Although Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2021 aren’t technically until the last weekend of November, we’re already seeing incredible discounts pop up earlier than ever before. With major online stores such as Amazon and Target already promoting Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers, it’s high time for your business to start your campaigns and holiday events by optimizing your product pages.
This Black Friday strategy guide, along with Cyber Monday campaign ideas, would assist you in optimizing your product page to increase sales, reach new clients, and cultivate loyal relationships this holiday season.
The Predictions for Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2021
Black Friday
Before the pandemic, Black Friday had already shifted from a day to a week, with retailers kicking off their online deals before the day itself. However, it wasn’t the same in 2020 because retailers began firing all cylinders to hasten the Black Friday hype. For example, throughout November 2020, Walmart held three separate Black Friday sales, each with its ad. One of the first adverts featured Apple’s AirPods Pro at their lowest price ever.
In 2021, we are predicting a similar “marathon” approach. This is because while the pandemic has subsided in the United States, COVID-19 variants and labor shortages continue to threaten the holiday season.
Cyber Monday
Many individuals predicted that COVID-19 and the accompanying economic uncertainty would lead to lower Cyber Monday 2020 spending. On the other hand, holiday shoppers defied all projections, with Cyber Monday sales jumping from $9.4 billion in 2019 to $10.8 billion in 2020. This is why we predict that Cyber Monday e-commerce sales will be more than $11.8 billion in 2021.
On Cyber Monday 2021, we expect to see even more excellent online sales discounts. Don’t panic if you missed out on a Black Friday laptop or smartphone deal. These stores will reorganize their Black Friday offers and re-distribute them on Cyber Monday. On Cyber Monday, we have every reason to expect that these things will be even cheaper.
Understanding Consumer Behavior During the Holiday Season
According to the latest Google research, 65% of holiday shoppers in the United States believe COVID-19 wouldn’t affect how they shop for the holidays this year, compared to 47% in 2020.
Consumers have little time and several items to purchase over the holiday season. Here are the three most common shoppers:
The searcher: These are shoppers that do good research before making a purchase.
The bargain-hunter: As the name implies, these are shoppers that look for the best sales discount and spend accordingly.
The browser: These are shoppers who make sure that they browse items thoroughly before making a purchase.
To appeal to these customers, you’ll need to develop new plans and approaches well before the season begins. This is why your product pages must be optimized.
Product Page Optimization Tips for Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2021
Highlighted below are the ultimate product page optimization tips for Cyber Monday and Black Friday in 2021:
Audit Your Website
Before the Cyber Monday and Black Friday shopping seasons begin, conduct a thorough review of your website to ensure that it is in good working order. This would help you identify flaws before the holiday shopping season arrives. To audit your website, use the following steps:
Use a Site Audit Tool to check the URL of your website
You can get specific recommendations and assess how your page performs when you run your site through site audit tools.
Check for technical errors
You’ll want to look for technical faults after you’ve run your site via an auditing tool. These could be about security, performance, SEO, or something else entirely. Your website’s technical structure and layout have a significant impact on how well it works for customers.
Identify SEO-Related problems
Now you’ll want to focus on SEO-related concerns to boost your search engine rankings. This could entail looking at image alt text, meta descriptions, and other things.
Analyze User Experience
Heatmaps indicating what areas of your design draw the most interest and what users are reading are available in some tools. This form of study will show you how your visitors are affected by your website’s overall design and user experience.
Ensure Your Product Pages are SEO-Ready
The majority of consumers are savvy Black Friday shoppers who plan ahead of time for their purchases. This is why it’s critical to optimize your product pages to increase search traffic leading up to the holiday shopping season. The idea is to appear in search results for things that people are looking for and entice them to click through and visit your website. Here are some ways to ensure that your product pages are SEO-ready:
Ensure Your Product Data is Optimized
When it comes to operating shopping campaigns, product data optimization is crucial. A fully optimized product data aids Google in determining when and where your products should be displayed. Google will show your products more frequently if it is related to a user’s search. Additionally, this increases the likelihood that someone looking for your product will find it and buy it.
Make Proper Research on Holiday Specific Keywords
Every holiday will have its own set of keywords that can be utilized to boost search results. You’d need to rank quickly during the holiday season for people to find you. As a result, avoid excessively competitive keywords, such as “buy smartphones online”.
Look back at last year’s statistics to create your holiday keyword plan. Check to see if any of the keywords shoppers used to locate you were particularly interesting. After that, you may use Google Keyword Planner to get more suggestions by pasting some of those keywords in. For the time being, ignore PPC metrics and instead concentrate on seasonal keyword volumes. To uncover holiday season trending keywords, sort keyword recommendations by month.
Create Links to Your Holiday Sales
You may not have time for a full-fledged link-building effort before Black Friday, but by optimizing your outreach, you can gain some last-minute visibility. You can either contact prospects one by one or utilize a tool to locate and contact key industry figures automatically. In other words, make a concerted effort to link your product page to popular curation sites.
Monitor Your Site’s Load Speed
When it comes to site load time, online buyers have relatively low tolerance, especially when surfing on mobile devices. They’ll leave your site if it takes more than a few seconds for your pages to load.
So, before the big day, double-check that your product pages are functioning properly. Furthermore, to prepare for the traffic increase on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, schedule page load tests ahead of time. Assess whether any changes are necessary, but refrain from making drastic changes to your store structure that could compromise the speed and performance of your site during the holiday periods.
