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Sep 25, 2024 | 8 minute read
written by Seamus Roddy
It’s the seasonal commerce event so momentous that it goes by four letters: BFCM.
You might not yet be thinking about turkey and which cousin you’ll be sitting next to at Thanksgiving dinner, but the Black Friday Cyber Monday season demands your preparation. Consider that last year, on Cyber Monday alone, total online spending in the U.S. was more than $12 million – up 9.6% year over year.
There may be broad urgency and excitement for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but that also means strong competition for your shoppers’ dollars. Here are six ways that you can build urgency, excitement, and attention around Black Friday and Cyber Monday for your online store – along with demonstrations of how Elastic Path Composable Commerce can help.
The first tip about building urgency and excitement for Black Friday and Cyber Monday is to put a premium on working fast, testing, and scaling the commerce initiatives that work.
After all, commerce innovation has changed. Once, a big bang, all-at-once approach to innovation ruled the commerce world. Now, businesses are more likely to approach problems and initiatives one at a time, doubling down on what works and jettisoning what doesn’t. In the context of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it might look like a dedicated landing page for season sales, or expanded bundling features, or a seasonal loyalty catalog.
What’s imperative isn’t getting everything done at once, but launching and testing initiatives throughout September, October, and early November. Launch new experiences fast, see what’s driving conversions and revenue, and then do as much revenue-generating activity as possible in November and December.
Attracting new customers – and reattracting existing ones – should always be a priority. But whether you’re a manufacturer selling machine parts or a specialty retailer selling high-end accessories, your buyers are thinking about buying online during the BFCM season. The way to take advantage of this ready-to-purchase atmosphere is by launching strong, applicable marketing campaigns.
You’re likely averse to having loads of IT work or dev hours invested into your marketing campaigns. Fortunately, it’s possible to launch gorgeous, personalized shoppable landing pages in minutes with Elastic Path.
Elastic Path Composable Commerce includes the ability to build no-code, templatized, personalization-friendly shoppable landing pages. This way, you can run beautiful, high-converting marketing campaigns for all Black Friday and Cyber Monday initiatives – without spending weeks and weeks of IT or dev work.
The best way to create urgency and excitement… is to create urgency and excitement. And there’s no on-site experience that more directly targets urgency and excitement than flash sales, fast deadlines, countdown clocks, and other explicitly time-based offers.
Even for brands with more considered purchases, having a deadline has been shown spur purchases.
Businesses that use Elastic Path Composable Commerce can launch on-site deadline experiences fast, without dev hours or help from IT. Watch below to see a merchandiser bring to life a flash sale using Elastic Path in minutes.
Offering product bundles during BFCM serves a dual purpose: You can spur urgency and excitement about your products while also increasing average order volume (AOV) and increasing revenue.
Product bundling is when two or more individual products are instead sold together as a combined offer. Some examples of bundling take a dynamic form, in which shoppers can select specific components within their bundle. During BFCM, bundling is a way to clear stock, capture consumer attention, and compete with the heavy discounting and sales that are occurring across the economy.
Commerce teams that use Elastic Path get access to our Bundle Builder, a merchandiser-friendly tool for creating and managing bundles that increase AOV, spur revenue, and create excitement about buying on your storefronts.
It’s possible to try flash sales, bundling, or another promotion type, and not see the results you want. But during the BFCM rush, you owe it to your business to try any and all relevant promotion types that generate excitement and additional revenue.
With Elastic Path, you can easily turn promotions on and off, and understand the value generated from the promotions you launch versus the budget being spent. This way, you’re not just generating excitement, urgency, and revenue – you’re also practicing smart, profitable merchandising.
Whether free gifts or buy one, get one offers or discounted shopping, you can launch new promotions and measure their success analytically with our Promotions Builder. Watch to see our promotions builder in action.
Creating and maintaining BFCM urgency and excitement doesn’t stop once a shopper hits “purchase” or “buy now.” You should prioritize an exceptional commerce cart experience to build BFCM excitement – and to convert that excitement into actual purchases and revenue.
Consider that year-round, close to 70% of online shopping carts are abandoned. This means that your business could be losing more than twice the amount of your realized online revenue during checkout alone.
In addition to common shopping cart design best practices, you can add elements to your cart that build urgency and excitement, including countdown clocks, in-cart suggested items and add-ons, in-cart rewards like free shipping, and more.
Whatever strategies you choose to build urgency and excitement for BFCM can be accommodated by Elastic Path Composable Commerce. If you aren’t using Elastic Path, try our platform for free today, and start building a demo storefront that brings your best BFCM merchandising ideas to life.
Access a free Elastic Path trial today to see our leading composable commerce solution in action.