four days are a great opportunity for e-commerce sites, but they also mean an intense period that requires serious preparation. If you are engaged in e-commerce and want to make the most profitable use of this period, it is now essential to organize various Black Friday campaigns and make the best preparation possible.

How Should You Prepare Your E-Commerce Site for Black Friday?

Black Friday is one of the busiest periods of the year for your e-commerce site. You can turn this intensity into a great advantage with a multi-dimensional and holistic e-commerce campaign management. There are certain issues that you should definitely consider when preparing your site for this period. Skipping any of these issues may hinder the success of your campaign.

Create Your E-Commerce Infrastructure

Your website may reach visitor numbers you have never seen before during this period. Unstable e-commerce infrastructures may have difficulty responding to increased traffic. Accordingly, users may have trouble accessing your site or navigating between product pages. You may not be able to foresee this intensity at the stage of setting up an e-commerce site, but if you want to benefit from the opportunities provided by Black Friday, it is important to have a strong infrastructure. You can get all kinds of support from IdeaSoft in this regard.

Collect Contact Information Before the Campaign

E-mail newsletters are an effective and practical way to reach your customers. A message titled Black Friday deals that lands in their e-mail box is a serious trigger for purchase. However, during this period when campaigns increase, customers are under the influence of a serious advertising density and it can be very difficult to collect their contact information. Anticipating this situation and collecting contact information in advance makes your job much easier.

Determine Your Advertising Strategies

Advertising strategies during campaign periods are directly related to your success in this process. Advertising studies tailored to the audience you want to reach, combined with discounts and other campaigns, give very effective results. For this reason, it is important to determine the promotion and advertising strategies you will follow during this period, in light of the data you obtain from your market research, before Black Friday. The earlier you determine this roadmap, the more flexible you will be against new conditions that arise.

Use Social Media Actively

Social media has become an indispensable part of our lives. Accordingly, it has become a very useful area for advertising and promotion, and recent e-commerce marketing trends confirm this. During this period, actively announcing Black Friday discounts and similar information on social media channels will make it easier for you to reach the sales figures you want.

Improve Your Content

Informative content about your products or services, eye-catching visuals and creative videos will help you reach more people in this process. Therefore, preparing such content in line with the promotion strategies you have determined before the campaign period will pave the way for you to meet the right audience at the right time and convince your potential customers to buy.

Develop a Mobile-Focused Strategy

You should not forget that a large portion of your customers see both your advertising work and your products from mobile devices. Therefore, it is important to develop all your strategies in a way that includes and even highlights mobile devices. The fact that the content you prepare and the website you sell on are fully compatible with mobile devices will positively reflect on your sales figures on Black Friday days.

Determine the Campaign Products

During this period, you do not need to include every product in your catalog in the campaign. However, the Black Friday products you apply discounts to should be parallel to the target market you want to reach. It is of great importance to correctly determine which products will be included in the campaign. For example, Black Friday phone discounts are one of the topics that customers especially focus on. If there are such products in your catalog that would normally strain budgets, it may be useful to discount their prices.

Check Your Stock

During this period, you may see sales figures that you have not reached or predicted before. Therefore, you can prevent possible problems by checking your stocks and determining the products within the scope of the campaign accordingly.

What Campaigns Can Be Made on Black Friday?

In addition to the discounts you will make during the Black Friday process, you can support your strategies with some campaigns. These campaigns will play an important role in increasing your sales. The campaigns you can make during this period can be listed as follows:

What are the Sales Increase Strategies in Black Friday Discounts?

It is predictable that your sales will increase slightly compared to normal conditions during the Black Friday discount. However, strengthening these discounts with certain strategies will visibly increase the share you will get from this pie. We can exemplify the effective strategies you can follow to increase your sales during this discount period as follows:

Today, shipping fees are quite high. These fees can prevent customers from purchasing. You can make your products much more attractive with the free shipping opportunity during the Black Friday period.

Black Friday is no longer just a single day. From this point of view, making discounts for different product groups on different days will be interesting for customers. For example; an announcement titled “Black Friday electronics discounts” indicating any day will quickly mobilize customers who are considering purchasing such a product.

Black Friday is a period when high-cost products such as laptops are purchased in higher quantities. Including products in such groups in limited numbers in the discount will seriously trigger the purchasing motivation of customers. The same can be said for products that are discounted for a very short time.

Influencers are one of the most preferred advertising and promotion channels of the last period. Your potential customers are more likely to buy products highlighted by people or accounts they follow, like and trust. In a period of intense advertising campaigns such as Black Friday, working with influencers will allow you to stand out among your competitors.

Instead of explaining all the details about Black Friday discounts at once, increasing the curiosity of customers with various tips can be an effective campaign. In this way, you can ensure that your campaign is followed more carefully.

Nobody says no to an interesting gift. Based on this idea, you can include free gifts in your campaigns during this period. You can increase the interest of consumers in your products with promotions such as “buy one, get one free”.

Creating bundle packages where you bring together products with common points will be a remarkable campaign in this process. In this way, your customers have the chance to meet more than one of their needs at a time and at a more affordable cost. You can also make this campaign fun by keeping some of the products in these packages secret as an element of curiosity.

Emphasize Urgency and Time

Black Friday discounts are valid for a limited time period. Those who do not benefit from the discounts during this period may lose this opportunity and never be able to catch it again. In addition to the time limit, including a limited number of products in the discount will encourage customers to buy as soon as possible. You can also emphasize the urgency by placing a countdown tool on your website.

Prepare Gift Guides for Your Customers

Customers evaluate the discounts made during this period not only for themselves but also to buy gifts for their loved ones. In order to benefit from this trend, you can prepare gift guides that appeal to different customer groups. These guides make it easier for those who cannot decide what kind of gift to buy, while also increasing your sales amount.

Don’t Forget to Provide Customer Support

Black Friday is a suitable time period to increase your sales as well as to create a loyal customer base. The support you provide to your customers after the sales you make during this period paves the way for the sales you will make both during this period and in the future. You can activate add-ons such as live support and chat on your site during this period.

Continue to Use Social Media Effectively

Using social media just to announce your campaigns in advance will not be enough during this busy period. You can reach more customers by turning your social media accounts into a reminder and campaign notification service while campaigns are ongoing or new products are added to the campaigns.

Do Not Neglect Email Bulletins

Especially employees constantly check their email boxes. An email they receive during this time that includes attractive discounts makes it easier for you to attract their attention. In order not to miss this opportunity, following an effective emailing strategy during the campaign will yield very positive results.

Enrich Your Campaigns with Games

Customers show more intense interest in campaigns that they see themselves as a part of. For this, you can determine the products that will be discounted in light of the preferences of the customers with the surveys you will organize on your social media channels. It is a fun and eye-catching strategy to show your visitors random discounted products that are constantly updated with a tool you place on your website.

Remind Me About Products Abandoned in Cart

A large portion of consumers who shop online leave the site without completing the purchase after adding products to their carts. You can ensure that those people complete the purchase by preparing cart reminder e-mails during the Black Friday period. Preparing the content of these e-mails to emphasize the features of the temporary discount period will give even more effective results.