Black Friday CRO Strategies + Checklist [2025]

Massive occasions like Black Friday require massive preparations.

After all, it’s one of the biggest shopping fests of the year, if not the biggest, and you need to be at the top of your conversion game. One miss, and hundreds of thousands of dollars gone.

This blog post will help you with all the Black Friday CRO strategies, tools, and best practices. In a nutshell, it’s the ultimate eCommerce Black Friday CRO guide you need.

Let’s get started!

Black Friday CRO Checklist

Here’s a comprehensive checklist covering the Black Friday CRO hacks and strategies:

20+ Best Black Friday CRO Strategies for eCommerce Brands

Now, let’s go through the complete eCommerce Black Friday CRO guide in much more detail. Make sure to implement these strategies and best practices to optimize your Shopify store for Black Friday CRO.

#1. Revisit & Analyze the Previous Years’ Sales Data

If you’ve been in the eCommerce game for years, your data could speak for itself.

You can analyze the data from previous years to see what worked the best and what didn’t. It’s the best source to gain insights for your Black Friday conversion strategy.

For example, here are some of the key data points to analyze:

• Discount strategies of the previous years

• Conversion rate

• Cart abandonment rate

• Email open & engagement rates

• SMS engagement

• Paid ads performance data

• Loyalty program data

All these data insights can be quite helpful in some of the CRO strategies we’re going to cover in further points. And it will make your approach more technically sound instead of doing the guesswork.

#2. Finalize Your Black Friday Promotional Sale Strategy

Customers want the best deals on Black Friday — after all, that’s the whole point of shopping on Black Friday. Some customers even postpone their shopping and wait for the Black Friday deals. 

The point is — your promotional sale had to nail it.

Here’s an example of Black Friday promotional sale from Fashion Nova.

Based on the factors related to your current pricing strategy, decide on your discount strategy. Decide whether you’d want to go for the free shipping offer. Again, your data about previous or recent strategies could be helpful.

Learn more: How to Test Your Pricing Strategy Effectively: A Comprehensive Guide

Pro Tip: Design your discount strategy around product bundling offers. This way, you can entice customers to buy more from you to get the attractive discount, and increase your average order value (AOV). Create a “Build Your Own Bundle” offer so that customers get flexibility on what they want to include in the bundle — and this will also help increase the conversion rate.

#3. Prepare Your Website Design for Black Friday

Your website must embody the spirit of Black Friday.

Design your store with the Black Friday theme to immediately grab the attention of your visitors. Yes, it may require you to invest time and effort into redesigning your store. But you have the solution: GemPages Landing Page Builder.

GemPages’ template library already has ready-to-customize templates for Black Friday and other seasonal promotions, too. Also, you can use GemPages’ Image-to-Layout feature to speed up the design process as it allows you to create a customizable layout from a reference image or URL.

On top of all that, you can use a suite of advanced features to optimize many other aspects of your store for the Black Friday sale. We’ll go through more of these functionalities later in this article.

#4: Craft Website & Product Copy for Black Friday

Your website and product copy play a crucial role in boosting conversions. But the thing is — it requires you to rewrite the copy based on the occasion.

Let your customers know why they should buy from you on Black Friday with compelling copy. Also, entice your customer to complete the purchase at the earliest to get the Black Friday deal.

Don’t be afraid to be creative. This example from Nykaa — Pink Friday Sale — shows you can even come up with your own creative name for the promotion.

#5: Optimize Your Website for Mobile

Black Friday or whatever the occasion, mobile optimization is not optional — it’s a necessity.

Mobile commerce has grown so big, it’s outranking desktop. A StatCounter report shows that nearly 60% of the global market share is contributed by mobile, whereas desktop’s share is at 40%.

Make sure to audit and optimize your mobile user experience. Since you’re going to change the website design and copy, it becomes even more important to review your updated website on mobile.

