As the fourth quarter of 2023 draws near, the eCommerce industry starts preparing for the upcoming holiday seasons and sales events. Amazon Black Friday and Amazon Cyber Monday are two of this quarter’s highly anticipated eCommerce sales events.
Whether you are selling on Amazon or other eCommerce platforms such as Walmart or eBay, obtaining success during Black Friday and Cyber Monday requires more than mere luck. A successful Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaign demands sufficient preparation and a calculated approach.
To help you boost your sales and enhance your overall Amazon business performance during Cyber Monday and Black Friday 2023, we have compiled insights and valuable tips encompassing pre-event, actual event, and post-event strategies.
Overview: Black Friday and Cyber Monday Shopping Events
In the context of the consumer industry, Black Friday occurs the Friday after Thanksgiving. Initially, such an event was only an in-person shopping event. However, as technology evolved, Black Friday extended beyond brick-and-mortar stores and into online shopping platforms like Amazon.
While Black Friday’s origin can be traced back as far as the 1950s, Cyber Monday, on the other hand, was introduced in 2005. Cyber Monday describes the Monday after Black Friday when consumers continue to shop online.
The main difference between Black Friday and Cyber Monday is that Black Friday deals are offered online and in physical stores, whereas Cyber Monday deals are more online-focused. Nevertheless, the difference between Black Friday and Cyber Monday is almost negligible, for both holiday shopping events offer huge discounts and great deals.
Important eCommerce and Amazon Data
Knowing important information that drives the marketplace is crucial when preparing your Amazon Business for Black Friday and Cyber Monday events. From factors influencing shoppers buying decisions to sales reports, these data points can help you quantify your results, determine trends, identify products & categories that attract consumers, and more.
Factors Influencing Buyer’s Decisions
Understanding the factors influencing online shoppers to purchase items can significantly enhance your strategies for the upcoming Amazon Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2023. To provide you with a clearer understanding of the triggers that lead shoppers to click the “Add to Cart” button, here are some of the key factors influencing buyer decisions:
• Product Reviews
Before making purchases, most shoppers tend to navigate to the review section of the product listing to gain insights and recommendations from fellow shoppers who have previously bought the same item.
Most consumers read through reviews when shopping online, and 79% of these consumers actively seek out websites featuring product reviews. This emphasizes the essential role of product reviews for every eCommerce enterprise, including your Amazon business.
Although personal recommendations are given more weight than online reviews, a significant population of shoppers remains confident in the reviews left by other consumers concerning a product. It is estimated that 46% of eCommerce shoppers find online reviews as reliable as personal recommendations. You should take product reviews into consideration when unveiling your Amazon Black Friday deals.
• Free Shipping
When shopping online, shoppers prefer listings that have free shipping options. More than 65% of consumers expect free shipping for their online orders.
Online businesses that do not offer free shipping often experience cart abandonment. Shipping fees often discourage shoppers from continuing their purchases, contributing to the average overall abandonment rate of 69.9%.
Hence, when developing your Black Friday or Cyber Monday strategy, you should consider free shipping options for your product listings. Free shipping has been proven to increase sales and store engagement, which is why Amazon likewise adapted the free shipping option to its platform.
• Discount Offers
Many shoppers anticipate discounts and promotions from eCommerce sites, like Amazon, as the holiday season draws near. With that in mind, offering price discounts to consumers can help influence their buying decisions in your favor.
When offered a discount, approximately 66% of online shoppers are likely to complete a purchase even if they did not initially plan to buy the product. Furthermore, discount promotions reduce shopping cart abandonment, with 54% of shoppers choosing to buy items in their cart after being presented with discount offers for those products.
• Website Interface
An eCommerce site’s design and functionalities also have a significant impact on the shopping behavior of consumers. Hence, online sellers and business owners should take time to optimize their websites or listings.
A mere 1-second delay in page response could lead to a 7% drop in conversions. Additionally, if a listing page or website takes longer than 3 seconds to load, around 40% of visitors are inclined to abandon it.
