6 Ways to Help Merchants Make More Sales This Black Friday/Cyber Monday

Black Friday/Cyber Monday is massive for merchants. It’s a time when they’re looking to increase sales, shift stock, and amplify their business growth. It’s also a time when Shopify Partners can lean in and help merchants succeed on the biggest commerce holiday. We’ve put together a list of resources to help you drive your clients to success this Black Friday/Cyber Monday. In this post you will learn: How to optimize a site for mobile How to increase site speed and checkout experience Ways to boost your client’s sales, discounts, marketing, and more

Most businesses have one event each year to work towards—an event that can determine their success for the year, and amplify their business to a whole new level. That event rolls around every November and will be familiar to everyone who works in commerce—Black Friday/Cyber Monday.

Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) is massive for merchants, so in the time leading up to the event, merchants will lean on Shopify Partners to support their businesses with campaigns, handling the increased consumer demand, and creating ways to sell more products. To help you help merchants, we’ve put together six resources you can use to help your clients keep up with the demands of BFCM.

1. Make mobile apps shoppable with the Mobile Buy SDK

It’s no secret that consumers purchase on the move. While the majority of online stores themselves are mobile optimized, many merchants choose to create specific shopping apps for iOS and Android devices. This is because on-the-go buyers appreciate the mobile-first shopping experience, support for their native wallets, and other mobile integrations such as push notifications to keep them in the loop of new stock and sales.

The Mobile Buy SDK allows you to integrate Shopify checkout into the mobile applications you build for your clients. This lets merchants sell any of their physical products through the app, and track sales info in their Shopify Admin.

Use the Mobile Buy SDK to add mobile checkout to their apps, and increase sales through mobile this holiday.

For more information, check out the docs on Mobile Buy SDK.

2. Use discounts to create Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals and increase cart size

Help merchants sell more this Black Friday/Cyber Monday by leveraging the power of discounts. With Buy One, Get One deals and the PriceRule API you can create discounts that help merchants make more sales, increase their order size and move more inventory.

Increase cart size with Buy One, Get One deals

Help your clients double that cart size! Implement simple Buy One, Get One (BOGO) discounts to double the stock merchants ship to buyers. These discounts can easily be set up within the Shopify Admin from the Discounts page, and can even be set as any type of Buy X, Get Y discount, in which you can customize the quantity to be added to cart, and different products or collections.

For more information on setting-up BOGO and creating discounts in the Shopify admin check out the discounts help guide.

Get creative with discounts using the PriceRule API

The PriceRule API allows you to create just about any type of discount model you can dream up. Broadly, you can create discounts based around:

• Percentages. Get a certain percent off an order, or only after buyers spend a certain amount or add a certain quantity to their cart.
• Dollar amounts. Get more dollars in savings if you add certain items or quantities to your cart.
• Conditions for free shipping. Have a specified cart value or size to unlock free shipping.

Use the PriceRule API to shift more stock and add more revenue for your clients this BFCM. For more information on using the PriceRule API, check out the docs.

3. Build pages that keep up with the fast pace of Black Friday/Cyber Monday

A quick loading website has many perks, from keeping fast-moving consumers engaged to helping you rank in search engines to reducing bounce rate. But it’s just as important to keep page load speed consistent in the checkout experience. According to Unbounce, one out of five customers will abandon the shopping cart if the pages are too slow.

"If any part of the site is slow to load and at risk of freezing during high-traffic periods, it’s important to address this as soon as possible."

Ahead of Black Friday/Cyber Monday, you should run load tests on the online stores you’ve built for clients, as well as your apps. If any part of the site is slow to load and at risk of freezing during high-traffic periods, it’s important to address this as soon as possible. For troublesome back-of-house operations of your app, you may want to consider using parts of the GraphQL Admin API, which typically handles API calls more efficiently than in REST.

Learn more about the GraphQL Admin API and how it can be a more efficient way to handle back-of-house operations for apps and online stores.

4. Create shoppable social experiences with Instagram

Help your clients get their products in front of 500 million trend seekers with shopping stickers on Instagram Stories. Instagram integrates with Shopify, to help merchants offer a smooth and consistent in-app shopping experience, from product discovery to checkout.

To find out more about how you can create shopping experiences on Instagram to power up your client’s sales on Black Friday/Cyber Monday, visit our Instagram Shopping info page.

5. Marketing in Shopify: Help merchants drive even more traffic with Google and Facebook ads

Running paid ads is getting more complex every day. From pixels to keywords, there’s always something new to learn, and when merchants are small, it’s tough for them to keep up. As a partner, you’re able to lend your expertise and help merchants leverage ad campaigns this BFCM.

Marketing in Shopify is a new place for merchants to plan, launch, and track their marketing campaigns. Currently, merchants can use Marketing in Shopify for Google Smart Shopping campaigns and running Facebook ads.

"To help merchants make more sales, we’ve compiled our best marketing resources into a virtual toolbox, to help merchants of all sizes make more sales this Black Friday/Cyber Monday."

Help merchants put products in front of buyers through platforms they already love and use. With only a few simple steps to get going, you can increase sales and drive value to merchants. Read the blog to find out more about Marketing in Shopify.

6. Help merchants help themselves: Introducing the Black Friday/Cyber Monday Toolbox

Even if your scope of work doesn’t include helping merchants with marketing, you can still point them in the right direction to find marketing success.

We’ve compiled our best marketing resources into a virtual toolbox, to help you help merchants of all sizes make more sales this Black Friday/Cyber Monday. With guides on everything from how to creatively use discounts, to links to marketing and reporting apps, to direction on where to get help and support, the BFCM toolbox is a great marketing and sales-boosting kit for merchants who take a DIY approach to marketing or just need a little extra help.

Visit the BFCM Toolbox today and share with your clients.

Help your clients make more sales this Black Friday/Cyber Monday

Merchants often rely on the services and solutions provided by Shopify Partners to find sales success during BFCM. Whether that’s optimizing the speed of an online store or elevating their marketing efforts, use these six tools to provide timely, relevant, and reliable help to your clients at this busy time of year.

What Black Friday/Cyber Monday tools and tactics are you looking to help merchants with this holiday? Let us know in the comments below!