Black Friday statistics and trends for 2024
The complete guide to having your best Black Friday yet
The holiday season is filled with sweet treats, fun surprises, and lots of shopping. So, we wanted to give our store owners an early gift this year: Our first-ever Black Friday Cyber Monday Trends Report.
We conducted surveys across our ecosystem of partners and stores to gather tips and best practices for the 2024 holiday season.
We surveyed a broad cohort of store owners and employees to understand how they prepared for last year’s holiday season, and what they’ll be doing this year. We even reached out to our partner agencies and businesses to learn what they recommend, and packaged it all together just for you.
We hope this spreads a bit of early holiday cheer so that you feel fully prepared as we head into one of the busiest times of the year for ecommerce businesses.
Read on for Black Friday trends, stats, and recommendations that’ll knock your holiday socks off.
Benefits of prepping for BFCM and the holidays
As we know from our holiday season bank statements: Black Friday Cyber Monday is a huge revenue-driver for ecommerce businesses. In 2023 alone, BFCM generated $9.8 billion, and this year will be even bigger.
72%
of merchants attribute more than 20% of their annual revenue to BFCM and the holiday season.
WooCommerce Black Friday Cyber Monday Trends Survey, 2024
WHY THE TIME IS NOW
Isn’t it a little early to start preparing?
If we could give you a TL;DR on this report (we could, but really, you should read it), it’d be this: No. Start now.
We recommend tackling your BFCM prep across four categories: Inventory and operations, marketing, payment options, and site performance.
While the holidays seem a ways off, your competitors are definitely getting their prep underway, which means you needed to start planning yesterday. And these trends aren’t only for small and medium sized businesses: the larger the business, the more time they spend planning ahead.
Of stores that generate more than $1M per year in revenue, 56% plan at least a month ahead of BFCM, and another 28% plan in the month leading up to the event.
Overall, 81% of stores plan ahead for Black Friday Cyber Monday promotions. Doesn’t it make sense to get ahead of the competition by literally getting a head start on planning?
43%
of Woo Partner Agencies prepare their clients’ stores for the holiday season one to three months in advance.
Want to boost your BFCM results?
If you’re an established merchant looking to make this your best Black Friday ever, our expert team can create custom strategies to help get you there.
Top ways to prepare for Black Friday Cyber Monday
Inventory
& operations
It’s time to do your own holiday shopping, a.k.a. buying inventory to prep your stock levels now. Increasing inventory was the most popular BFCM prep activity, with 26% of surveyed stores planning to do so.
Respondents noted the challenge of replenishing all of their out-of-stock products — and keeping the most popular ones in stock, along with all of the supplies necessary for shipping them out.
What to do now
- Stock up on inventory, especially for your most popular products.
- Enable low inventory alerts, if you haven’t already.
- Spread orders to space out financial commitments.
Partner tip
Tento: Stock up on favorites and diversify your offerings
Ensuring you have enough stock to meet the anticipated demand can prevent lost sales due to stockouts. Expanding your inventory to include trending items can add significant sales growth, like personal care items saw in 2023.
What to do later
- Mid-September: Order your shipping supplies.
How to prep your website
- Manage inventory and fulfillment efficiently with Pick List for WooCommerce.
- Create urgency with product stock counts using Advanced Product Labels or Product Badges.
- Get the best shipping integrations for your business.
The customer experience doesn’t end with a confirmation email
Director of Product Laura Johnson shares some quick tips for effective, efficient, and profitable shipping.
Marketing
Your sale won’t succeed if your customers don’t know about it — and with the constant barrage of holiday promotions, you need to tell them what’s happening early and often.
Black Friday marketing starts early — and seems to start earlier every year. Our survey respondents recommended sending out your first BFCM communications at least 20 days in advance.
But before that: Our Customer Success team recommends running warm-up promotions in October to build your email list and get people excited.
Partner tip
Mailchimp: Make the most of your data
Customers are willing to share their data if it means more personalization. Take advantage of the data you have, and ask for the data you need. Use segments and AI-powered tools to deliver more relevant messages without all the manual work.
What to do now
- Decide on product discounts and promotion strategies.
- Plan your marketing campaigns for October, November, and December.
- Build up your email list.
- Create your campaign content.
Partner tip
Mailchimp: Maximize reach with omnichannel marketing
Support your email campaigns with SMS and social media to build stronger connections with your customers. Use email to drive your core message, and send automations to keep customers engaged over the BFCM weekend.
