How Shopify Partners prepare merchants for Black Friday: Q&A with EtherCycle’s Kurt Elster

Kurt Elster missed the Beanie Baby craze. 

He caught the next wave, though, flipping Furbys on eBay when he was still in high school. “That was my gateway to ecommerce,” he says.

An entrepreneur from the jump, Kurt eventually launched his own ecommerce agency in 2009, focusing on bike shops. When one of his clients was looking for a new website, he decided to try Shopify. “We jumped in feet first and built a custom theme. That's how we got involved with Shopify Partners.”

Today, Kurt’s agency EtherCycle (a portmanteau of ethernet and bicycle) is a seven-person team, helping Shopify merchants optimize conversion and grow revenue. EtherCycle offers services like theme development, store setup and migration, and strategic consulting. 

EtherCycle’s work has led to some clients’ best Black Friday outcomes yet. As merchants around the world prepare for the biggest sales event of the year, we sat down with Kurt to get his advice on making the most of the holiday season.

Shopify: What is the most common challenge merchants face when preparing for Black Friday Cyber Monday?

Kurt: Where people get caught up is with overthinking it or having the limiting belief that you can't do it as well as a big box retailer. All of that is wrong. This is the one time where people are expecting to hear from you via marketing channels. You want to get your message out there in as many places as possible. 

Shopify: How does EtherCycle help merchants get their sites ready for big sales events?

Kurt: Phase one is about getting all the speed bumps out of the way. Can we improve the on site experience? Can we make this navigation easier? Can we make it easy to find products? If we do that, the site is easier to use. Customers are happier. It's more trustworthy. Merchants are happier because they potentially get more sales and fewer support requests.

When I land on your site, I should be able to bat at my iPad and still land on a deal somewhere. Make it that obvious. Big box retailers are not hiding deals. It's in your face, it's very obvious.  

Shopify: What are some strategies merchants can use to maximize sales over the Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend?

Kurt: I like an early bird Black Friday sale for past buyers, people who've made more than two purchases from you in the last 12 months. Those people are very good customers. Why not reward them by running the same sale earlier in the year? 

Shopify: Can you share an example of a merchant that had a successful Black Friday as a result of EtherCycle’s work?

Kurt: One of my favorite examples is a longtime Shopify store, Hoonigan. We've worked with them many years, and helped them have their best Black Friday ever. They offered a free gift with purchase exclusive to the Black Friday sale. It had not been sold outside of that time, people had never seen it before. It had a tremendous effect because it had exclusivity. 

Shopify: What advice would you give to new merchants preparing for their very first Black Friday Cyber Monday?

Kurt: The main menu is what makes or breaks a lot of stores. I want a main menu where every link goes to a promotional landing page, a product, or a collection, and that's it. Everything else can live in the footer. Then I want everything on that homepage related to Black Friday, a deal, a promotion. Then do not be afraid to tell people about it.

Shopify: What technical audits do you perform on a Shopify store to ensure that it's ready for a big sales event?

Kurt: The most obvious thing that people miss is placing test orders on multiple devices. As a web developer or a Shopify merchant, the chances are you probably have a decent phone, an updated laptop. That's not what I want. I want the iPad grandma's using. When you can successfully make a purchase, we can be confident that it's going to work for everybody else.

Shopify: How would you leverage data to help steer merchants as they’re developing marketing campaigns?

Kurt: If you have ever run a sale in the past, you now have historical data that you can use to get ideas from. In Shopify, run the discount report. What were the highest value discounts? What were the ones that were moving the needle? Cart behavior analysis is going to show what items are added together in a shopping cart because that could provide ideas on bundles or free gifts with purchase.

Shopify: What is your advice for merchants who decide to run a last-minute Black Friday Cyber Monday campaign?

Kurt: If you're out of time, you just have to do something. Do anything. Get email campaigns out there. Use Shopify Email to send the campaign to all your past purchasers. Those are the people who are most likely to make a purchase again on Black Friday. 

Shopify: What's an emerging trend in commerce that merchants should be aware of this upcoming Black Friday?

Kurt: I think the trend this year that has surprised me is automatic discounts, which is a variation on discount code, but the customer does not have to put that code in. We want to eliminate that breakage. We want to make the process easier. 

Shopify: Any last advice for merchants heading into the biggest sales event of the year?

Kurt: Create a dedicated deals landing page. I don't see a ton of Shopify stores doing it, and with Online Store 2.0, it's quite easy to make an alternate page template and then use that to create a landing page that is purely about your deals.

Link to that throughout the site: in the announcement bar, the header, the footer, on the homepage, on every product page. You don't have to hire a developer for this. All of this can be done with section blocks in the Shopify theme editor.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.