Webshop Black Friday
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Is your webshop (Corona) ready for Black Friday?

Black Friday is fast approaching. And before you know it, it's all over your webshop. That's why you need to start preparing... now! And preferably yesterday.

So is your webshop ready for Black Friday? And how do you turn this otherwise gloomy Friday at the end of November into a bright spot in your annual accounts? That's what we're trying to answer in this post. But first, a reminder of why Black Friday 2020 is so important for you, the webshop owner.

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Adam Ketelsen
Adam Ketelsen
- SEO-specialist
Last updated: Mar 22, 2024

Why Black Friday 2020 is special

Like Halloween, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and Father's Day, Black Friday is an import from the US - and the so-called Black Friday is becoming well integrated in Denmark. At the end of November, Danes eager to buy flock to the shops - both physical and digital - with their hot thank-you cards in a collective pilgrimage.

2020 will hardly be an exception. But something is different this November. With a pandemic looming over all, the prospect of the usual massive crowds in physical stores seems utopian to say the least.

So all indications are that many will stay at home in front of the screen this Black Friday. That (and of course a serious chunk of unused holiday money in Danes' bank accounts) means that digital stores have a better deal than ever on this year's Black Friday - but at the same time, a tougher deal. Because other webshop owners know that the demand for online shopping is greater. As a result, supply and competition are also higher than ever.

In other words, you need to make an extra effort to make your webshop visible for Black Friday 2020.

But how do you do that? Find out in this post, where we dive into the digital toolbox and give you the tools to get your webshop ready for Black Friday.

1) Warm up and get ready for battle

Don't expect to win if you go into the match without warming up. Your visitors should be in no doubt that your shop is having Black Friday.

That's why it's vital to have a solid strategy and content plan in place - at least a month before Black Friday. You want to get as many hot leads as possible, as competition for Black Friday ad space is fierce.

The warm-up phase is about building a solid retargeting group. You do this by:

Get a lot of traffic to your webshop
Make blog posts, show new products, and generally spread the word about your products.

Create polls
It's a fun way for your audience to interact with your brand. For example, you could poll between two products.

Make use of social proof
For example, by making videos where customers talk about your products, by getting Trustpilot reviews or by getting influencers to recommend your products.

Create a Facebook event and get your audience to join
Here you can update regularly with sneak peeks of offers and post directly to the interested audience.

Use Halloween and Singles' Day to collect newsletter sign-ups
October and November offer other holidays that you can use to generate leads and warm up your existing customers for Black Friday - for example, by offering your customers discounts or benefits in exchange for signing up to your newsletter.

Ideas for lead campaigns

  • Get 15% on your next purchase
  • Competition
  • Get a gift with your next purchase
  • Get free shipping
  • Get access to special Black Friday offers
  • Get access to VIP evening before Black Friday

Make sure you have a lot of new subscribers to your newsletter, so that you have built up a large database of users. Newsletters are free advertising for your business.

Plus, it's one-to-one direct marketing that allows you to target specific customer segments with relevant and personalised offers that increase your chances of your newsletters converting.

2) Create a Black Friday landing page

By creating a landing page dedicated to your Black Friday campaign, you increase the likelihood that users googling "[your business] / [what you sell] + black friday" will be led straight from the search results and onto your page - especially if you're good at writing landing pages that rank.

On your Black Friday landing page, you can give your (future) customers an overview of your Black Friday campaign - for example by:

  • tell about the advantages of shopping in your webshop on the day - high discounts, large stock, fast delivery etc.
  • provide an overview of popular brands and product categories - remember links to relevant collection and brand pages
  • hold competitions
  • do a countdown to Black Friday (we'll come back to that a bit further down in the post)
  • provide information about opening hours on Black Friday
  • tell about Black Friday's history in Denmark and other nice-to-know

You can create your Black Friday landing page as a product category/collection. If you have offers on all your products - for example 50% on everything - it might make less sense, but it makes sense if you have offers on a specific selected range. That way, you give your visitors an overview of all your good offers.

Here you can see the Black Friday landing page of the electronics chain Power, which is built according to all the rules of art (Webamp has no relation to Power, we just think it's a cool landing page).

black friday landing page

3) Have your landing page live well in advance - and all year round

You can have your Black Friday landing page online all year round, not just in the months leading up to Black Friday. That way you can use the rest of the year to create SEO value, as the site will be indexed on Google.

In the run-up to the next Black Friday, you can then update the page with new offers, new text and other new content. This will also create an evergreen content effect because the page will remain relevant to your target audience. This increases the likelihood of your page climbing the search results and getting more and more traffic each year the calendar shows end-November.

It's going to benefit you next Black Friday - and the next and the next.

By the way, make sure that the landing page URL is simple and descriptive - and thus SEO-friendly.

  • For example: www.din-webshop.dk/black-friday

A SEO-friendly URL does not contain superfluous information and automatically generated characters and numbers.

  • For example: www.din-webshop.dk/se-vores-fantastiske-tilbud-paa-black-friday_14rfop03d#3

Read Webamp's post on SEO on Webshops, where we also give tips and tricks for a good URL structure on your webshop.

