Black Friday Cyber Monday is just around the corner! 📅

While online shoppers eagerly await the best deals of the year 🛍️, are your preparations limited to just "stocking up enough inventory for the upcoming season"? 📦 If so, you might be missing a few important spots. 👀

Successfully managing Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday is a multifaceted task, and you must successfully manage multiple areas, such as marketing, customer support, inventory planning, order fulfillment, and more. Because each of these areas plays a critical role in ensuring your store runs smoothly during the high-demand period.

Luckily, countless tools are available for each task, but only a few can truly enhance your Shopify store’s efficiency during BFCM. This blog is all about those top solutions. Let’s start!

Why is Black Friday and Cyber Monday Important for Shopify stores?

69% of online sales during Black Friday and Cyber Monday were made through Shopify stores. 🤯 Considering Shopify’s popularity as a shopping channel during Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it's crucial for merchants to optimize their stores and strategies to fully take advantage of this high-demand period. Increased volume of orders helps merchants to maximize their profit and gain new customers.

But it's not just about volume; Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday is also a great time to clear out dead stock. You can use strategies like bundling, offering extra discounts, or selling to wholesalers in BFCM to move products that have been gathering dust.

Moreover, Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday is an amazing opportunity to turn new customers into regulars. Those one-time buyers? With the right follow-ups and personalized offers, they can become loyal customers after the holiday rush. It's the perfect time to increase your profits, clear dead inventory, and build a customer base.

That’s why overcoming the most common challenges during the BFCM is vital, and with the right solutions, you can overcome BFCM hurdles and ensure your Shopify store runs smoothly.

Common Shopify Black Friday Cyber Monday Challenges and Their Solutions

Shopify stores' challenges during BFCM are not drastically different from those at other times of the year. However, the surge in demand can intensify issues related to inventory planning📦, customer support💬, marketing📈, and product delivery🚚, making them more severe and costly. 💸 Preventing these problems is possible with effective solutions. Let’s explore the most common issues and the best apps to tackle them.

📦 Planning Inventory for Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday

One of the biggest Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday challenge  is forecasting demand and planning inventory effectively. This is because the demand spikes during these peak periods are significantly different from other times of the year, and when they are not managed well, Shopify stores face multiple inventory problems, such as out-of-stock and overstock.

During Shopify Black Friday, out-of-stock happens when demand spikes faster than expected, depleting inventory quickly. On the other hand, overstock occurs when stores overestimate demand and end up with excess stock, tying up resources. These issues also can cause delays in product delivery during Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday. All of these result from the lack of robust planning tools and significantly reduce the profitability of your Shopify store during BFCM. As a solution, you should take seasonality into account when predicting sales and making future plans for peak seasons. That means you must analyze sales data from previous BFCM periods when preparing for this year’s BFCM.

Sounds complicated? Well, it might be if you’re using Excel for inventory planning for such a busy period like BFCM. Since Excel lacks real-time data, assessing your past data correctly and developing an accurate past BFCM analysis is harder. Besides, it takes much more time to compare advanced inventory solutions. Even if you spend time analyzing past Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday data, the reliability is still questioned because Excel is prone to errors. To sum up, using Excel for Shopify inventory planning can be risky, potentially wasting both your time and money.

However, forecasting sales and planning your Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday inventory can be easy, quick, and efficient with a robust inventory planning solution such as Fabrikatör.

📱 Fabrikatör helps you create seasonal inventory plans with advanced analytics, making your Shopify BFCM period more profitable. You can accurately analyze last year’s BFCM data, identify changes in demand, set a realistic growth rate for the upcoming season, and create a solid Shopify inventory plan. It provides you with effective planning and speeds up your operations. With its automated replenishment process, you can keep selling without running out of stock. Moreover, you can quickly generate purchase orders and select the most cost-efficient purchasing routes with freight planning. With Fabrikatör, you can better assess sales opportunities during Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday and easily increase your profits. See it in action for more.

💳 Fabrikatör offers three different plans for various needs of small to growing Shopify stores, with monthly fees ranging from $99 to $199 per user. Learn more about this 5/5-rated Shopify software.

📌 Even if Shopify inventory planning is done efficiently, you can still face stockout due to unexpected global trends, especially if you’re running an apparel store. With Fabrikatör, you can accept backorders and keep selling, as well as generate cash flow when you’re temporarily out of stock. Read Backorder Benefits for Your eCommerce Store for more detail.

