Prime instruments and methods for fulfillment

In July, we performed our second annual Black Friday Cyber Monday Traits Survey to know what methods and techniques companies are prioritizing forward of this yr’s peak season. 

You possibly can see a full overview of the outcomes right here, however on this put up, we’ll get into the finer particulars of methods, instruments, and greatest practices to assist what you are promoting rise to the highest this vacation season.

The vacation season represents a serious bump in lots of retailers’ income schedules, with 73% of retailers reporting that this era accounts for over 20% of their annual income. 

In 2024, Black Friday alone generated $10.8B in income, up from $9.8B in 2023. Cyber Monday noticed the same enhance as shoppers spent $13.3B in ‘24 — up from $12.4B in ‘23. General, the vacation season (from November first to December thirty first) generated $241.4B in 2024, almost $20B greater than in 2023.

And regardless of financial uncertainty attributable to US tariff modifications, Salsify discovered that 53% of shoppers plan on spending the identical quantity as final yr, and 22% plan to spend extra.

The TL;DR? Don’t maintain again throughout this peak purchasing season. The vacation pie continues to develop, and we’ll do our greatest that will help you take a much bigger piece of it.

Necessary client conduct insights from 2024

To set the scene, listed below are a number of stats to bear in mind as you put together your retailer:

1. 44% of shoppers will begin their vacation purchasing earlier than November in 2025.
2. 61% of shoppers want shopping for from manufacturers that align with their private values.
3. Cellular system spending accounted for 54.5% of vacation income, however desktop conversion charges had been greater all through the season.
4. Purchase now, pay later (BNPL) spend elevated from $16.6B in 2023 to $18.2B in 2024, and 79% of final yr’s BNPL purchases had been made on cell gadgets. 

Vacation purchasing has already began

As we mentioned final yr, the time is now — particularly as a result of shoppers need to unfold out their vacation spending in 2025. BazaarVoice’s client purchasing report discovered that extra buyers will start their reward search in September and October, night out the unfold between early buyers and those that start purchasing in November. 

Personalised advertising and marketing helps you stand out from the gang

That mentioned, even when your vacation offers don’t begin quickly, you need to be making ready with knowledge evaluation and buyer segmentation: 57% of buyers would discover alerts about offers on merchandise they’ve proven curiosity in to be “extraordinarily useful”. 

Personalised offers and product suggestions can set your model aside — however solely when you have the programs in place to automate and execute on these techniques.

Optimize your web site for the very best expertise

Cellular gadgets accounted for 54.5% of vacation spending, however desktop purchasing noticed greater conversion charges. Which means each variations of your web site should be speedy, smooth, and simple to make use of: don’t give shoppers a motive to go away earlier than they even take a look at your merchandise.

This additionally applies to your checkout course of: be sure you have quite a lot of cost choices out there — together with BNPL — and ensure all of them are straightforward for purchasers to finish on cell gadgets.

Ideas from our knowledgeable ecommerce businesses

Along with the developments report, we additionally surveyed 12 licensed WooCommerce businesses, asking about preparation timelines and greatest practices for the vacation purchasing season.

They suggest getting began if you happen to haven’t already: 41.7% begin making ready shoppers’ shops three to 6 months upfront, with bigger businesses (and retailers) planning even additional forward. 

Ten out of the twelve businesses agreed that the highest three priorities for vacation preparations are: 

1. Conversion price optimization, 
2. Advertising and marketing and promotion setup, 
3. and website pace and efficiency.

These responses had been in keeping with the findings of our service provider developments report. Learn the way your friends are making ready — all the small print are within the sections beneath.

Web site efficiency optimization (and upgraded internet hosting)

We famous within the outcomes overview that website efficiency and internet hosting had been the highest upgrades deliberate for 2025. However, this isn’t nearly website pace. Ease of navigation and cell responsiveness may even play an enormous position in your vacation season success. 

As we talked about above, Adobe discovered that 2024’s cell system spend was greater, however desktop noticed extra conversions. Each gadgets are essential and may obtain some consideration as the vacation season attracts close to.

Your preparation activity checklist

1. Testing: Check website pace, core internet vitals, checkout flows, transaction emails, and another mission-critical performance. Run modifications on a staging website earlier than taking them dwell. All the pieces ought to be quick, easy, and simple to navigate.
2. Improve and migration planning: If you happen to’re considering of migrating hosts or upgrading your internet hosting plan earlier than the vacation season, get that underway. Use site visitors spikes from earlier years (or take a look at benchmark knowledge to your area of interest) to foretell useful resource utilization for 2025.
3. Measure and optimize: Or, the vacation season may be a very good time to assemble knowledge and reevaluate. Did the spike in site visitors trigger all month-to-month charges to extend, or is it pay by utilization?
4. Insurance policies and data: Be certain that your entire coverage pages (like delivery and returns) are up-to-date to attenuate the demand buyer questions would possibly place in your help workforce. Product pages ought to load rapidly and supply solutions to your entire prospects’ questions.

