4 quick and easy Black Friday sale ideas for your Shopify store

With Black Friday only weeks away, you need to have deals that people will get excited about to help you sell as much as possible.

Here are four Black Friday sale ideas that you can easily set up on your Shopify store to help you get the most out of the holiday. 

 Note: Check out our 12 week plan to get some more tips on how to prepare for Black Friday!

1. Category by category: Attract traffic throughout the weekend 

Schedule sales for different sections of your store during different times of day. Run it by collection, brand, product type, or hand-picked groups of products. This will get people coming back to your store throughout the weekend, or even the entire week.

For example, you can create a Black Friday promotion that looks like this:

• All SHOES 30% off from midnight until 6:00 a.m.
• All JACKETS 30% off from 6:00 a.m. until noon
• All ACCESSORIES 30% off from 6:00 a.m. until noon
• All JACKETS 30% off from noon until midnight

You can actually do this really easily with our Discounts app!

PRO TIP: Make sure to use the app's "Sale Icon" feature to add a sales flag to each item that's included in the sale on the collection or product pages. This will make it clear to customers what items are on sale and at what time!

Last year, Reebok ran a twist on this type of sale by offering varying discounts on different categories. These weren't timed out in blocks like the example above, but a sale like Reebok's is still a great option for Black Friday — and it's easy to set up with Discounts!

Source.

2. Descending discounts: Create urgency

Another way to motivate your customers and attract traffic throughout the weekend is by offering descending discounts. 

For example, make everything 50% off at midnight, 40% off at 1 a.m., 30% off at 2 a.m. and so on. It'll get people shopping on your store at varying times throughout the day and motivate them to check out before they miss a sale. 

These discounts can also get people to visit your site during slower periods by offering higher discounts during those times.

You can use Bold's Discounts app on Shopify to put on this type of sale too, setting up each discount to start and end at whatever times you choose.

Another great thing about Discounts is that it doesn't require discount codes to work, which streamlines your checkout. What's also cool about this app is that it displays the sale price and original price. This is called anchoring: it makes the lower price seem instantly more desirable, enticing sales.

An example of price anchoring from Lightinthebox.com.

Keep in mind: if you're putting a lot of products on sale, make the stop time shortly before the actual cut-off. This will give the app enough time to revert all the prices.

 

3. Storewide sale: get traffic and conversions

This classic sale never gets old. It can motivate customers to visit your store and, of course, make a purchase.

With Bold Discounts, you can easily put your whole store on sale with just the click of a button, then watch as people add more to their cart than they normally would because they know they're getting a deal.

How big you make the discount is up to you, but the better deal you can offer the bigger the incentive is for your customers to buy from you.

Last year, Pura Vida Bracelets ran a sale for 50% off everything until November 30, pushing it heavily on Instagram (find out more about how to promote Black Friday sales on Instagram!)

PRO TIP: Your phrasing also influences how your customers feel about the sale. An experiment conducted by Psychology Today found people perceive “Get $ Off” as achieving a gain, and “Save $" as avoiding a loss. So word your sale in a way that appeals to your target audience.

4. Extended sale: Go above and beyond for your customers

Instead of just doing sales during the Black Friday weekend, run sales throughout the week. According to Google, retailers get a spike in store traffic the entire week leading up to Black Friday.

The week leading up to Black Friday brings the most traffic. Source.

This means people are on the hunt well ahead of the holiday, so give them the deals they want right when they're looking for them — and even extend your sale past Cyber Monday. 

Lots of retailers do this to take advantage of the spend-happy time of year. It gives their customers more time to indulge on sales.

Timbuk2 did this last year, showing their customers some love by allowing them to get their Black Friday deals from November 20 to 26 — a whole week!

Start setting up sales on your store today

Install Bold Discounts today to start setting up the types of deals we just talked about. You can even get your first two weeks free! What do you have to lose?

If you really want to take selling to the next level, try Bold Conversion, a suite of apps that work together to increase conversion rates and average order value. It's great for Black Friday because it gives your store the ability to run even more types of sales.

What kind of sales have worked for you on Black Friday? Let us know in the comments below!