4 Signs Your Black Friday eCommerce Strategy Needs an Upgrade

Reviewing and upgrading your Black Friday eCommerce strategy ahead of time is essential for maximising Q4 sales.

Research revealed that 80% of shoppers are more willing to purchase from a new brand when there’s a promotion available.¹ This means that Black Friday is likely to drive many new deal-seeking shoppers to your site.

Looking for ways to improve your eCommerce strategy in advance can help further increase the likelihood of these shoppers converting.

In this article, we’ll help you harness your brand’s full Black Friday potential by covering the key signs your strategy needs updating.

Lessons from Black Friday 2024

Using data to drive your Black Friday strategy can really help you maximise its effectiveness.

Our Black Friday Report revealed some interesting figures from 2024 that you could use to enhance your strategy for 2025.

We found that sales began steadily increasing from the beginning of November, suggesting an even more drawn-out sales period than 2023. However, most sales still took place on Black Friday itself, highlighting the importance of the day for consumers.

Additionally, mobile devices still dominated the event, with almost 70% of orders placed using a phone. 

These figures suggest that while Black Friday is a key revenue driver, it’s important that your strategy covers the whole month of November. It also shows that offering a mobile-friendly shopping experience is essential if you want to capture sales from tech-savvy shoppers.

Black Friday challenges for online retailers

There’s no denying that preparing for Q4 can be overwhelming. Retailers are busy organising discounted stock, creating marketing campaigns and preparing social media channels for the busiest dates in the eCommerce calendar.

But let’s not forget that all the traffic you generate through your marketing and advertising is being driven back to your website, so offering an optimised, user-friendly site is crucial to your Black Friday success.

Some websites may struggle to cope with the huge surge in online traffic, resulting in slow page loads, errors, and site crashes. You’ll need to address these issues before the peak of Q4 hits.

Let’s look into some of the problems your online store may run into this Black Friday, and explore ways you can combat them:

1. Slow site functionality

At this time of year, the internet is bustling with online shoppers looking for the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals.

No matter how great your discounts are, if your user experience (UX) is bad, it can create friction that prevents your shoppers from converting. 

During Black Friday in eCommerce, shoppers are often impatient, and delays in functionality can lead to them shopping elsewhere.

This is especially important when it comes to your site search. If search results take longer than 3 seconds to load, shoppers are likely to leave your site.²

What you can do: Leverage AI-powered technology to improve your on-site search performance. Search tools like Salesfire’s Search deliver fast and accurate results to your shoppers in seconds, reducing the chance of them abandoning your site.

By making it as easy as possible for your shoppers to find what they are looking for, you create a smoother path to checkout.

A better shopping experience can also help build long-term customer relationships. Studies have shown that 87% of shoppers reporting a great experience with a brand go on to buy from them again.³

2. Abandoning shoppers

There are a multitude of deals on offer throughout Black Friday, meaning decision-making can be even more challenging for shoppers. You’ll likely notice many shoppers building and then abandoning their carts as they consider their purchase or look elsewhere.

Without a strong retargeting strategy, many of these shoppers may never return to your site. You could end up losing out on potential sales to your competitors.

What you can do: To re-engage shoppers, look into ways you can recover abandoned baskets and capture the attention of your lost visitors.

Place importance on tactics like abandoned cart emails to remind fatigued Black Friday and Cyber Monday shoppers about items they have left in their baskets.

For some brands, sending a single cart abandonment email was enough to recover sales from over 20% of abandoned carts.⁴

Prepare your email flows by doing the following to avoid missing out on any Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales:

• Consider the timing: Set out a time frame in which you send out your abandoned cart emails. Do you want to send a series of emails over a specific time frame, send a one-off basket reminder or create a series of automated emails?

• Including incentives such as free delivery or further discounts: You may already be offering a large Black Friday discount, so consider if you can take it one step further. You could offer free shipping or an additional incentive to encourage your shopper to come back and complete their purchase.

• Build up urgency: Carefully consider your subject lines and include time-sensitive CTAs. This creates a sense of urgency for your shopper, as they’ll want to avoid missing out on the items in their basket.

Pro tip: If you use Klaviyo for email, using an integration like AI Connect can help your flows recover even more revenue. It can identify more of your anonymous visitors, enabling Klaviyo to send abandonment emails to the shoppers it would normally miss. You can learn more about AI Connect in our webinar ‘Elevating Klaviyo Flows with AI Connect’.

Suggested reading: Optimise your retargeting emails using ‘The Ultimate Email Retargeting Checklist‘.

3. Low average order value

You work hard to drive traffic to your website, so you want to ensure you get the most out of those who convert.

This is especially important over Black Friday when your profit margins are slim and your discount offerings are high.

If your shoppers are only placing low-value orders, it can be a sign you’re missing out on opportunities to drive additional revenue.

What you can do: Get more out of your customer acquisition spend by implementing tactics that help increase your average order value (AOV).

Try displaying personalised product recommendations on your site to easily showcase other items the shopper is likely to be interested in. 

With solutions like Salesfire, you can integrate AI-powered recommendations on different parts of your site, from product pages to checkout.

This can encourage shoppers to build bigger baskets and help drive up your AOV.

After all, using personalised product recommendations to upsell and cross-sell products can increase your AOV by 10%.⁵

4. Poor customer retention rates

Black Friday is the perfect time to invest in acquiring new customers. You’ll likely be spending a lot of time and money driving shoppers to your site through PPC ads and social media campaigns.

However, once you’ve acquired these customers, it’s important that you keep them. This can help ensure a higher ROI on your acquisition costs, preventing wasted resources.

Returning customers are also essential for your eCommerce success, as their repeat purchases help generate a long-term, reliable revenue stream.

If your shoppers often make a single purchase and then disappear, it could be time to work on your retention strategy.

What you can do: Use tactics that help nurture customer relationships and keep your shoppers coming back for more.

Audit your retention strategy to make sure you’re doing the following:

• Personalising content: Personalise your on-site and email content to the individual shopper using tools like Salesfire. This helps your shopper feel seen and understood, which can help to build up loyalty towards your brand.

• Sending a post-purchase flow: Follow up after a shopper’s initial order using email and SMS retargeting to remind them of your brand. Display relevant product recommendations in your follow-up email to inspire further purchases.

• Create conversations on social media: Build up a community of loyal shoppers by encouraging and sharing user-generated content (UGC) on your social media. This helps shoppers to stay engaged with your brand even when they aren’t on-site.

Suggested reading: ‘Black Friday 2025: Getting the Most Out of Your Social Media Campaigns‘.

Final thoughts

Black Friday falls on the 28th of November this year, but it’s not just a one-day event. For your brand to reach its full potential this time of year, you need a strong strategy spanning across November.

If you’re experiencing issues like excessive cart abandonment or poor customer retention, now’s the time to address these. By ensuring you offer shoppers a seamless experience and valuable communications, you can drive up conversions and revenue this Q4. 

Start upgrading your strategy now, and make 2025 your best Black Friday yet.

1 What Science Says About Discounts, Promotions and Free Offers | CM Commerce

2 Google: 53% of mobile users abandon sites that take over 3 seconds to load | MarketingDive

3 50 Stats That Prove The Value Of Customer Experience | Forbes

4 The Truth about Cart Abandonment | Smart Insights

5 Using Ecommerce Recommendation Engines to Keep Your Customers Coming Back | BigCommerce