Rent assist for the robust stuff: If you happen to don’t have an in-house engineering workforce (or if you happen to do and so they may use some further bandwidth), rent a licensed Woo Company Associate for essential modifications.

From the specialists: Deal with safety

Whereas safety ought to at all times be top-of-mind, it’s particularly so throughout peak promoting intervals: 75% of surveyed businesses reported elevated safety threats throughout peak intervals, with subtle assault patterns rising.

“Organized crime ramps up at peak [seasons], so any high-profile manufacturers are at elevated danger of fraudulent exercise or new exercise beginning.”

— Kanuka Digital

Put together your website for these frequent cyber threats:

• Bank card testing and fraud makes an attempt
• Distributed denial of service (DDoS) assaults 
• Social engineering assaults
• Bot site visitors and spam orders

Growing stock

In 2025, 32.6% of retailers plan to extend their stock. With a surge in guests (and gross sales), you don’t need to maintain individuals ready on backordered merchandise — or stop a purchase order altogether. 

Plan your stock now to make sure that you could have all of the inventory, delivery provides, and warehouse house (and personnel) you’ll want earlier than the busy season. 

Your preparation activity checklist

1. Lean in to what already works: Overview knowledge from the previous 12 months to find out your hottest objects. And don’t look solely at gross sales knowledge — your advertising and marketing knowledge generally is a nice informant, too. Search for top-performing emails and social posts, and assess which merchandise are top-of-mind to your most engaged audiences. 
2. Keep knowledgeable: On WooCommerce, you’ll be able to allow low stock alerts inside your product settings.
3. Unfold out purchases: Unfold out your monetary dedication by ordering smaller batches of stock over the subsequent couple months. If you happen to want financing to fulfill demand, service suppliers like Tento are right here to assist.

Prime instruments for stock administration

• Again In Inventory Notifications: Notify prospects when your merchandise are restocked, particularly in the event that they weren’t capable of buy as a part of your BFCM offers.
• Superior Notifications: Simply arrange new order and inventory electronic mail notifications for a number of recipients of your selecting.
• Customized Inventory Standing: Show customized inventory statuses to speak exact details about your inventory availability and maintain Black Friday prospects knowledgeable when merchandise are about to promote out.

Including delivery choices

Website efficiency and rising stock had been far and away the preferred preparation strategies, however third place went to extra delivery choices. Whereas solely 8.3% of surveyed retailers intend on making modifications right here, it may be a useful factor to contemplate for what you are promoting, too.

Transport advantages, like quick or free delivery, may be highly effective motivators for conversion. Then again, costly delivery choices will typically lead to an deserted cart. 

BazaarVoice discovered that free delivery is the greatest precedence throughout all ages of buyers, with half of buyers aged 18 to 54 being keen to spend extra to high quality for the perk. 

Others report even greater numbers: DigitalCommerce 360 discovered that over 81% of shoppers think about free delivery their high precedence relating to order supply.

Your preparation activity checklist

1. Select a free delivery technique: There are a number of methods of providing free delivery that aren’t merely masking the fee. This weblog put up goes into element on how one can make it work for what you are promoting.
2. Know your viewers: Overview the information out of your electronic mail checklist, social media followers, or memberships. Can you serve all the individuals (and geographies) who’re probably to purchase from you?
3. Contemplate a number of strategies: If prospects don’t attain your free delivery threshold, it’s essential to offer them with choices for quicker delivery, or lower-cost however slower delivery. 
4. Give prospects the data they need: Be certain that prospects know and have entry to their order statuses — each to cut back demand in your help workforce and to keep up belief and transparency. Transactional emails ought to embrace achievement and delivery notifications along with monitoring numbers.

Prime instruments for delivery and logistics

• WooCommerce Print Invoices and Packing Lists: Generate invoices, packing slips, and choose lists to your WooCommerce orders to assist streamline your achievement course of after the Black Friday and cyber week rush.
• WooCommerce Order Standing Supervisor: Create, edit, and delete fully customized order statuses and combine them seamlessly into your order administration move to make your prospects’ on-line purchasing expertise the most effective it may be.
• Desk Price Transport: Superior, versatile delivery with the power to outline a number of delivery charges based mostly on location, worth, weight, delivery class, or merchandise rely.

Add cost strategies

Coming in behind delivery choices was cost strategies: 5.4% will add extra methods to pay in 2025. Hopefully this implies greater than 90% of our retailers have discovered a cost combine that works for them, however if you happen to’re nonetheless on the fence, take the next into consideration.

As talked about above, BNPL utilization is rising, and frictionless checkout is predicted. In 2024, $18.2 billion was spent utilizing purchase now, pay later strategies — and an enormous 79% of that was on cell gadgets. 

And it’s not solely the utilization numbers that you need to take note of: a 2024 survey from Affirm discovered that BNPL will increase common order worth by 60%.

