E-commerce: cash in on Black Friday

A company's sales activities can escalate at certain periods of the year (Christmas, Cyber Monday, summer or winter sales…) and in particular around Black Friday.

Black Friday is a US born event launching the holiday shopping period with exceptional offers. Black Friday, as its name suggest begins on the Friday following Thanksgiving and lasts for several days or weeks.

For a business, Black Friday is an amazing business opportunity with average sales increasing by 663%¹ compared to a standard shopping day. It is essential to anticipate this period and ramp up your marketing to attract shoppers: flash sales, new product launches, special offers, reductions...

Discover our 5 tips for getting the most from Black Friday and boosting your sales.

Prepare your product catalog

Before Black Friday, it is essential to spend time preparing your product catalog.

Black Friday is a much-anticipated event: 51% of shoppers² do their holiday shopping during Black Friday. They also tend to plan a budget for this period: a majority (51%³) plan to spend 200 dollars and 14% of shoppers³ have a budget of 500 dollars.

To persuade them to buy your products, you need to have new products and vary your product offer: launch a new range, add a specific category, create a gift set… You must also anticipate these variations and make the necessary changes to your product catalog: addition of new pages, removing obsolete references, updates to product information, integration of new images and/or medias…

These endeavors are vital to get the most from this period and to win new customers: the total number of online transactions can increase by 453%⁴.

Optimize your product page SEO

It is essential to perfect your SEO which is the main source of traffic for Black Friday sales (26%⁵).

When a shopper is looking for a product, they generally use generic search requests around the event: these general requests cover 40%⁶ of all searches. Shoppers also have preferences as to product categories with electronics⁷ being particularly popular during this period. Among the main types of products linked to “Black Friday” are: “laptop” (419,260 searches/month⁷), « tv » (188,550 searches/month⁷), « smart tv » (121,700 searches/month⁷), « microwave » (106,020 searches/month⁷)…

To be visible to shoppers, it is important to work on the SEO of your product pages. You need to identify the highest performing keywords in this context and integrate them strategically in each SEO field of Alt tags, meta description, product description pages…

Create special offers

To persuade shoppers, you need to present them with attractive offers.

When shopping during this period, their priority is to find the best deals: 75%⁸ say this is their number one motivation.

This makes it important to work on price data and to present this information on the product pages: extent of the reduction, percentage savings, original purchasing price crossed out, addition of specific badges (« Sale », « Special offer », « Black Friday »...)... You also need to give shoppers a sense of urgency and surf on their “fear” that they might miss out on a great offer. Some ways of creating this sense of urgency: add a countdown clock, display available stocks, indicate how many shoppers are looking at a product…

Optimize your omnichannel strategy

To get the most from Black Friday, it is essential to provide shoppers with a veritable omnichannel shopping journey.

In this context, they take their time researching a product: gathering information, assessing and comparing the same product from several brands… On average, they begin their product search 6 weeks⁹ before the event and use several information channels¹⁰ (eCommerce sites, stores, social networks…).

This makes it important that you create synergies between all your shopping channels and provide shoppers with consistent product information on each channel that they use. Nothing should upset the shopping journey: missing product information, imprecisions, inconsistencies...

Don't underestimate the importance of contextualization

To get the most from the opportunity that is Black Friday, it is important to adapt your eCommerce site to the cultural specifics of each country.

Black Friday's success goes beyond the USA: many countries are now on board and experience a major increase in sales during this period. For example, in Argentina, Black Friday related sales have increased by over 376%¹ during the past 5 years.

However, in each country there are cultural differences in the way in which it is celebrated. For example, only 5 countries¹ actually celebrate Thanksgiving. It is essential to consider these differences: 80% of shoppers¹¹ prefer to buy from a company providing a customized experience adapted to the local culture.

To get the most from the Black Friday period, it is important to anticipate and to carry out important work on your data: updates, contextualization, customization, verifications… When a company is managing thousands of product references on various shopping channels, and in several different languages and countries, the task can quickly become complicated. To rise to this essential challenge, companies are increasingly using PIM (Product Information Management) software.

¹ Alsan, M. A. (2020, October 15). What to expect from the 2020 holiday season. blog.weglot.com.
² Dejoie, F. D. (2021, September 13). Black Friday eCommerce : nos conseils et stratégies pour battre les records ! contentsquare.com.
³ Charlton, G. C. (2018, November 20). Shoppers Moving Online for Black Friday : Stats. salecycle.com.
⁴ Carré, W. (2021, August 21). Infographie : Les grands chiffres du Black Friday. contentsquare.com.
⁵ Carré, W. C. (2021, July 9). Black Friday : best practices et conseils pour préparer le pic de vente. contentsquare.com.
⁶ N'tsia, S. N. (2020, November 23). SEO et Black Friday : quels mots-clés décollent, quels marchands cartonnent ? journaldunet.com.
⁷ Angulo, F. A. (2020, November 23). Black Friday Statistics : Key Trends and Shifts Marketers Should Know. semrush.com.
⁸ Ward, B. W. (2021, October 11). Black Friday 2021 Ultimate Ecommerce Strategy. salecycle.com.
⁹ Pruett, M. P. (2020, August 31). Black Friday & Cyber Monday 2020 : What Marketers Need to Know. criteo.com.
¹⁰ Anis, Y. A., Elliott, B. E., & Koestler, C. K. (2018, November 5). Black Friday 2018 : Consumers are eager, more digital, and willing to spend. mckinsey.com.
¹¹ Henault, J. H. (2020, March 5). 50 faits et statistiques déterminants pour votre stratégie SEO internationale. semrush.com.