Best way to increase conversions on Black Friday

Black Friday is the best time of the year to get new customers and nurture existing ones.

You can expect your traffic volume to explode with about 200% increase in visitors on Black Friday over your daily average, and your strong traffic numbers will continue well into December.

If you’re an online retail business, then your site is one of the first touch points to engage with visitors. Have you optimized your site enough to convert all of the incremental holiday traffic?

During our Picreel morning meeting this week our CRO (conversion rate optimization) experts shared some tips on how to better prepare your site to capture more of your seasonal traffic. And these tips are not just another summary about optimizing your site! There are several tricks you should focus on now – just a few weeks before Black Friday — that offer instant results.

So, let’s take look at your site right now and make sure you are well positioned to it convert holiday visitors into buyers and subscribers. The CRO tips that I’m about to share are valuable all year long, but never more valuable than they are right now!

Let’s dive in!

Make your deals stand out

You don’t have to spend millions to craft an offer that prospects cannot refuse. There are many tricks and best practices that any business can use to grab your visitors’ attention.

One trick that can increase conversions on Black Friday is an action-oriented headline. A proper headline can get you as much as 93% higher conversion rates!

A good headline tells why your offer is special and creates a sense of urgency. This is especially important when creating your CRO strategy for the holiday season.

Check if your headline meets these rules:

• obviously good idea;
• proper targeting;
• clear offers and benefits;
• specific and relevant;
• catchy CTA

Make your headline sound enticing and creative. Check how Sleepcomfortly does that.

via sleepcomfortly.com

Words «reasonable» and «luxury» make the headline stand out. They show the difference. The word «most» also strengthen the pitch.

Do you agree that «Most reasonable luxury mattress in the world» sounds much better than «Check out our mattresses» or «Our mattresses are reasonable and luxurious»?

Make sure you use good targeting techniques. It is necessary to understand clearly who you are speaking to. Referring again to the Sleepcomfortly example, the second line can be attractive to all customers. But, it targets new shoppers. For example, on Black Friday, Sleepcomfortly will most likely see a lot of new traffic on their site, so they are specifically targeting this audience for better engagement.

Got your targeting in place? Good! Now, convey very clearly what’s unique about your offer. It can be a generous discount, free shipping, or simply highlighted unique selling proposition (USP).

The copy below makes it clear why you want their matrasses.

via sleepcomfortly.com

Finally, think about your call to action (CTA) button. Don’t make it hard for your web visitors to find your awesome offer. They don’t want to waste time, especially on Black Friday. Many brands have clearly outlined their customer journey and they set up marketing funnels to guide customers all year long. During the holiday shopping season these journeys will be accelerated, so be sure to direct your prospects down a simple and specific path to increase conversions on Black Friday.

Delight your existing customers

Do you run loyalty programs? If not, start one. If you offer such programs today, make sure they are making your existing customers feel extra special during the holidays. In e-commerce, 26% of all sales are driven by loyalty and cash back.

Loyalty programs are especially effective on Black Friday because chances are that people who bought your stuff in the past will be shopping at your store first. Give them a reason to buy on their first visit instead of shopping around.

It doesn’t have to be a complex campaign if you don’t have a program in place. Something simple like free shipping for existing customers will increase conversions on Black Friday. But if you’re able to invest resources now, then build loyalty and recognition offers that focus on your customers’ top values and interests.

Get visual

Another CRO tip on Black Friday is to keep your prospects on site longer. A quick and easy way to do that is to keep the balance between texts and visuals. Use images instead of text-heavy pages. Pictures can say more than cold texts.

Check the difference. These are two examples of about us page.

via miskynclothing.com

Which page looks better? Most likely, you’d agree that it’s the latter. Both web pages are able to display about the same length of the text.

There are three things that make images effective for CRO strategy:

Physical need

Images of delicious food are quite popular for businesses in food industry. And that’s reasonable.

Such images show an experience through the eyes of a happy customer. They meet visual expectations and encourage visitors to complete an action on a site.

Our eyes have more than 70% of the sensory receptors. Every second human eye sends millions of signals to the brain using optic nerves.

via Phillip T. Torres

Contrast

People pay attention to high contrast and that’s why before-and-after images tend to increase response. It’s an easy way to show benefits visually, which results in higher conversions on Black Friday.

via tejadascleaningservices.blogspot.com

Emotions

A good trick is to evoke emotions using the visuals. It keeps visitors engaged and forces them to remember your offer. 90% of viral ads use humor.

Be credible

It’s never too late to look at the web pages that talk about your business. Pages like about us, contact us and testimonials get a lot of traffic. Surprisingly, they are some of the most visited content. The main goals here are:

• Tell a story about your business or about your customers using your solution;
• Help to understand what problem can be solved with your offer;
• Provide valuable links;
• Add any useful information you think is important;

Visitors on these pages are not bouncing traffic. These are warm or hot leads. So, provide the most useful and relevant information on these pages. If you don’t have any of these pages – about us, contact, testimonials — try to add them to your site before Black Friday.

Why?

Many online shoppers are still risk averse about buying on the web. Even if your offer looks fantastic, most likely they want to research your credibility before they buy. They want proof and experience of other people buying on your site.

A countdown for precious offers

Another good trick to boost conversions on Black Friday is to create urgency. Limited time offer converts better than your regular propositions.

Customers are crazy about missing out on good deals. It takes 48 seconds to evaluate limited time offers. Otherwise, prospects may take 62 seconds on average to make their decision. That’s 23% longer to decide if they want your offer at all.

Amazon uses timers during the holiday season and for «Today’s Deals». The last Black Friday at Amazon was crazy – more than 5.5m items ordered – around 64 items per second.

Here is how one of Picreel customers used limited time offers.
We save a lot of time and resources (by using the platform) and these are high converting pop-ups.

Mads Timmerman

It’s not a good time to ignore your affiliates

I don’t want to tell you again that it’s better to invest in your existing customers than winning new buyers. You already know it, right?

But you can offer better deals for customers who buy frequently and share their experience a lot. Discounts, gifts, commissions, and any tokens of appreciation to such active customers can spread the word. Make affiliates from your loyal customers. It can be a good tool to get a sight of new people, who have already heard about you. It’s high-quality traffic that converts well.

Don’t stop your CRO strategy after Black Friday

After your Black Friday campaign has finished and you’ve enjoyed good sales, it doesn’t mean your CRO campaign is done. Other sales events are coming soon. So work on your campaign before, during, and after Black Friday. I’ve seen businesses increasing conversions up to 70% by using CRO strategies.

Not an expert in it? Picreel team of experts can help you plan, design, and implement your strategy to increase conversions on your site. Picreel popup builder can create your strategies in less than ten days. Or you can sign up for a forever-free plan and get our ready designed popups running in less than ten minutes.

Did you optimize your site for the holiday season? Did you see instant improvements? What techniques did you use? Let’s discuss in the comments below.