Here are the most critical elements you must check on the mobile site:

• CTA button size and visibility

• Promotional copy length

• Mobile page load speed

• Pop-ups and banners

Learn more: Shopify Mobile Optimization: Boost Mobile Speed & SEO

#6: Enhance Your Website Speed

Test your website speed regularly before the season and identify the areas of improvement.

Here are some tips to optimize your site speed:

• Optimize the size and file formats of images and videos

• Remove unnecessary files or animations

• Use the lazy loading feature

• Use a speed boost app, e.g., Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

Pro tip: Use GemPages’ Instant Landing Page feature. It helps you optimize the page load speed of your critical landing pages using the headless commerce technology. Instead of spending thousands of dollars on building a headless commerce solution, you can leverage its benefits with GemPages’ Optimize plan at just $59/month.

Learn more: Dropshipping Page Speed Optimization — Tips & Tools

#7: Design “Black Friday Special” Landing Pages

Landing pages work like a conversion machine in eCommerce.

When running paid ads or other marketing campaigns, you can send the traffic to special, high-converting landing pages designed for the Black Friday sale.

Here are some tips for Black Friday landing page optimization:

• Include conversion-focused elements (e.g., countdown timer, stock counter, offer banner, etc.)

• Add visual storytelling

• Build trust with social proof

• Create a unique CTA button

• Add trust & security badges

• Create a detailed FAQ page

Once again, GemPages is here to help you! As mentioned earlier, just search for Black Friday templates and pick a design that matches your brand’s requirements.

Learn more: How to Improve the Landing Page Conversion Rate? – GemPages 

#8: Optimize Your Cart & Checkout Flow

Now, let’s talk about the two most important pages before the conversion event happens — your cart page and the checkout page.

8.1 Add trust elements

When the customers are on the cart page, and they find something fishy, they won’t proceed to the checkout page. You must win their trust, and you can do so by adding trust elements such as a customer testimonial, returns option or money-back guarantee,  payment security badges, etc.

8.1 Remove the frictions from the checkout page

If your checkout process takes too long, you’re likely to lose the customer. Let the customers checkout as a guest. Also, minimize the form fields on your checkout page so that customers can complete the checkout quickly.

8.2 Increase payment options if needed

Not having the preferred payment option is one of the reasons some customers would just abandon their carts. Give them a preferred method of payment.

Learn more: 10 Best Shopify Payment Options for Your Business

#9: Run A/B Tests to Fix Ongoing Issues

A/B testing can help you fix issues with your conversion rate. But it’s important to know what A/B tests you should conduct. Mainly, focus on the tests that are impacting your conversion rate.

Here are some crucial Black Friday A/B testing ideas:

1. Homepage — Above-the-fold design

2. Homepage — Above-the-fold website copy

3. CTA Buttons across the site

4. Product page — primary images

5. Upselling and cross-selling offers

If you don’t have an A/B testing tool on your store, install the GemX: CRO & A/B Testing app. We’ve built GemX for Shopify merchants with our years of experience and expertise in the Shopify CRO space.

Running an A/B test with GemX is quite easy. Just go to the GemX dashboard, click “Create new experiment”, select your control and variant — and hit “Start experiment”.

Learn more: Top 20+ A/B Testing Ideas You Should Try

#10: Integrate Urgency & Scarcity Elements

Urgency and scarcity elements, such as a limited-time offer, flash sale, stock counter, etc., can help you boost your conversion rate. But make sure to use them mindfully. You don’t want to lose your customers’ trust in your brand.

With many GemPages templates, you can incorporate a countdown timer by default, or you can add a countdown timer element wherever needed.

#11: Prepare Email Sequences for Black Friday

Get ready with your email flows for every scenario — from early promotions to cart abandonment sequences.

Here’s an excellent example of a Black Friday promotional email from Princess Polly — the brand uses a static image at the top with a discount code and then displays multiple products with a GIF:

Customers might not convert on the first go.