Can Merchants Use Stocky for Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday?

Yes, merchants can use Stocky for Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It’s a built-in Shopify inventory management system available for free to Shopify Plus users. Stocky provides basic features like creating purchase orders and managing stocktakes, which can be helpful during the Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday period. However, many users find its functionality limited, leading to challenges that can hinder sales performance during this peak shopping time.

Issues such as inaccurate stock data and the necessity for manual updates complicate inventory decisions when timely accuracy is essential for BFCM success. Furthermore, users often report poor reporting capabilities, lack of mobile compatibility, and integration problems with key apps like QuickBooks, which can further frustrate merchants aiming to optimize their operations during this peak shopping season.

While Stocky might serve simple inventory management needs during BFCM, many Shopify brands prefer to explore alternative, more efficient inventory solutions like Fabrikatör. They need to make sure they’re are well-prepared for the challenges of Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

How Efficient is Shopify Plus for Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday?

Shopify Plus offers valuable features for managing Shopify inventory, particularly during the busy Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday period. However, Shopify Plus has limitations regarding detailed data analysis and accurate forecasting, which are vital for Shopify success during this peak shopping season. For growing businesses aiming to maximize profit during Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday, using inventory management solution like Fabrikatör can enhance the efficiency of Shopify Plus.

📞 Customer Support during Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday

On customer success, we believe Jason Lemkin when he said:

‘’Customer success is where 90% of the revenue is.’’

So, if you want your Shopify store to grow quickly and be highly profitable, you must understand that this is only possible with satisfied customers. Especially during a busy period like BFCM, when you can gain many new customers, responding quickly to your customer's needs and inquiries is crucial.

However, using manual customer support solutions for Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday can cause you to miss some customer messages, leaving some inquiries unanswered and delayed responses. That’s because manual customer support methods require constant manual monitoring and updating, which is challenging in peak seasons.

To avoid the hurdles of manual solutions and provide timely and effective support for customers, you can use Gorgias. It centralizes all your customer communication in one place, helping you manage the increased volume during BFCM without missing a beat.

📱Gorgias is an AI-powered customer experience app that simplifies and automates customer support. It brings all your support channels together and equips your team with an AI Agent that quickly answers tickets, performs tasks, and maintains your brand’s tone. Gorgias also provides 24/7 support to boost your team’s speed and efficiency.

💳 The app offers various monthly plans to suit different needs and budgets, ranging from $10 to $900. You can learn more here.

Mastering Bundling for Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Bundling products on Shopify during Black Friday and Cyber Monday during can be challenging because of the high order volume, tricky pricing, and managing inventory. Plus, you have to deal with customer expectations and potential technical issues. However, with a successful bundling tool, you can increase the average order value during Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday. When you group products together, you can clear out slow-moving inventory while increasing the appeal of popular items. Plus, it simplifies the shopping experience, making it easier for customers to choose and increasing the chances of larger purchases. How to use it?

• Make an ABC analysis first to identify your best-selling and slow-moving items,
• Combine them into special-price bundles to boost sales and clear out inventory,
• Group complementary items or those that fit a specific BFCM theme,
• Highlight your bundles and make their promotions,
• Track how different bundles perform and refine them based on sales data,
• Make your bundles available only during BFCM or in limited quantities to drive quick sales,

and voilà! ✨ You’ve boosted your sales during BFCM and significantly reduced your slow-moving inventory. But what tool can help you manage the bundling process quickly and efficiently for your Shopify store? It’s the Bundler-Product Bundles app.

📱During BFCM, you can use the Bundler app to create classic bundles, mix & match bundles, quantity breaks, and tiered discounts. It boosts your sales through targeted promotions and bundle landing pages and supports subscriptions for ongoing customer engagement. Besides, this Shopify app is easy to use with its user-friendly interface, saving you time during the busy BFCM period.

💳 The Bundler app is very budget-friendly with its two paid plans: $6.99 per month and $9.99 per month. There is also a free version available. You can check it out here.

