Cyber Monday Deals for WooCommerce

Cyber Monday, just like Black Friday, is an event that both shoppers and sellers look forward to. For shoppers, it’s a chance to save money. For sellers, it’s a big boost to sales.

These events are a great addition to any business plan! In this article, we’ll talk about what Cyber Monday is, when it happens, how it’s different from Black Friday, why you should take part, and how you can do it.

All of this is sure to boost sales in your online store!

What Is Cyber Monday?

Cyber Monday is another day of discounts and promotions in the U.S., linked to Black Friday and Thanksgiving. Black Friday usually takes place the first Friday after Thanksgiving, while Cyber Monday is the first Monday after that.

However, these two events differ not only in date, as we’ll see in the next section.

Differences Between Cyber Monday and Black Friday

The main difference between Black Friday and Cyber Monday is what they’re all about. Black Friday actually started out as a promotional event in physical stores in the U.S., and it’s since expanded to include online shopping. Even now, despite it being online, it’s still big in physical stores, with people going crazy over it.

On the other hand, Cyber Monday was created just for the online world, giving eCommerce and marketplaces like Amazon a chance to see a big jump in sales.

Since online stores don’t have to share the spotlight with physical stores, Cyber Monday is a great opportunity for them, especially for those selling digital products. Customers are drawn to these items during the event so it’s a good time to sell.

But it’s not just the potential sales that are pushing sellers to join Cyber Monday, there are other reasons too. Let’s see some of them!

Why Join Cyber Monday?

It’s no surprise that sales are a priority to sellers, but there are other perks to joining Cyber Monday. For example, you can:

• Reach out to new clients – On Cyber Monday, lots of customers browse the web to find the right promotion for them. Taking part in this event can really help you get noticed by a wider audience, especially if you let people know you’re taking part in it beforehand on your website and social media.
• Increase customer loyalty – There’s nothing customers like more than getting a discount or promotion, which makes them more likely to stick around. You can also use this chance to promote other loyalty tools, like a loyalty program or a newsletter.
• Increase AOV- One of the best ways to boost the average cart value, or AOV (average order value), is to offer discounts and promotions. When there’s an offer, the average consumer is more likely to buy products they might have waited to buy or not bought at all. This can be especially effective when the discount is based on the number of items purchased or the total value of the cart.
• Challenge the competition – If you’re not planning to take part in Black Friday/Cyber Monday, it’s worth noting that your competitors will probably also be doing so, whether they have small or large stores. As we’ve seen, sales during this period can also have a lasting effect on your online business through customer loyalty so it’s a good idea to stay ahead of the times and events.

In a nutshell, there are lots of benefits that mainly focus on increasing sales and strengthening your online presence. For this, it’s important to understand how your potential customers behave during these specific events.

Consumers’ Behavior

It’s easy to get caught up in the seller’s perspective when we’re dealing with a new customer and forget to see things from their point of view. But it’s also important to remember what it’s like to be on the other side of the table. In fact, you can get a lot of benefits from analyzing how the average user behaves — what do people actually do on Cyber Monday?

• Search for discounts and offers – It’s no surprise that people often put their online purchases on hold in the days before Black Friday and Cyber Monday, in the hope of a good deal. This means that not only will they be more likely to buy, but also that if you don’t have a promotion, your customers might be disappointed.
• Impulsive purchases – One of the best sales tactics is all about the Scarcity Principle. Products or offers that are coming to an end tend to be more appealing to customers than those without an expiration date. Because Cyber Monday lasts for a limited time, customers are pushed to buy faster decreasing the time they usually spend making up their minds which also leads to abandoned carts.
• Use of wishlists – This is an increasingly popular feature in online stores. You don’t know how many customers add products to their wishlist in anticipation of a promotion or discount. Even better if they receive an email informing them of the promotion. The same can be done by simply adding products to the cart and buying them later, but this solution is usually less efficient and popular.

There are also other features and behaviors that you can find outside of these events, but they really take off during these periods. You’ll also find shopping via mobile devices, so it’s important to make sure your site is mobile-friendly. There’s also an increasing number of people looking for free shipping, it’s a feature online shoppers seek nowadays.

Now, let’s see what kind of deals to go for on Cyber Monday.

Create Exclusive Deals for Cyber Monday

As mentioned before, Cyber Monday has a lot in common with Black Friday, but there are also some big differences. So, when you’re putting together your promo strategy for this event, it’s important to keep these two factors in mind. So, our advice is that you offer the following:

• Limited-time packages – Free upgrades or customized offers as part of the Cyber Monday strategy. It’s crucial to create a sense of scarcity and urgency at these events because they’ll lose their impact once the day is over. More and more companies are offering discounts for an entire week, including Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
• One-of-a-kind digital incentives – Instead of going for the usual Black Friday discounts, Cyber Monday can feature exclusively digital promotions, such as discounts on online services, downloadable products, or digital gift cards. Since Cyber Monday is more focused on the digital world, targeted promotions tend to be more successful.

Before you get started with your promotional strategy, it’s important to make sure your WordPress website is ready to handle the event. Let’s go over a few steps to take.