Your preparation activity checklist

1. Make checkout frictionless: Hold your customers on-page, and decrease the variety of steps it takes to take a look at. Allow cell pockets choices like Apple Pay or Google Pay (each of which can be found in WooPayments) for straightforward purchasing on cell gadgets. 
2. Add BNPL: Add at the least one BNPL possibility for purchasers in your goal geos. This supplies extra monetary accessibility through the vacation season and doesn’t add danger for what you are promoting. 
3. Check, check, check: Earlier than deploying new cost choices, check them on a staging website to ensure no income is misplaced once they’re launched. Then, launch nicely forward of the height season in order that any bumps or glitches are discovered and resolved.

How to decide on your new cost strategies

Earlier than including new cost strategies to your retailer, verify which choices your prospects use essentially the most, and which strategies you don’t at the moment supply. When making your alternative, think about buyer places, platform processing charges, and platform evaluations and reliability. 

Unsure the place to begin? Try (pun meant) our full checklist of cost choices, or skip proper to purchase now, pay later choices.

Along with the preparation developments above, we additionally requested retailers whether or not they deliberate to strategy the vacation season in another way this yr, and 42% of seasonal retailers confirmed a number of enjoyable modifications:

1. Subscriptions: A couple of retailers famous new subscription plans, new memberships, and up to date choices for his or her current subscribers. 
2. Infrastructure: Others famous launching an up to date web site earlier than the busy interval — an enormous mission, however doubtless one that can pay dividends. Internet hosting upgrades had been one other fashionable alternative. 

Want a efficiency improve?

Pressable gives free migration to their scalable infrastructure that delivers 100% uptime — the very best possibility for a pre-peak internet hosting change.
From now till September 30, 2025: Stand up to $2,500 when migrating your current WooCommerce retailer to Pressable Premium.

3. Promotional methods: Many new promo methods are on the horizon for our retailers this yr, together with new and sale-specific product bundles, earlier gross sales, strategic electronic mail list-building, having a much bigger social presence, and model partnerships.

With the above techniques, you’ll be in a very good place to have a robust vacation season efficiency. However why not take it up a notch?

Listed here are a number of statistics to additional inform your BFCM sale technique:

• Electronic mail was rated the simplest advertising and marketing channel by 23% of retailers, with natural social coming in second at 21.1%.
• The preferred promotional methods had been:
  1. Product bundles (27.4%)
  2. Tiered reductions (18.2%)
  3. Dynamic reductions (16.1%)
  4. Free presents or add-ons (14.7%)

From the specialists: The highest new commerce applied sciences

Our knowledgeable businesses had been emphatic that retailers ought to leverage the next applied sciences as a part of their vacation season technique:

1. Operational AI and workflow automation for effectivity.
2. Cloudflare Turnstile for bank card fraud prevention.
3. Cloudflare ready rooms for site visitors administration.
4. Skilled VPS-level internet hosting with proactive website monitoring.
5. Automated testing and staging workflows.
6. Klaviyo for superior electronic mail advertising and marketing automation.
7. FunnelKit for WooCommerce conversion optimization.
8. Superior analytics integration for data-driven choice making.

Whether or not you’re making ready for the vacations or one other peak season, your greatest determiner of success would be the plan you place in place. If you happen to haven’t began planning, it’s time. 

We all know it’s quite a bit to handle. To get you began, think about the following tips from our company companions:

• Discovering developments: Cross-reference your earlier peak gross sales intervals with search developments to establish your precedence merchandise and themes.
• Fixing your personal ache factors: Ask your self and your workforce about what was most painful over the last peak interval. Analyze the why, after which determine how one can enhance. Previous challenges or weaknesses can typically result in the largest positive aspects. 
• Hype up your viewers: Construct hype to your promotions and model with password-protected early entry campaigns that encourage viral sharing. This takes time, so begin early.
• Hold your workforce in sync: Maintain weekly workforce conferences to overview requirements and priorities initially of each week. WPBarista does the identical: “These conferences turn out to be extra important the busier we get.”
• Early is greatest: Wrap up vacation planning as early as attainable — promotions, advertising and marketing methods, and the content material to execute.
• Don’t save prep for the vacations: CoSpark recommends turning preparation right into a core tenet of your working mannequin: “Being ready isn’t a seasonal activity for us, it’s how we work all yr. We maintain websites lean, up to date, and performing nicely on a regular basis, so site visitors spikes aren’t a scramble.”

Final yr, we additionally regarded on the Woo Market knowledge from the BFCM prep interval. These are the extension classes that noticed essentially the most installs as shops received prepared for his or her massive gross sales and vacation season:

For a lot of retailers, the vacations are the busy season and it may be robust to remain organized all through the chaos. The variety of methods you would put together for a peak promoting interval is almost limitless. Ultimately, all that planning wants to show into doing. Listed here are a number of methods to get began:

Vanessa has spent her profession writing useful issues for individuals throughout the tech house. Exterior of labor, she enjoys coaching for triathlon, rotating by means of hobbies, and exploring new locations each city and pure. She has two fluffy cats, maintains a number of succulents, and has far too many books on her TBR shelf.