Boosting Sales with a Custom Mobile App Builder for Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday‍

Did you know that 73% of BFCM purchases were made on mobile devices in 2023? With the surge in mobile shopping, having a dedicated app is essential for maximizing your sales potential during peak shopping periods like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. However, many Shopify store owners face challenges like high competition and the need for an efficient way to reach customers amidst the noise of promotional messages. That's where StoreLab comes into play!

📱With StoreLab’s Shopify growth service, you can create a fully designed, customizable mobile app for iOS and Android tailored to your store's needs. This powerful app builder not only allows you to send push notifications directly to your customers, keeping them updated on sale times and best deals, but it also helps you gain new customers through targeted ads.

Plus, you can boost sales from existing customers with a mobile app. How? Mobile apps convert 3x better than mobile websites and deliver a 10% higher AOV. By enhancing the customer experience with smoother shopping and checkout processes, you'll also be able to recover lost sales with unlimited abandoned cart notifications.

With a 5/5 Shopify rating, StoreLab’s service is designed to help you sustainably grow your sales and enhance customer loyalty. Easy to set up and get going, StoreLab’s Shopify growth service is perfect for entrepreneurs, SMEs, and start-ups looking to grow their business effectively and sustainably.

💳 StoreLab has two flexible plans to grow with your business, so you can pick what works best for your needs and budget. You can learn more about StoreLab here.

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Better Gifting Experience for Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Many customers will visit your Shopify stores to purchase gifts for their loved ones during BFCM. With the increased demand for gifts, Shopify stores face challenges such as managing personalized gift messages, coordinating message delivery timing, and efficiently handling gift cards and store credit. Giftnote addresses these issues by simplifying the gifting process for your store.

📱Giftnote simplifies the gift messaging process by integrating a fully branded experience into your store. Users can add gift messages via a custom widget or at checkout, choosing when to deliver them (immediately, later, or upon gift arrival). It also enhances Gift Cards with the same seamless experience and offers Store Credit and integrations with platforms like Klaviyo. With Giftnote, you can transform your gifting process, surprise recipients with timely messages, and convert one-time gift recipients into loyal customers.

💳 The app offers only one plan for $19 per month. Learn more here.

Simplify Accounting before Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Keeping up with sales accounting details during BFCM may be challenging due to the high volume of orders. By using a top-notch accounting app, you can effortlessly manage the influx of transactions, track discounts and promotions, and ensure your finance reports are accurate. This means you can focus on sales strategies to increase your profit, knowing your accounting is in expert hands. This reliable and efficient accounting app is none other than QuickBooks.

📱QuickBooks Online is a powerful tool for managing your Shopify store’s finances. It helps you easily track income and expenses, ensuring accurate financial records amidst the sales surge. It is especially handy with its automated structure for peak periods like Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday. With QuickBooks, you can automate the entry of invoices, manage inventory, and stay on top of your tax deductions, reducing the risk of errors and saving you time. This allows you to focus on driving sales and delivering great customer experiences while keeping your bookkeeping in check. Plus, it is now integrated with Fabrikatör. You can send your purchase orders to QuickBooks Online and streamline your accounting processes with enhanced inventory planning.

💳 QuickBooks Online offers three different plans, with prices ranging from $30 to $85 per month, depending on the features included. You can learn more here.

High-Converting Landing Pages for Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Imagine landing pages as the showcase for your Shopify store, prominently displaying your BFCM discounts and promotions. That’s why using a landing page builder allows you to create targeted, high-converting landing pages highlighting special offers, promotions, and exclusive deals. You can design pages that capture attention, drive conversions, and showcase your best Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. Therefore, you can offer a more focused shopping experience, increase customer engagement, and boost sales during the busy holiday season. One of the best Shopify apps you can use to build landing pages for BFCM is Pagefly Landing Page Builder.

📱PageFly Landing Page Builder can significantly enhance your Shopify store by allowing you to build and design stunning, high-converting pages without any coding. You can use its easy drag-and-drop editor to create custom landing pages for your Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals and add elements like color swatches, cross-selling options, and sales countdowns to drive conversions. With extensive integration capabilities, you can seamlessly add features such as reviews, product customizers, and bundles. Plus, PageFly ensures your pages are SEO-optimized, responsive, and perform well across devices.

💳 PageFly offers two paid plans: the Limited version at $24 per month and the Unlimited version at $99 per month. Learn more here.