Optimize Your Site for Mobile Users
People spend more than four hours every day on their phones, according to a recent survey. I expected a greater figure. Even so, that’s 28 hours every week. The majority of this time is spent on social media and browsing e-commerce websites. As a result, the popularity of mobile shopping continues to rise. Smartphone shopping accounted for 41.1% of sales between Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2020. According to Adobe Analytics, this is up 7.4% from 2019.
According to Retail Systems Research, more than a third of people who shop on their phones buy from the retailer’s mobile site because the procedure is simple. This is why you must optimize your product pages for mobile users.
Improve User Experience With Product Content Enhancement
Check the Product Titles
The more descriptive the product titles for your items and product categories are, the better. This is because each word can be used as a keyword in an organic search. Google favors product pages with descriptive titles since they help users find exactly what they’re looking for. Longer names also imply greater value and have a better possibility of capturing the attention of visitors.
Add Compelling Video Content
The use of video content in digital asset strategies has become so common that many eCommerce companies now consider videos to be crucial. Your customers will not be concerned if your product is tough to use. This is because video can dispel that fear by showing that the owner only needs to follow a few easy instructions.
In addition, if clients wish to learn more about the differences between certain features, video can swiftly and accurately communicate those distinctions.
Optimize Images and Alt Tags
Optimizing your images and alt tags is standard eCommerce best practice, but focusing on holiday-specific keywords will help shoppers find your sales. Consequently, by including them at the end of the image text, you can put your keyword research to good use.
Improve Your Ratings and Reviews
A positive review does wonders for consumer confidence. When customers search for a specific product, you want them to see your most positive reviews first.
This is especially true on mobile platforms, where shoppers look for a stamp of approval in-store before committing to a purchase. As a result, improving your ratings and reviews is essential.
Create a Value Proposition
When deciding whether or not they need what you’re selling, visitors focus on your value proposition. They’ll depart your site if they don’t fully comprehend the value you can deliver.
If you don’t already have one, consider your unique selling proposition (USP) to help you come up with one. You’ll be better able to explain to your prospective customers why they should choose you over the competition if you can clearly express what makes your business unique.
Make Clear Delivery Terms
The main reason why people choose to shop online on Black Friday is to avoid large crowds, traffic, and queue. As a result, delivery and shipping techniques are important for them. If free delivery is available, 58% of online buyers will order more products, and 83% prefer to wait an extra two days for their items to arrive.
Make sure visitors can quickly spot free shipping, or special delivery offers on your product pages if you’re offering them. You should indicate anticipated shipping and delivery time for holiday shoppers who want to use Black Friday and Cyber Monday to get good deals. To make it easier for customers to convert, include this information near the call-to-action button.
Create Product Page Enhancement Opportunities for Better User Experience
It’s important to create product page enhancement opportunities to get the most out of your website. We recommend you focus on:
Adding Attractive Pricing
We all know that the desire to save money on popular items drives most Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. Discounts, after all, are what drive conversions and sales. Even if your online store isn’t offering huge discounts, there are a few things you can do to make your offers appear more appealing.
On your product pages, display “before” and “after” prices so customers can see how much money they’re saving. Add the percentages that demonstrate how much money customers are saving at your store on any specific deal. Play around with the color contrast on your pricing details to ensure that the discounted price is immediately discernible.
Adding Additional Payment Options
Visitors to eCommerce sites don’t convert for various reasons, one of which is a lack of faith in the online store.
Adding more payment choices and having them visible throughout your site, even on product pages, is one way to deal with this. Consequently, even the pickiest and most sensitive customers will have a better chance of converting.
Upselling with Recommendations
While people are looking for the best value-for-money prices for particular items on shopping holidays like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, they are willing to spend more money overall on their holiday orders.
Therefore, to increase sales and revenue, offer shoppers on your site the option to increase their orders while still getting exceptional offers.
Creating a Conscientious Landing Page
You can dominate search results for your brand by creating and maintaining a dedicated landing page. Even though you only need to update this page a few times a year, it must remain indexable all year.
You can either combine your Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers into one page or create two different pages for each sale, depending on how extensive your offerings are.
Setting Up Remarketing Pixel
Most people begin researching about Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals weeks in advance. Thus, today is the ideal moment to start implementing retargeting campaigns. Set up a retargeting pixel on your site and advertising on Google and Facebook to remind customers of things they’ve looked at previously. You want people to visit your product pages again and buy something. Pay specific attention to visitors that came to your site in the days leading up to the holidays, as recency affects conversion rates.
You Can Start Preparing for the Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sales Today
You must be willing to change your plan in response to shifting needs and demands. Make the required adjustments if a specific deal or campaign isn’t working for you to guarantee that your Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales run smoothly. It’s fine to adjust your eCommerce strategy if the changes are based on data rather than preconceptions.
If you’re still unsure where to begin optimizing your product pages, or you don’t have the time to do it on your own, try hiring a conversion optimization professional to assist you. At Vserve Solution, we understand that growing your eCommerce business is a full-time job, and this is why we provide comprehensive eCommerce solutions for our clients. We can help ensure that your Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales generate sales and revenue by product page optimization and implementing data-driven marketing strategies.