Prepare Your WooCommerce Store for Increased Traffic

One thing that’s really important for your business is how easy it is to scale your eCommerce. It’s not unusual to experience a much bigger rush of visitors to your site during these events than you’d normally get throughout the whole year.

While marketers see the potential for big sales from a spike in traffic, they often don’t consider the stress it can put on your portal, especially if it’s built on a low-level hosting service.

It’s important to make sure your site can handle a lot of traffic without slowing down or even crashing. This is called scalability.

If your site goes down during a busy event like Cyber Monday, you’re not just losing out on potential sales (especially during these events), but you’re also damaging your image. This can affect your store’s success even months or years later.

So, it’s a good idea to check in with your hosting service to make sure everything’s running smoothly and to look for any extra stuff that might be slowing down your site’s navigation. Things like unoptimized themes, heavy images, unnecessary plugins, cache issues, and so on.

Optimize the Checkout Process for a Smooth Experience

The checkout stage is a crucial but delicate part of your sales process. Many shopping carts are abandoned at this point, often because of unexpected costs or difficulties filling the order.

That’s why we suggest you double-check that the process is running smoothly, and look for ways to speed it up and simplify it where you can. As we said before, Cyber Monday is mostly about digital and downloadable products, so you might want to think about using a quick checkout for digital products.

That way, you can ask for any extra info after you’ve paid and before you download, so you only need to give them your first name, last name, and email address.

If you’ve built your online store using the WordPress/WooCommerce combo, you can use a dedicated plugin to easily add this functionality. One option is YITH WooCommerce Quick Checkout for Digital Goods.

The plugin lets you choose which fields to show in the quick checkout so you only see the ones you need for the order:

Once you’ve picked your fields, customers can go ahead and place orders by entering only the data you’ve set as essential:

You can also make it easier for returning customers to buy again by adding a feature that other big names like Amazon already use: a one-click checkout process. With the YITH WooCommerce One-Click Checkout plugin, you can allow customers who’ve already registered to buy with just one click.

This way, they can add products to the cart and complete the checkout normally (if they need to buy several products) or just buy one product with one click, skipping the whole bureaucratic and tedious checkout process:

These factors are important for any store, but they’re especially crucial when selling digital products. If customers have a bad experience, they’ll likely take their business elsewhere. So, it’s essential to make the purchase process as quick and easy as possible.

Let’s look at some marketing tips to keep in mind during Cyber Monday deals.

Cyber Monday Marketing Strategies for Online Shoppers

Cyber Monday is exclusively an online event, so your marketing campaign should be focused on digital channels. You’ve got to focus on two things: getting customers to come to your site and turning people who just happen to visit the site into customers.

So how to do it? Here are some steps to take:

• Email and social marketing – Back in the day, you had to use flyers and billboards to promote a store or sales event. In the eCommerce world, though, the tools are different. For instance, your newsletter can be a great way to get people excited about Cyber Monday and let them know about any discounts you’re offering. If this tool requires some planning and can’t be implemented overnight, you can still make use of social marketing. Most people spend a lot of time on social media, and that’s where you can grab their attention!
• Urgency creation – When it comes to Cyber Monday and other limited-time events, it’s all about urgency. Use countdown timers and limited stock alerts to get people to take action by tapping into the Scarcity Principle.
• Notify customers who pass by – Not everyone who visits your site on Cyber Monday will know about the current deals so make sure you put banners and announcements on the pages that get the most traffic (like the home page) to get users who are just browsing your site interested.

Take Advantage of Social Proof During Cyber Monday

Another key part of running your online store is social proof. It’s especially useful during Cyber Monday.

Reviews and testimonials help build trust with customers, especially with new ones. Since time is limited during events like this, it’s good to use anything that can speed this up.

That’s why you might want to upgrade your product reviews and make them easier to find and more appealing by using a plugin like WooCommerce Advanced Reviews.

Post-Cyber Monday Strategies

If you want to make the most out of this event, don’t rest on your laurels counting your sales once it’s over. The days after Cyber Monday are actually a great time to try to make more sales.

After an event like this, there’s always a certain percentage of people who’ve checked out the site but didn’t purchase. Sending a cart recovery email with a super-limited discount for the next few hours can help you get a lot of those people back on your site!

Also, in the aftermath of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it is very important to build loyalty with new customers so that their first purchase on your site is not their last.

You can do personalized follow-ups (people are increasingly looking for a personalized experience in their online purchases), integrate a loyalty program (so that the purchase is just the beginning of a journey), offer further promotions (being careful not to undervalue the Cyber Monday ones, otherwise it may negatively impact later events), post valuable content in your blog and on your social media accounts, and much more.

Conclusion

To sum up, Cyber Monday is a great chance to boost sales, but the real challenge is figuring out how to turn casual shoppers into loyal customers. To build lasting relationships, you’ve got to get your online store ready, make sure it’s easy to navigate, optimize the mobile experience, and keep customers interested with promotions and valuable content. If you get it right, Cyber Monday will not be just a one-day sales spike but the gateway to long-term success.