Managing Discounts Efficiently During Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Discounts constitute the main component of the Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday period. However, constantly updating discounts and displaying them for products can be especially challenging for Shopify stores with large inventory. Therefore, using a discount app during BFCM would help you simplify promotions and discount management.

📱Discounty makes managing discounts during BFCM easy. You can quickly set up and combine various discounts like bulk, quantity, and cart discounts. For example, you can create offers like "Buy 2, Get 10% Off" or "Spend $100, Get 10% Off" to boost your store's average order values. Plus, this Shopify app lets you filter products by collections or tags, add sale badges, and set percentage or fixed amount discounts. You can also schedule discount campaigns to run automatically, and Discounty will handle updates for you. Besides, its simple interface and helpful support make it easy to launch effective discount campaigns during the holiday rush.

💳 This app offers three different paid plans, with monthly prices ranging from $9 to $49.90, depending on your needs. You can learn more now.

Drive Shopify Sales with Timer-Countdown for Black Friday and Cyber Monday

During Black Friday and Cyber Monday, millions of Shopify stores offer discounts, giving customers many options for finding discounted products they want. This can lead to a slower decision-making process and an increased number of abandoned purchases. To prevent this problem, you can use a timer bar to speed up the sales process and create a sense of urgency for customers. These time bars:

⏰ Encourage customers to act quickly on limited-time offers,

🛒 Motivate shoppers to finalize their orders before the offer expires.

🔥 Draw attention to special discounts and promotions, making them more compelling.

📅 Highlight preorders and build excitement for upcoming products.

and the Essential Countdown Timer Bar is ideal to use for this purpose.

📱The Essential Countdown Timer Bar app allows you to customize the countdown timer's text, colors, and placement to match your store’s branding. You can set timers for specific days, recurring events, or fixed-minute intervals, making it ideal for promotions, pre-orders, product launches, and flash sales. It’s particularly effective during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and other high-traffic periods, helping you drive more immediate sales and maximize your revenue.

💳 It offers three paid plans to meet the varying needs of Shopify users, with prices ranging from $6.99 to $29.99 per month. You can access more here.

🤳 On-point Black Friday and Cyber Monday Marketing with Email & SMS

With over 2 million merchants on Shopify, standing out during the busy BFCM period is incredibly challenging due to intense competition. 🤯 To stand out, you should follow a marketing process that is both precise and fast.

Managing effective marketing and personalizing customer interactions becomes overwhelming without the right tools. If you’re using Excel for customer data, campaign plans, sales reports, and various marketing lists, you already know how inefficient it could be for your Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Excel can’t handle large datasets well, making it easy to miss important data. Manual updates lead to errors; without automation, you risk missing out on optimizing your campaigns in real-time. As a result, you might miss key insights, make mistakes in your campaigns, and ultimately see poor performance and customer engagement during BFCM.

You can use Klaviyo to eliminate these problems before Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It helps you to manage customer data efficiently, automate your campaigns, and track your store’s real-time performance.

📱Klaviyo is a powerful tool for Shopify owners during BFCM; it offers personalized email campaigns based on customer behavior and purchase history. Thanks to integration with Fabrikatör, it helps manage backorders proactively by using information from Fabrikatör to inform customers about restocks and reduce cancellations. Additionally, with data and analytics Fabrikatör generated, Klaviyo enables strategic email campaigns, ensuring timely and relevant communications. Its integration with Shopify enhances your email marketing efforts, increases sales, and improves customer satisfaction during the busiest shopping season.

💳 Klaviyo has two paid plans: the combined email and SMS package costs $60 per month, while the email-only package costs $45 per month. There’s also a free plan available for starters. Click here for more details.

🛍️ Fulfilling Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday orders while customers eagerly waiting

Fulfilling orders during BFCM is another challenging operation due to a sudden increase in order volume. When customers look forward to their orders, stores face pressure to process and ship orders quickly.

Managing your store during BFCM can be overwhelming. An increased number of orders can quickly expose any weaknesses in your Shopify fulfillment processes. You might find yourself constantly updating inventory, avoiding stockout, or rushing to get orders out the door. Besides, keeping customers informed about their orders while dealing with a flood of support requests can become a full-time job in itself. When done manually or without the right system in place, all these tasks can lead to mistakes, delays, and a lot of stress. But it doesn’t have to be that way—you can simplify the fulfillment process with ShipHero.

