The Right Reasons For The Success Of Shopify’s Black Friday Sale
As Shopify records benchmark sales during the Black Friday weekend and Cyber Monday, many eCommerce enthusiasts, Shopify experts, and marketers have set out to find the right reasons behind this triumph.
While some believe the pandemic has a lot to contribute to this success, others have regarded a few logical factors accounting for a $2.4 billion sale within two days.
We set out a small research and brainstorming session within our little group of Shopify experts and marketers and found six powerful reasons that lead Shopify to a new zenith.
Before jumping on to the reasons, here are a few must-know stats from the sales.
Image Source: Shopify
The sum of Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) sales sum up to $5.1 billion globally — with an average cart price of $89.20. And this number has officially raised the annual BFCM sales by 76% than last year. In a way, one can say that BFCM 2020 was the best season for the eCommerce arena and especially for Shopify!
Image Source: Shopify
Six Reasons How Shopify Took A 76% Revenue Jump
Shopify stands as a popular eCommerce platform amongst developers due to three prominent reasons:
- An unparalleled point-of-sale feature
- 100+ payment gateway compatible options
- 2000+ apps to choose from — for integration
Either you do it yourself, or you hire a Shopify expert to build your eStore; Shopify has the power to provide you the most updated, trending, and highly-functional options. And such vigilance can make your eStore more likable. The BFCM sale is clear evidence of the same.
Let’s now look at six reasons that facilitated Shopify to achieve this benchmark.
- eCommerce is the future of Retail Sales
2021 is almost upon us, and the vaccine for the COVID-19 virus is in circulation. We can expect the global population to roam out and about freely a few months before the end of 2021, and this raises the question of eCommerce’s perpetuity in the coming years and its success.
But here is something interesting — while the pandemic wasn’t entirely responsible for the growth of eCommerce in 2020, it certainly nudged along the progress multi-fold.
Image Source: Shopify
During this pandemic, over 52% of the buyers have admitted that eCommerce is their first choice to make retail purchases. So, in a way, the pandemic is a perfect framework that initiated a random experiment on the growth and domination of eCommerce in retail sales. And the results are self-explanatory.
Even when you consider eCommerce purchases in economic terms, rational consumers will prefer this platform because it helps them save on transportation and other preliminary expenses incurred to make the desired purchase.
2. In The Spirit Of Espousing Small Businesses
Contrary to many economic notions that imply a barrier to entry on new and small firms, the past year has only seen encouragement within the business arena.
Call it the effects of the pandemic or the growth of a sustainable business environment, merchants and consumers are supporting small businesses. Of course, there is a minor ulterior motive hidden, lowers cost, but the bigger picture is that of a community coming together in aid of small businesses.
And precisely because of this emotion, consumers have begun promoting and buying from small businesses. Many influencers have promoted a few of their favorite small businesses via social media handles — without any endorsement fee.
Shopify’s survey said that 57% of the online shoppers seek out local and independently owned businesses for their purchases. And 61% of the buyers asserted that they would plan to purchase from such small eStores to support them.
And as a result of such encouragement, Shopify merchants hit the jackpot during the BFCM period.
3. Growing Marketing Efforts
As the demarcating line thins out, business operations have increasingly become interdependent. Every activity is a sub-set of the other and can be mathematically expressed so.
We can derive a directly proportional mathematical relationship between the sales of your Shopify eStore and your marketing efforts.
Shopify’s analytics plane gives you abundant information about your customer’s shopping habits, the devices they use, how they found you, and how you can anticipate their next purchases. It easily syncs with your digital marketing strategy and fetches data that you can you to your advantage.
Shopify merchants took advantage of this feature to market the on-set of their sales weekend and invite as many customers from across the globe. It truly is a Marvel!
If you’re having thoughts about hiring yourself a Shopify expert to create an eStore, then it would only be sane!
Here is a glimpse of the channels from where customers poured in.
Image Source: Shopify
4. Real-Time Customer Query Redressal
Remember when you had to wait in endless telephonic ques for product query redressal?
After the introduction of ChatBots, 30% of operational costs were instantly waived off, and by 2021, 85% of customer queries will be addressed via real-time applications.
Shopify merchants used real-time applications to address product-related customer queries, thereby converting close to 70% of users to customers. Shopify Ping is perhaps one of the most fantastic additions to your Shopify eStore to keep a rather human bridge between you and your customers.
According to Shopify, during the BFCM sale, Shopify ping was up to 62%, and as soon as the sale closed, the ping went back down to 33%. These figures say a lot about the sale and how Shopify achieved the benchmark sales figure.
5. Cross-Border Selling Worked Like Gravity To A Moving Cart
According to Shopify, 14% of the total sales were cross-border purchases. One thing that we can derive from this number is that Shopify merchants aren’t afraid of opening their eStore to a global audience.
1000+ km apart doesn’t seem to be a daunting figure with Shopify selling. Merchants and customers have the confidence to take and place orders from a store across the continent because they trust in Shopify’s shipment fulfillment system.
The quality of trust and confidence placed in Shopify merchants has lead to a phenomenal result during the BFCM sale.
6. Quick Checkout Accelerates Sales Rate
Shop Pay is Shopify’s quick checkout option that was introduced earlier this year and has proven very effective during the BFCM sale.
The idea is simple — your customers want to pay and get out as soon as possible. They do not want to wait to fill in elaborate forms because it negates the idea of not having to stand in long queues at the mall.
Shop pay facilitated a 129% increase in y-o-y sales overall within a few months of its introduction. And the reason for that is that customers were super happy about the quick payment method. So happy that merchants that used this feature deduced a 1.72x times checkout-to-order ratio.
The Verdict — Shopify’s Masterstroke!
From the numbers and the final results, it seems that Shopify has been planning for the 2020 BFCM sale right from the beginning of the year. Shopify anticipated a significant sales number this sale season, from launching a new feature to encouraging small businesses to join their community.
Now, if you’re looking to join this club and be one of the many Shopify, merchants then here is what w can do for you:
- We can be your Shopify expert should you choose to hire us
- We can develop/migrate a great eCommerce website for you, and
- We can ensure that the maintenance and updating of your website happen timely.
If you’re looking to hire Shopify expert, ZealousWeb is your partner in eStore creation! Let’s get in touch to make great profits.
