What to pay attention to during Black Friday

• Server Stability: Also pre-Black Friday, it is important to check for potential server issues caused by intensive access during the Black Friday campaign interval.

Internal Linking Recommendations

• The Black Friday LP must be displayed on all site pages throughout the campaign, starting with the menu and included in the sitemap.xml.
• The campaign LP should also be supported by a backlinking strategy, implemented a day before the campaign starts, to benefit from authority transfer and become relevant to search engines.
• The LP should be populated with text and marked with FAQ structured data. Content in this section should be interrogative, such as “When is Black Friday?” or “What is Black Friday?”.
• To keep the page looking clean, you can use a “read more” function for full content display.

Keywords: Headline 1, title, meta description, and the menu anchor must contain the keyword “Black Friday” along with the current year.

Redirect Strategy:

• If the Black Friday LP will be displayed instead of the homepage, the teasing landing page must be redirected to the homepage via a 301 redirect.
• If the Black Friday LP is dedicated to the campaign, the homepage should be temporarily redirected to it using a 302 redirect.

DATA

Pre-Black Friday

• Tracking Audit: We start with a tracking audit and testing on the Black Friday LP to ensure implementations work unequivocally.
• UTM Parameters: A massive volume of data is generated in a single day. To profit from this, all campaigns must use UTM tags with all 5 parameters: utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_content, utm_term. This allows for granular analysis later.
• Long-term Effects: Due to GA’s attribution model (Last-Non-Direct), we can see the long-term effects of Black Friday traffic if it returns to the website via direct traffic.
• Commercial Analysis: Establish price strategy and stock predictions.
• Audience Creation.
• Real-time Dashboard including: Traffic sources, devices, users, demographics, pageviews, Javascript errors, server response time, requests per second, detail views, add-to-carts, checkouts, transactions/revenue, and distribution of users (homepage vs. listings vs. products vs. checkout).
• GTM Container Optimization.
• Loading Speed: To improve speed, we can remove certain unnecessary Javascript libraries that load the pages (e.g., Hotjar).
• Remarketing: We aim to collect cookies for remarketing actions.

Direct Marketing

• Planning: Plan communication frequency and themes early to avoid excessive or insufficient communication.
• Cooldown: Reduce promotional campaigns and vouchers in the period leading up to Black Friday.
• Frequency: Depending on the campaign type, email frequency should not exceed one email per day during Black Friday to avoid annoying subscribers.
• Segmentation: This is the key. Ideally, communicate differently with major segments:
  • Inactive: Remind them why they should return to the site.
  • VIPs: Offer sneak peeks to build anticipation.
  • Active / Single-purchase clients.
• Content: Develop attractive and distinct content. Use unconventional subject lines, GIFs, and creative phrasing to stand out in crowded inboxes.

Performance marketing

Before Black Friday

• Lead Gen: Define campaigns for newsletter subscriptions and send push notifications.
• Micro-conversions: Focus on obtaining micro-conversions.
• Audience Setup: Ensure relevant audiences are identified and isolated (BF users) to be used for subsequent campaigns (Cyber Monday, Christmas, Spring Sale, etc.).
• Product Analysis: Analyze product categories included in the promotion.
• Budgeting: Establish additional budget and its split between Awareness and Transactions.
• Phased Rollout: Set a clear start date. Gradually increase budgets in campaigns with profitability-focused bidding strategies to avoid sudden spikes that could destabilize the campaign.
• Creative Prep: Create Black Friday search ads and set rules to start them on the campaign day, while ensuring ongoing (non-BF) ads are paused.
• Teasing: Define teasing campaigns with an awareness component (video, display, discovery) to create expectations.

During Black Friday

• Budget Monitoring: Check consumed budgets several times a day; high search volume and rising costs can exhaust daily budgets in hours.
• Bidding Strategies: Relax profitability-focused bidding strategies (lower ROAS, CPA thresholds).
• Optimization: Check display audience performance and stop those that consume budget without delivering results.
• Functionality: Periodically check site functionality.

UX/UI

To better address customers, we divide them into two categories:

1. Deal Hunters: Have more time for research/comparison, are not necessarily brand loyal, check multiple sites, and use “similar products” sections.
2. Go Getters: Have a specific need/product in mind, use the search bar and guest checkout, know the pre-discount price, and buy quickly.

During Black Friday, user attention spans decrease. You need “extras” to trigger the purchase decision:

• Vouchers, free delivery, gift wrapping, free samples, etc.

Data Collection for UI Optimization helps:

• Optimize the platform and track audience interests.
• Determine “rockstar product” clusters.
• Identify navigation patterns and errors.

Design Comparison (Visual Examples):

• Poor Design (Left): Elements compete with each other, cluttered layout, no Call to Action (CTA), repetitive text, and high-contrast colors that make everything look the same.
• Good Design (Right): Includes products, airy layout, logically grouped items based on common attributes, cropped photos, and less text to read.

Recommended additions: Discount percentage and a clear link/button to all discounted products.

Extra Info:

• Creatives used in performance campaigns should match those on the website for easy recognition.

If you want us to help you get ready for Black Friday and beyond, give us a sign at hello@datarevolt.agency.