Nik Sharma, AKA the DTC guy, is the CEO of Sharma Brands, a strategic initiatives firm working with a wide range of brands to help grow and scale revenue across digital platforms.

In this article of our guest-post series, Tapping In, Nik shares words to help brands maximize revenue this BFCM.

This is my absolute favorite time of the year. 

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are approaching fast, and my team and I have been realllly hard at work creating dozens of new landing pages and hundreds of ads for Sharma Brands, HOOX, and 1180 clients as we help them promote their best offers of the year. 

To get everyone even more fired up, my friends at Tapcart put together one of the best reports I’ve seen on BFCM commerce trends.

They partnered with a global market research consultancy and asked 1,117 consumers across all generations, ethnicities, incomes, relationship statuses, and education levels to participate.

The BFCM stats and trends that stood out:

In my recent newsletter send, you’ll remember that average order values for BFCM were $105 globally and $120 for U.S. sales in 2022. 

That said, of the consumers polled in Tapcart’s survey, 71% reported having budgets between $100 and $500, with 15% planning to spend more than $700 this year. (Which is great news! Consumers are ready to spend.)

What’s even more exciting is that 31% of shoppers plan to increase their budgets this year.

Additionally, on average, 69% of consumer purchases are gifts for others, and 31% are for themselves.

Interestingly, Tapcart saw significant differences by generation here, with older generations doing much more shopping for others, stating that 75% of shoppers ages 50-75 said their BFCM purchases are gifts.

On the other hand, 38% of Gen Z purchases are for themselves. I love this stat because it is one of the most powerful angles you should consider testing. 

As the data shows, so much of BFCM shopping is for EOY holiday gifts for others. Try A/B testing your landing page and ad copy with language that promotes your products as “The perfect gift” for XYZ's consumer base. I think you’ll be really surprised by how much this simple copy/framing change can lead to more sales. 

BTW if you need help creating dedicated landing pages for your gifting variants, check out our special HOOX BFCM offer, and we’ll get you set up :) 

Additionally (and I know this applies to me), 85% of consumers admit to impulse purchasing during BFCM. With that in mind, adding optional cross-sells and upsells is always the move. What’s another $25-50 when it comes to BFCM spending? Consumers are ready to buy the right items and deals. 

As far as channels, email remains the most typical channel for consumers to hear about sales from their favorite brands, with 63% of respondents saying they learn about sales in their inbox first.

Another interesting note was that of the consumers polled, Shopify mobile app usage continues to trend up. 

According to Tapcart’s survey, mobile shopping apps (like the ones Tapcart helps brands create) increased in popularity this year. Out of the folks surveyed, the number of consumers planning to do their holiday shopping via mobile apps was up 3 points from 65% in 2022 to 68% in 2023.

Of the consumers polled, 36% of people have five or more shopping apps on their phone, with 8% saying they have ten or more.

And these shopping apps convert. 38% of consumers reported buying directly from mobile app push notifications, slightly higher than those buying from paid social (36%) and markedly higher than those buying from SMS (26%).

From Tapcart’s own data, ‍Shopify stores with a Tapcart-powered mobile app are seeing an average of 63% higher conversion rates and 82% higher revenue per session from consumers shopping via their apps vs their online stores.

Why do consumers love mobile apps so much? Fast and convenient checkout was the number one reason consumers liked shopping on mobile apps. With an app, there’s no more hunting for credit cards or filling out your shipping address for the tenth time. In fact, shoppers were even more drawn to mobile apps because of the fast checkout this year (70%) compared to last (63%). 

If you are considering building an app for your brand, now is absolutely the time! If you’re brand runs on Shopify, you can stand up an app with Tapcart in just a few days (not a few weeks or months) 

IMO, you still have plenty of time to build and deploy an app for BFCM.  

Here are a few hacks that I love if you are planning to do this.

1. Consider offering an exclusive product variant, colorway or discount to shoppers on the app ONLY. 

This will incentivize more downloads and more sales when it comes to BFCM. 

2. Another tactic I really like is to let your app users shop your BFCM sales an entire week early. Again, this engages users in downloading the app to take advantage of your BFCM sales.  

BTW,  consumers are 40% more likely to download an app and opt into push notifications during Q4 than during the rest of the year. Now is the perfect time to build, deploy, and grow that push subscriber list. You will be shocked at how easy these apps are to build and share. 

With all this hype, let’s end with more positive stats. 

For example, 93% of consumers report feeling excited about BFCM ads. Only 7% say ads didn’t make them feel excited at all.

That means 9 in 10 people say BFCM ads evoke positive anticipation. People are hyped for those deals!

Additionally, mobile dominated BFCM purchases last year, up 11% YoY—with no signs of slowing down. Even more consumers plan to shop the EOY season with mobile shopping apps this year, and maintain last year’s use of phone browsers (71%) for their BFCM shopping. 

Many brands already see a ton of their traffic from mobile devices, but it still represents a smaller chunk of overall revenue. Want to close that gap? Lean into a truly mobile-first mindset by building a mobile app for your brand. The trend seems only to be moving in one direction here, and brands that under-prioritize the mobile experience will fall behind. 

If you want to read Tapcart’s report with 30 more interesting stats, you can do so HERE.

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