4) Use countdown - both on page and in your advertising

Your Black Friday deals are only valid for one day - or at least one weekend. You can make this visible to your customers by counting down. And we're not just talking about your Black Friday landing page or the front page of your webshop.

We're talking across the board! In your social ads, in your paid ads - both in Google Search, in your display network and on other paid channels. In Google Search, for example, you can highlight upcoming events with a countdown by using a COUNTDOWNor GLOBAL_COUNTDOWN feature.

As for the countdown on the webshop itself, there are various apps, add-ons and plug-ins you can implement in your shop. Depending on which eCommerce platform you use to manage your e-commerce, there will of course be variations in functionality and design. Shopify, for example, sells a larger selection of timer apps in their app store, but WooCommerce, Smartweb and other platforms also have decent selections of counters.

In the end, it's all about keeping your already red-hot leads on fire and maintaining interest in your Black Friday campaign. So use countdowns everywhere you can get to.

5) Keep track of pricing rules - both external and internal

It's a good idea to have your pricing rules in order - for both legal and financial reasons.

External price rules - avoid legal pitfalls

First of all, be aware that your pricing on Black Friday must follow the marketing rules. This means, for example, that your pre/normal prices must be valid for at least 6 weeks before Black Friday, as well as rules on when you can give your prices laudatory labels such as "shock price" or similar.

Be aware of the rules, otherwise you risk getting into legal trouble.
You can read more about how to get ready for the Black Friday price war on the e-label website.

Internal price rules - avoid cheating yourself

It's one thing to mislead your customers with misleading prices - it's another thing to cheat yourself. Because, of course, the whole point of Black Friday is to sell your products at low prices. But not so low that you take money to work.

Let's say you run promotional prices on a number of selected items in your webshop throughout November - for example, 25% off. Now Black Friday is approaching and you decide to offer 30% on all items in your range. But you may not have considered whether the discount should apply to all products - or only to already non-discounted items.

If it applies to all products, you risk cheating yourself. Take, for example, an item with a sale price of DKK 400. Because of the November discount, you are now selling it for €300. But what about Black Friday? Do you cut the price by a further 30% and sell it for €210?

It's starting to look like a losing proposition. So make sure you've set up and tested your webshop's pricing rules correctly - and well in advance.

6) Know your audience - and which platforms they come from

Before you start throwing ad dollars around, you first need to know your audience. So ask yourself the following questions about your target audience:

  • Which products do they buy the most of - and which products do you earn the most from?
  • Which channels do they come from - social media, paid advertising, organic search results or other channels entirely?

Google Analytics is your best friend.

The first question is answered under Conversions > Ecommerce > Product Performance. Remember to specify a longer period - for example the last 3 months - to get a more accurate picture of which products you sell the most of.

You might also want to look at data from last year's Black Friday; which products performed best there?

black friday webshop product perfomance

The second question is answered under Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels.Also remember to specify a longer period to get a fair sample.

black friday Webshop performance 2

7) Increase the budget of your paid advertising

If you're counting on paid advertising in Google Search to drive traffic to your webshop on Black Friday, you need to keep a good old-fashioned saying in mind: you have to perform to enjoy!

In other words, you'll need to increase your ad budget if you want to dominate Google's results page. Because your competitors certainly do too.

The demand for products is just greater on Black Friday. Below, for example, you can see how clicks on a webshop selling electronics increase around Black Friday 2019 - and how they drop drastically on the following days.

black friday advertising

The more clicks, the higher the click rates.

So bring your wallet if you don't want to drop out of the auction - and lose valuable ad space.

8) The final stretch - the days leading up to Black Friday

Now the final stretch is approaching. You're warmed up and you're getting ready for battle. But it's not quite time to rest on your laurels and wait optimistically for orders and turnover. You're not quite there yet.

In the days leading up to Black Friday, make your customers extra aware that you'll soon have offers on your products - BUT DON'T give too much away!

You can also use the days before to get the last sign-ups for your newsletter - for example by tempting them with special VIP access to promotions on the day or with a small gift for the first 1000 purchases.
Finally, it's a good idea to have your campaigns, audiences and ads set up at least 3 days before Black Friday to ensure campaigns are ready to run and that you can check for errors before activating them.

In general, have banners, ad texts and other ads ready, and set up rules for them so that they turn on and off automatically.

9) Have your server ready - no one shops in a closed store

Black Friday is approaching and you've delved into the toolkit to ensure your shop gets traffic on the day.

Now you're ready to open the virtual doors to the massive crowd. So now comes the last big question: Is your webshop ready for the traffic?

No one can shop in a closed store - physical or digital. In other words, you need to be 100% sure you have enough server capacity. So check your hosting provider to make sure potential customers can't access your shop because of an overloaded server.

If you have a Shopify webshop, you will be blessed with a stable eCommerce system that is both hosted and maintained by Shopify itself. If you use WooCommerce and other systems, however, you should make sure that your server is set up correctly.

Get help for Black Friday on your webshop

Want to make sure your webshop is ready for Black Friday? At Webamp you will be met by specialists in web, SEO, PPC and Social Ads, who can help with your online marketing as well as with your webshop itself.

Learn more about SEO, and increase your online presence

Whether you're a generalist or a marketing specialist, our SEO specialists have put together some great advice for you on our blog.

Learn more about SEO in Webamp Academy.