Some customers will just explore your offerings and move to other websites to check more offers. It’s a common practice on occasions like Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

To bring back such customers, you must set up a robust email marketing strategy. For example, you can set up an abandoned cart email flow to let the customers know that you’ve extended the offer for them till Cyber Monday.

#12: Create an SMS Marketing Strategy for Black Friday

Just as we need to have Black Friday email strategy, SMS is equally important. 

Customers check their SMS more regularly than emails, and thus, you could leverage your SMS marketing strategy to convert the last-moment shoppers.

#13: Display Social Proof & Trust Elements

Throughout the website, you must show trust elements to win your customers’ trust.

13.1 Customer reviews or testimonials

Social proof in the form of customer reviews or testimonials is crucial to building trust.

13.2 Press mentions

Apart from customer reviews, your press mentions can also create brand authority. Let’s take a look at this example where Death Wish Coffee proudly showcases its press mentions.

13.3 Trust and security badges

Display trust and security badges on your cart and checkout pages.

13.4 Returns or money-back policy

If your returns policy is generous, e.g., a 30-day return policy, customers would feel safe to buy from your brand. Similarly, a money-back guarantee also helps increase confidence in your brand.

#14: Create a “Black Friday Special” Popup

A discount pop-up is an evergreen strategy to increase your conversion rate.

Here’s an example of how a popular brand — Fashion Nova — collects details about preferences that can be further used in the re-marketing efforts.

#15: Enhance User Experience for Black Friday Shopping

Create a dedicated collection for Black Friday Sale if you’re not offering sitewide discounts. Customers must not be confused about what and how they’re getting the offer.

#16: Give Your Paid Ad Campaigns the Black Friday Theme

Running paid ads on Black Friday without the Black Friday theme is like knowingly wasting your money. You must create the Black Friday ad creatives.

#17: Optimize Your Store with Personalization

Customers love seeing product recommedations that are curated based on their personal preferences. Enhance the search experience with relevant recommendations to help your customer find the right products.

#18: Promote Your Most Exciting Offers Through Announcement Bar

Announcement bar is one of the first things customers notice when they land your website. Free shipping offer, 30-day returns policy, etc., should be highlighted through the announcement bar. 

You can even use more than one bar. For example, apart from the one top of the hero section, you can place another announcement bar in the middle of the homepage.

#19: Offer a “Buy Now, Pay Later” Payment Option

One of the ways to attract more conversions is to let customers buy without worrying about the immediate payment. This strategy could be especially helpful when you’re selling expensive items such as electronics or jewelry items.

You can use Shop Pay to offer a flexible “Buy Now, Pay Later” option with installment payments.

#20: Create a Dedicated FAQ Section/Page

If the customer is in doubt, it’ll likely not end up in a closed deal.

You must resolve all the concerns that might bother your customer before making a purchase. First, you need to know what those concerns are and then address them all in your FAQs section/page.

GemPages makes it easy to create a dedicated FAQs section with the Black Friday theme. Just drag and drop the “Accordion” element and customize it as you need. 

#21: Leverage Your Loyalty Program

A loyalty program is often an underestimated strategy.

You could run loyalty program campaigns for Black Friday. For example, announce an offer for extra loyalty points a week before Black Friday.

One of the biggest advantages of leveraging a loyalty program is that you won’t have to offer a direct cash discount. Instead, you’ll reward customers with loyalty points that are going to come back to you in the form of future purchases.

Final Thoughts on Black Friday CRO Best Practices

Remember — the most important factor associated with conversion is your customer.

Whatever CRO strategy you plan to implement this Black Friday must consider your ideal customers’ expectations from your brand.

Finally — install GemPages — Landing Page Builder — if you haven’t already, and start creating stunning product and landing pages for Black Friday and subsequent holidays.

To learn more about other eCommerce marketing strategies, tools, and best practices — check out more resources on the GemPages Blog. Also, join the GemPages Facebook community to network and learn from like-minded entrepreneurs and experts.

FAQs About Black Friday CRO Tips

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