📱For BFCM and all peak seasons, you can use ShipHero to streamline your warehouse operations and eliminate the hassle of picking, packing, postage, and shipping by automatizing them during the busiest shopping season. ShipHero also integrates with major shipping carriers, simplifying label printing and tracking, which reduces errors and speeds up delivery times. By reducing manual tasks and errors, ShipHero ensures that your fulfillment runs smoothly, even during the busiest times like BFCM.

💳 The starting price for ShipHero is $1,850/month and includes basic features. It also offers the 3PL plan and Enterprise+ plan, which cost $1,995/month and $2,750/month. Click here to learn more.

Optimizing Shopify Store for Upcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday

You might be wondering if it's really necessary to optimize your Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday approaching. Think back to last year's BFCM: how did your actual demand compare to your initial plans? ⚖️ Did you experience any issues or missed opportunities? Reviewing your past BFCM performance 🔍 can help you understand the importance of getting things right this year.

• If your store’s promotions didn’t reach the right audience,
• Managing customer communication and support was more challenging than expected,
• You lost customers or didn’t meet your sales targets,

Most importantly, if you found yourself constantly dealing with stockouts and rushing to place new orders during BFCM—often paying extra to suppliers—you must focus on improving your inventory planning. You need to create an efficient plan for your inventory, ensuring that no details are overlooked and no tools are missed during the planning process. 📘 You can use Fabrikatör’s Inventory Planning Playbook for BFCM to learn more about how to make efficient inventory planning for the upcoming peak season. In addition, you can access our Operational Checklist 🗒️ to prepare for the upcoming BFCM process and keep track of progress with your team.

Having efficient inventory planning would be the right first step to achieving BFCM success, as having enough inventory and making timely deliveries is necessary for a successful BFCM period. That’s why using an advanced solution is key to handling BFCM effectively.

Improve Shopify Inventory Planning This Black Friday and Cyber Monday with Fabrikatör

BFCM is all about selling discounted products to the right customers without stock issues and generating cash flow; that’s what Fabrikatör promises you. 📈 You can effectively and efficiently manage all your inventory operations with Fabrikatör, which is essential for your Shopify store’s success. ✨

With Fabrikatör, the upcoming BFCM can turn out differently from last year’s—with fewer problems, less stress, and more profit. How? 🤔

• Adopt a more proactive approach when planning inventory: plan ahead realistically 📈 with Fabrikatör’s advanced sales planning, avoid last-minute POs and stock issues during BFCM,
• Don’t overthink 🔄 when to replenish stock; let Fabrikatör do it for you,
• Integrate with valuable apps such as 📦 ShipHero and 📧 Klaviyo to manage BFCM efficiently,
• You don’t need to tell your customers you’re out of stock; tell them you keep selling using backorders,
• Master your past data with 📊 powerful analytics to be better prepared for the upcoming peak season,
• Choose the most 💸 cost-efficient purchasing routes to decrease your costs,
• Sleep well 😴 without the stress of possible BFCM problems,

…and more!

Do you have questions about how to use Fabrikatör and are curious about its features? If you have 30 minutes, you can see Fabrikatör in action now!

📌 Friendly reminder: 30 minutes is nothing when compared to the time you’ll invest in manual inventory planning methods during BFCM.

FAQs for Shopify Black Friday Cyber Monday

What is Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday?

Shopify Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) refers to the peak shopping days following Thanksgiving, when online retailers experience a significant surge in sales. In 2023, Shopify merchants reached a record $9.3 billion in sales on BFCM. This period not only boosts sales but also helps businesses build long-term customer relationships, making it a critical time for Shopify users to optimize their marketing strategies and inventory management.

When is Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2024?

Countdown is already began for the busiest shopping season of the year. Shopify Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) 2024 will take place from November 29 to December 2, with Black Friday on November 29 and Cyber Monday on December 2. Shopify businesses already started to get ready for the upcoming demand to avoid possible problems during this profitable period.

How to optimize my Shopify store before this Black Friday and Cyber Monday?

To ensure a successful Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday, efficient inventory management is essential. This requires having a solid BFCM inventory plan and the right solutions in place. For more details, you can visit our BFCM page where you'll find various resources you might need for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.