What to do later
- October: Launch a warm-up campaign and build your email list.
- November: Tease your BFCM discounts and promotions.
- December: Follow up with holiday content and promotions.
Partner tip
Mailchimp: Personalize your marketing with segmentation
Mailchimp customers saw 45% higher click-through rates from November 21 to December 1, 2022, when they segmented their campaigns.
START EARLY:
SEND YOUR FIRST COMMS AT LEAST 20 DAYS AHEAD
How to run your Black Friday marketing campaign
Our merchants recommend a holistic approach for BFCM marketing:
- Launch targeted campaigns via social media, email, and Google Ads.
- Promote special discounts, coupons, and holiday offers.
- Use banners, pop-ups, and promotional materials on your website.
Use Smart Coupons for WooCommerce to add promotions to your store, and then promote and list products on other platforms with extensions like Google for WooCommerce or TikTok for WooCommerce.
Payment options
Want to hear something surprising? Only 11% of stores offered buy now, pay later (BNPL) options and only 22% offered express checkout for Black Friday Cyber Monday in 2023. We highly recommend adding both to your store for financial accessibility and higher conversion rates.
One extension, lots of options
WooPayments offers both features in a single plugin and will always be our recommendation if it’s available in your country.
For a full list of payment providers, including several BNPL and express checkout methods, browse the Woo Marketplace.
Partner tip
Affirm: Add BNPL for higher average order value
Stores that offer BNPL through Affirm report over 60% higher average order values, and Cyber Monday in 2023 saw a 42.5% YOY spike in BNPL usage. This signals a continuing trend of consumers turning to installment payment methods to finance their holiday purchases.
What to do now
- Audit your payment method split — which options are customers using the most?
- Make sure you have all the ways your customers want to pay: Add methods that increase conversion like express checkout, and that bump up average order value like BNPL.
- Track your conversion rates before and after the changes.
Partner tip
Avalara: Don’t get tripped up with taxes
Increased sales, while a great thing, can affect your tax thresholds, also known as nexus. Including sales tax compliance as part of your overall holiday preparations can support your business’s revenue goals, improve CX, drive efficiency, and reduce costs.
What to do later
Early November: Your deadline for making site changes — 👏stick 👏to 👏it.
Most popular tools and plugins for Black Friday Cyber Monday
We also looked at the Woo Marketplace data from last year’s BFCM prep period. These are the extension categories that saw the most installs as stores got ready for their big sales and holiday season:
Site performance
Don’t save the peace and joy for December: Your customers deserve a frictionless shopping experience at all times of the year. Around the holidays, many will be shopping on multiple sites and will expect an easy browsing and checkout experience every time.
The better their store experience, the higher your sales will be — so if there are fixes and upgrades you’ve been putting off, now’s the time to make them.
What to do now
- Analyze last year’s BFCM and holiday season.
- Run a check on your Core Web Vitals.
- Test changes on a staging site before publishing.
- Rely on the Woo community when you need help.
- Refine and optimize your mobile site experience.
- Hire a certified Woo Agency Partner for important changes.
Agency Partner tip
CoSpark: Optimize your store for mobile
Mobile shopping is on the rise. There’s also a big push towards creating an omnichannel experience, so it’s crucial for websites to be optimized for mobile devices.
When enlisting an agency’s help, make sure you ask for the following:
- Load testing.
- Speed testing.
- Database optimization.
- Audit for up-to-date page functionality.
- Optimized server capacity for anticipated traffic spikes.
- Mobile responsiveness.
86% of Woo Partner Agencies prepare their clients’ stores by optimizing site speed, followed by adding payment methods, and customizing checkout.
Other items to prep ahead of BFCM
Some things that you might want to manage yourself include:
- Updating your product details and website content.
- Making sure your plugins are up to date.
- Optimizing site content and product descriptions for SEO with holiday-specific keywords.
- Contacting your hosting provider to price out capacity upgrades during the holiday season.
- Testing your site and checkout experience on mobile.
What to do later
Taste your cookie batter… er, test your site, and fix any issues as they come up.
More resources to help you prepare
We’d say, “that’s it,” but really, this is just the beginning. The number of ways you could prepare for Black Friday Cyber Monday is nearly limitless. Eventually, all that planning needs to turn into doing. Here are a few ways to get started: