Preparing for Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Black Friday and Cyber Monday (Cyber Week, Cyber Month, BFCM, 'the holidays', honestly who names these things?) are here. We're in crunch time. Development holds, high-alert monitoring, and discount codes have landed.

It is important to point out that “The shape of the holiday season will look different this year, with early discounting in October pulling up spend that would have occurred around Cyber Week,” said Patrick Brown, vice president of growth marketing and insights at Adobe. “Even though we expect to see single-digit growth online this season, it is notable that consumers have already spent over $590 billion online this year at 8.9% growth, highlighting the resiliency of e-commerce demand.”

Now there are a million things to take in around BFCM, here are a couple more things for you to absorb. According to salescycle.com consumers spent $8.9 billion online on Black Friday and $10.7 Billion on Cyber Monday last year. Stats on the weekend are getting increasingly murky to track, the deals are bleeding into different days so significantly, we're at the point where we should be tracking November and December consumer spend as a better marker.

This year there is expected to be $9 billion (+1.1%) in online sales on Black Friday and $11.2 billion (4.6%+) on Cyber Monday according to Adobe. Due to the tremendous growth in online shopping (especially taking the last few years into account), your websites are expected to be more important than ever.

Your High Level Stats

1. 69% of people will shop online for Black Friday, while only 32% of people will shop in-person.
2. 64% of people will shop on Cyber Monday in 2022 – a 42% increase from 2021.
3. Clothing, electronics, and toys will be the biggest purchases during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Collected from drivereasearch.com

Black Friday/Cyber Monday History

Using Adobe Analytics, NBC has charted historical spend from 2014 to 2020 (we added 2021 and 2022 predictions ourselves because we love making graphics for you). Here's the data to read more. As you can see, that graph goes up and to the left. Brands that aren't seriously integrating ecommerce into their holiday plans are seriously missing out on revenue opportunities.

3 Things to Expect

1. Deal Matching is becoming an expectation for big brands (which usually means it will trickle to smaller brands soon). Be prepared to match deals or give even better deals due to the expected deals you have ever seen. Many retailers are working with backlogged inventory on specific items (while others might be sold out). Expect to see big discounts on that inventory.

2. Longer period of sales. This isn't new, the bleeding of Black Friday and Cyber month to weeks or longer is also an expectation now. Brands are running some sales for the entirety of November, and into December. Reports are in the customers are shopping earlier to avoid any shipping/logistics issues. Expect longer sales cycles and adjust how you measure those sales.

3. User experience on your site matters more than ever. Enabling a personalized user experience for their shopping journey and especially doubling down on their mobile experience. For new customers, this is your opportunity to provide a great experience to gain a lifetime customer. For returning customers, remember to reward their loyalty.

5 Simple Tasks

1. Test your site speed. Make sure it's moving as fast as possible.
2. Prepare for larger amounts of traffic.
3. Make sure that your website is mobile ready.
4. Send those discounts out early and often.
5. Make sure your teams, especially customer service and fulfillment, are operating at peak performance. This is the time to nail it.