Furthermore, an alarming 88% of online consumers are unlikely to revisit a website after encountering a negative user experience. Hence, you should optimize your website for the upcoming holiday season, focusing mainly on its mobile responsiveness, navigation, security, search function, checkout process, and product details.
In cases where your products are featured on an eCommerce platform like Amazon, where you lack control over the technical setup, directing your efforts toward listing optimization becomes essential. This ensures that Amazon shoppers obtain precise product details that they can use to evaluate your product better.
Conversion by Devices
As you gear up for the holiday season, it is essential to gain insights into the conversion rates across different devices. This information holds significant value for your eCommerce business, for it enables you to fine-tune your marketing strategies based on customer device preferences.
Furthermore, this understanding can shed light on device performance trends during peak shopping periods like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Identifying these trends allows you to pinpoint areas of your business that may require improvements or updates, such as optimizing content presentation and enhancing user experiences.
Ultimately, comprehending device-specific conversion rates empowers you to shape a tailored approach for the upcoming holiday sales events. Below showcases last year’s conversion rates that highlight the varying performance of different devices during the critical shopping days of Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2022.
Consumer Spending
Knowing what consumers have purchased previously on Black Friday and Cyber Monday gives you an idea of the possible purchases for the upcoming Cyber Monday and Black Friday 2023. Most shoppers spent their money on gift items in anticipation of the gift-giving season. Some of the popular categories consumers spent their money on include the following:
Social Media Platforms Demographics
Social media platforms have become essential for promoting products and driving traffic to a website. Social media platforms allow you to give consumers early access or exclusive access to your listings. Understanding the user demographics of top social media platforms can help you improve the effectiveness of your Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns.
Instagram: Instagram is popular among younger audiences aged 18 to 34. It has become a top social media shopping destination, with 130 million monthly users engaging with shopping ad posts on the platform.
If you offer steep discounts for your listings, you can capitalize on this younger age group, for they are the ones who tend to seek a discount code or items at bargains.
Facebook: Around 60% of individuals engage with Facebook on a daily basis. The majority of its users fall within the 25-34 age group, with video content as one of the primary drivers of engagement on the platform. Contents containing personalized recommendations or new products can help redirect FB users to your listings.
TikTok: Although relatively new in the social media landscape, TikTok has over 1 billion monthly users worldwide, contributing to the exponential growth of its online shopping ads.
This social media platform is popular among users aged 16-24. You can create videos highlighting holiday decorations to entice audiences to your Amazon store.
Pinterest: Pinterest has become not just an avenue for ideas and inspiration but also a unique space for online sellers and business owners. Unlike the previous three social media platforms, Pinterest appeals more to older audiences.
A significant 38% of its users are aged 50-64, and 34% are aged 30-49. You can create pins showcasing an interesting Amazon product category to keep customers coming to your online store.
Each social media platform has its own distinct users, behaviors, and features. Based on the data highlighted above, you can tailor your Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns to intensify their reach. Thus, helping your business thrive in the competitive landscape of eCommerce.
The Amazon Holiday Shopping Weekend
To further refine your approach for the forthcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales events, delving into Amazon’s statistics can be a game-changer. These crucial data insights will be instrumental in shaping your strategies for Amazon Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2023.
Key Insights from Amazon Black Friday and Amazon Cyber Monday
Amazon announced that the holiday shopping event of the previous year, encompassing Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday, was a huge success. Notably, Black Friday witnessed a sales growth of 2.3% compared to its 2021 figures, while Cyber Monday sales also surged by 5.8%.
“This was a record-breaking holiday shopping weekend for Amazon. Customers shopped millions of deals this weekend and we have many more amazing deals to come,” said Doug Herrington, CEO of Worldwide Amazon Stores.
