How to Prepare for the Largest Selling Holiday, Singles' Day

You may be asking yourself, what is Singles’ Day? Singles’ Day, celebrated on November 11, is a sales event that originated in China. But it wasn’t always a shopping bonanza.

In fact, it began in 1993 as a day for singles to treat and celebrate themselves in the same way couples and families celebrate various milestones. Since then, it has become the biggest online shopping day in China—bigger than Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. In Chinese culture, numbers carry a lot of significance. While the number one can signify a win (i.e., first place), it also represents loneliness or a solo relationship status. The holiday started at Nanjing University as a way for students to celebrate their singledom (it was founded by four single young men, which is why it was originally called Bachelors’ Day). It’s also known as the “bare sticks holiday” because of the way four 1s appear in the calendar.

Singles’ Day is not only celebrated in China but is becoming more and more popular in the US and around the world. About 250,000 brands participated in the Singles’ Day event last year, with the US being the top country selling to China by gross merchandise value. Take advantage of this holiday marketing opportunity to boost sales and attract new customers. Learn how to prepare for Singles’ Day early with the following four strategies.

Top four Singles’ Day strategies

1. Optimize for mobile

Ensure that your online store is easy to browse through on mobile because statistics show that 90% of Singles’ Day purchases are made on mobile devices. Prior to 11/11, make sure your pages and products are well laid out, with clear headings and consistent branding, and that your pages load fast enough to not disrupt the overall shopping experience.

Learn more about site optimization.

2. Communicate your offers and promotions early

It’s important to start communicating your offers and promotions a month in advance of Singles’ Day. This will give you the opportunity to build brand awareness to new customers and get existing customers excited about your upcoming promotions for the holiday.

Shopify Email now offers a new Singles’ Day email template, making it easy to create and send an email campaign in just a few clicks. The template highlights a discount section followed by a call-to-action button that automatically applies the discount to a customer’s cart, along with a featured collection section where you can highlight products that are new or a part of the promotion. We recommend sending out a teaser announcement about your upcoming promotion with our sales template and then duplicating the Singles’ Day template and sending an email out to your customers on 11/11. It's also a great time to confirm your email list prior to 11/11. A healthy list will have a greater chance of being delivered to the inbox. So as you are sending out teasers, ask that your subscribers confirm their email addresses so they don't miss any of the excitement on 11/11. Get started with the Singles’ Day email template today.

3. Promote your offerings on your homepage

Now that you’re driving traffic to your store with your email campaigns, make sure that your promotions are also displayed on your online store for visitors to see. This can be done by adding a header banner, updating your image banner, or adding a feature collection to your homepage highlighting your Singles’ Day promotion.

Learn more about editing your online store ecommerce theme.

4. Make use of short videos

Due to the increasing popularity of short videos such as Tiktok and Instagram Stories and Reels, video ads are a great way to grow online sales by promoting your products and deals to the audiences that are most interested in them. You can create video ads, track results, and manage your orders all from within Shopify.

Learn more about creating TikTok video ads within the Shopify admin.