Last year, Shopify merchants around the globe brought in a whopping$6.3 billionin sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. These shopping days are a huge opportunity for independent sellers, and early data-driven planning can help you capitalize on them.
Your Shopify data and reports let you understand trends from the past and convert them into insights for better performance. Let’s look at how you can use analytics to plan for a successful Black Friday Cyber Monday.
Define your goals and targets
Success looks different for every business, so take the time to figure out what you’d like to achieve this shopping season. Which metrics matter most to your business, and how do you expect Black Friday Cyber Monday to affect them?
Diving into your metrics from years past will help you understand market trends and performance so you can know what to expect. Look at trend lines for traffic, sales, and orders from previous Black Fridays Cyber Mondays to make predictions for the coming year and set realistic goals.
In addition to looking at your shopping data, be sure to understand and evaluate market trends like rising customer acquisition cost and recessionary pressure — especially important in this economic landscape. Together, these insights will set you up for a solid Black Friday Cyber Monday strategy.
Give your business a checkup
Do you know where the health of your business stands today? The healthier you are before Black Friday Cyber Monday, the better your chance of success on the big day(s). Now is the time to analyze your key metrics in order to track the health of your business.
Take a look at yourAnalytics overview dashboardto evaluate metrics like total sales, total orders, store conversion rate,average order value, and top products sold. With the new comparison periods feature, you can compare performance data across different time periods to see how your health has changed over time for each of these metrics.
Take (literal) stock
Understanding your stock is crucial to making smarter inventory and fulfillment decisions come Black Friday Cyber Monday. Even if you haven’t heard of the Pareto principle, you’ve probably heard of the idea behind it—that 20% of your top-performing products account for 80% of your total revenue. That’s why you’ll want to stock up on popular items before the shopping rush begins to avoid selling out. On the flip side, this is your chance to discount any excess inventory and move less popular items.
Running anABC analysislets you quickly identify your top products, as well as those that could use a little extra push. Meanwhile, analyzingsell-through rateby product anddays of inventory remainingwill help you understand how fast those products are selling and when you can expect to run out of inventory. Your orders tab comes preloaded with the most important metrics so you can see a snapshot of the number of orders received and how many items were purchased, along with fulfillment and returns data. This clear picture of the inventory you have on hand lets you build your Black Friday Cyber Monday strategy with pinpoint accuracy.
Amplify what works—and nix what doesn’t
You can’t get it right all the time, but you can pause, analyze, and iterate. Simplified reporting allows you to clearly view which promotions are working and which aren’t. Identify the discounts that are impacting sales performance, and either do more of the same, or change course. Not only will your analytics empower you to adjust your discounts strategy for this Black Friday Cyber Monday period; they will serve as a guiding light for future years so you can make continuous improvements.
For more information on discounts clickhere.