As per Amazon report, the top-selling Amazon categories during the holiday shopping weekend include:
• Home Category
• Fashion Category
• Toys Category
• Beauty Category
• Amazon Devices
Moreover, popular Amazon products purchased during Black Friday and Cyber Monday include:
• Nintendo Switch
• Amazon smart plug
• Hasbro Gaming CONNECT 4
• Amazon Echo Dot
• Fire TV Stick
• Apple AirPods
The Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns of small and medium-sized businesses were highly successful, generating $1 billion in sales. Also, 60% of the units sold in the Amazon store come from third-party sellers. Some of the trending categories for small businesses include:
• Home Category
• Beauty Category
• Kitchen Category
• Toys Category
• Apparel Category
Amazon Cyber Monday and Black Friday Selling Tips
In order to increase your success this holiday season, you need to optimize your strategies, especially your Cyber Monday and Black Friday marketing strategies. Here are some strategies you can apply to help you prepare your Amazon business for the upcoming holiday weekend to improve Cyber Monday and Black Friday sales.
Determine Priority Items
Since not all products will be in demand for the season, you must identify products or categories that will likely generate sales during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. You can check product ranking and sales history for reference.
You can further narrow down your search by checking items under best-selling categories such as Home, Fashion, Toys, Beauty, and Kitchen. You can likewise review previous years’ Amazon Black Friday deals to help you find deals that new customers will be interested in. By doing so, you can focus your resources to support any strategic marketing campaigns for the said products.
Ship Inventory Before Your Amazon Deadline
Once you have identified priority inventory items, ship them before the deadline. Amazon’s deadline for receiving Black Friday and Cyber Monday inventory is November 1. To avoid delays or fulfillment congestion, ship at least a week before the deadline.
Consider Your Fulfillment Service
Amazon sellers can choose between independently fulfilling customer orders (FBM) or leveraging Amazon’s proprietary fulfillment service (FBA). Nonetheless, if you opt for FBA, having an alternative plan involving third-party logistics is highly beneficial. This contingency proves invaluable should FBA facilities become inundated with customer orders and fulfillment tasks.
Conduct Promotions Ahead of Time
Similar to your Prime Day deals, you should also drive traffic to your listings ahead of Black Friday and Amazon Cyber Week. Driving organic traffic to your listings can help increase your listings’ organic ranking.
To market your product or listing before the holidays, consider introducing early bird discounts to pique customer interest and build anticipation.
Furthermore, you can employ another popular Black Friday marketing strategy involving newsletters or sharing compelling content on your social media channels to attract shoppers to your store’s Black Friday sale.
Manage Your Reviews
As you prepare for Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2023, overseeing the feedback and customer reviews featured on your listings is crucial. If possible, aim to address any negative feedback associated with your listings. The presence of negative feedback can dissuade potential shoppers from making purchases.
It is estimated that more than 85% of shoppers are hesitant to buy products with negative reviews. Similarly, this negative customer feedback can also damage the reputation of your business, as 50% of shoppers are more likely to share this feedback to other potential customers.
Perform Listing Optimization
Optimizing your listings on Amazon before Black Friday and Cyber Monday can drastically improve the overall performance of your Amazon business. In particular, listing optimization leads to better product visibility, improved click-through rates, and enhanced conversion rates.
To optimize your listings, you should conduct keyword research to guide you when making engaging titles, persuasive bullet points, and compelling product descriptions.
Additionally, listing optimization also includes the use of high-quality images for your products. A well-optimized image should accurately represent your product. Accordingly, 60% of consumers tend to buy items from websites using high-quality product photos.
Prior to uploading your listing photos, ensure that the photos adhere to Amazon’s photo guidelines and requirements. For guidance, you may follow the specifications below:
Tips During the Holiday Events
Managing your Amazon Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaign does not end during the actual sales events. There are still important things to do to achieve a successful Cyber Monday and Black Friday campaign, and these include the following:
Monitor Your Amazon Business
During the holiday weekend, monitoring your conversion, stocks, and cart abandonment is necessary. It gives you an insight into how your business performs during the holiday event and likewise allows you to make adjustments required for favorable results.
Handle Customer Queries and Support
Be sure to promptly respond to customer queries or concerns during the holiday weekends. This is especially true for Amazon FBM sellers who are primarily in charge of their business’ shipping and customer support.
