With the surge in online shopping during BFCM, it’s crucial to ensure your website can handle the increased traffic. Many businesses fail to prepare for the influx, leading to slow load times, crashes, or even full outages. 

As this article highlights, some major retailers lose revenue and experience increased customer frustration due to website downtime during BFCM. To avoid this common BFCM pitfall, ensure your website is optimized for speed and performance. This includes performing load testing in advance and ensuring your server capacity can manage peak demand. Having an IT team on standby for emergencies can make all the difference.

Another common BFCM pitfall is mismanaging inventory. Nothing frustrates customers more than clicking on a great deal only to find the product sold out. While creating urgency is a good sales tactic, running out of stock too early can hurt your brand's image and lead to lost sales. It’s essential to plan inventory ahead of time by analyzing previous BFCM data, understanding customer behavior, and preparing for demand spikes.

Companies should have backup plans in place, such as alternative suppliers or offering similar products when something sells out. This ensures that you won’t lose potential buyers just because one item is no longer available. Keep customers informed of restocks and offer alternatives, and you’ll be more likely to keep them engaged with your brand an avoid this common BFCM pitfall.

With so much focus on increasing sales, it’s easy to forget about maintaining a smooth customer experience. Poor navigation, complicated checkout processes, or unresponsive customer service can quickly turn excited shoppers into frustrated ones. This is one of the most overlooked common BFCM pitfalls that can negatively impact your brand beyond the holiday season.

To provide a seamless experience, ensure that your checkout process is user-friendly and quick. Additionally, using tools like chatbots to manage the inevitable surge in customer inquiries is a great solution. Automated tools can assist with FAQs and order tracking, allowing your customer service team to handle more complex queries. Happy customers are more likely to return after BFCM, so investing in their experience is key.

Offering discounts may seem like a simple strategy, but it’s often not the most effective way to capture sales. Consumers today expect more personalized offers, and giving everyone the same 20% off may not resonate with your audience. Instead, focus on tailored deals that appeal to different customer segments. For example, you can offer exclusive deals to your loyal customers or create bundles for new shoppers.

Personalization has been shown to drive higher conversion rates, and by leveraging customer data, you can offer the right deal to the right person at the right time. Rather than falling into the common BFCM pitfall of generic discounts, creating targeted campaigns will resonate more with your audience and increase your chances of upselling and cross-selling during BFCM.

Finally, one of the biggest common BFCM pitfalls is treating BFCM as a one-time event. Yes, you’ll get a rush of new customers during this period, but what happens after the sale is just as important. Failing to follow up with post-sale engagement is a major common BFCM pitfall that could result in missed opportunities for repeat business.
According to Shopify, engaging customers after BFCM through personalized email campaigns and exclusive offers can help turn one-time shoppers into loyal customers. Post-sale follow-up emails, such as thank-you notes, shipping updates, and future discount codes, keep customers connected to your brand. The goal is to foster long-term relationships, not just one-off transactions.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday can be game-changers for your business, but only if you’re well-prepared. By ensuring your website can handle high traffic, carefully planning your inventory, prioritizing the customer experience, offering personalized discounts, and keeping customers engaged after the sale, you can avoid common BFCM pitfalls and set your business up for success.