If you run an ad campaign outside the Amazon website, promptly reply to customer queries, including questions about promos and coupon codes.
Boost Social Media Campaign
During the ongoing holiday weekends, you can further improve your Amazon store engagement and conversion by boosting your social presence. Be active and create engaging posts by showcasing attractive product videos and images.
You can also delve into influencer marketing as part of your social media campaign. You can offer a free gift to influencers so that they will promote your brand and products during the holiday season. However, any connection between you and the influencer receiving the gift should be disclosed as per Amazon guidelines,
Influencer marketing leans significantly on the principles of psychology. Given that our brain is inherently receptive to influencer marketing, this approach can bring substantial advantages to your Amazon business.
Digital media influencers, including Amazon influencers, can help influence consumers’ purchasing behavior. In fact, almost 70% of consumers reported that influencers often influence their purchasing decisions, while more than 60% also shared that social media influencers helped them discover new brands.
Post-Black Friday and Cyber Monday Tasks
Your responsibilities do not end along with the conclusion of the holiday shopping events. Some tasks demand continued careful attention, and some might even require immediate action. Following Amazon Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales events, here are some essential things you should do.
Deal with Customer Returns
Along with your Amazon sales comes Amazon returns. Deal with product returns professionally, as this influences your performance. Since customers might already be frustrated, it is best to make the returns process more convenient for them by extending the return window or offering different return channels.
Depending on the situation, you may also offer a full or partial refund. If possible, make instant refunds to clients you consider VIPs or those loyal to your brand. If you wish to learn more about product returns, we prepared a separate article concerning Amazon Returns and How to Deal With Them.
Check Analytics
It is crucial not to overlook the necessity of comprehensive data analysis for your Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns. Delving into the numbers is instrumental in identifying potential mistakes and gaining insights into enhancing your business strategy for Amazon Black Friday and Amazon Cyber Monday events next year.
Ask for Customer Feedback
After Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Amazon sellers should ask for customer feedback. Obtaining favorable customer reviews can help you improve your seller metrics and credibility.
Although Amazon does not require sellers to request reviews, they may still do so, especially for specific orders. Instead of requesting via email or Buyer-Seller Messaging, you could request an appraisal from a customer using Amazon Seller Central’s “Request a review” feature on the Order Details page.
Amazon allows you to request a review from a customer once per order between 5 and 30 days after the delivery date. Alternatively, if you want a more convenient way to request customer reviews, you may also use a feedback management tool to automate requests for Amazon reviews.
Effective Amazon Seller Tools Approved By Amazon
Below are some of the essential Amazon seller tools crucial for optimizing your Amazon venture. These seller tools are Amazon third-party software partners, which means Amazon approves using these software tools. Using these software tools can help sellers automate, manage, and grow their businesses.
Seller Snap: An AI-powered repricing software that helps you automatically adjust your listing prices based on essential factors such as market trends and competitor prices. Thus ensuring that your products are competitively priced for maximum sales and profits.
Jungle Scout: This is a comprehensive tool for product research and competition analysis. It helps you identify profitable niches and products to sell on Amazon, especially for the coming Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
FeedbackWhiz: A feedback management software that helps you monitor and manage customer feedback or reviews. This Amazon software tool is important for building credibility and driving sales.
InventoryLab: As its name would suggest, this Amazon seller tool can help you manage your Amazon inventory. It can help you track your inventory levels, sales, and expenses. Thus, preventing instances of stockouts and overstock.
Helium 10: This Amazon seller software offers a wide array of functionality, including but not limited to advertising, analytics & reporting, order management, product research & scouting, and more.
Preparing Your Amazon Business for Success
Amazon Cyber Monday and Black Friday 2023 mark the start of the holiday shopping season. These pivotal eCommerce events are accompanied by significant consumer engagement, increased order volume, and challenges.
In order to preempt or mitigate potential issues within your Amazon business during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, proactive preparation is essential. The insights provided above serve as a guide to preparing your Amazon business, ensuring customer satisfaction and optimal overall business performance. By embracing these strategies, you position your business for success amidst the holiday shopping rush.
