How To Leverage BFCM Sales With The Best eCommerce Tech Stack (AI Tools Included)

June 17, 2024

•

7 min read

As online retail sellers gear up for the highly anticipated Black Friday (BFCM), the stakes are high to seize the countless opportunities available to drive sales, attract new customers, and foster brand loyalty leading up to the holiday season.

To gain a competitive edge, let's see how you can boost holiday sales with an eCommerce tech stack with top AI tools for the upcoming BFCM effectively.

Power-up

Navigating the vast array of eCommerce and AI tools for Shopify can be overwhelming.

It's tempting to stick with familiar tools, but by doing so, you may miss out on untapped potential and risk falling behind in an industry where customer spending and loyalty are declining.

Particularly with the upcoming holiday selling frenzy, it's crucial for online retailers to embrace growth technologies.

To build a robust retail tech stack that prioritizes sales and conversion optimization, it's essential to explore the available options and understand what suits your business needs.

Feeling ready yet? Let’s dive in!

Definition: What is an eCommerce tech stack?

An eCommerce tech stack is like assembling a superhero team for your online business.

It's a combination of:

Front-end tools
- HTML/CSS (Bootstrap...)
- JavaScript (Angular, React, Vue.js...)
- Preprocessors like SASS, PUG, and HAML
Back-end tools
- Databases
- Frameworks
- Servers
- Programming languages
3rd party applications
- Analytics tools
- CRM
- Payment gateways
- Shipping modules
- Marketing tools

All of these work together to make your online website run smoothly and save the day.

From web hosting to payment processing, you should expect automated workflows, optimization, and super-powered insights that boost your website’s performance and keep your customers happy.

🦹‍♀ Choose your tech stack wisely because, in the world of eCommerce, it's the difference between being a hero or ending up in the villain's lair.

eCommerce frameworks - Source: angularminds

The Best eCommerce Tech Stack To Boost Sales This Holiday Season

During BFCM, make the most of your tech stack by automating tasks as much as possible. By leveraging technology and streamlining processes, you'll have more time to fine-tune your strategies and increase your chances of a successful sales event.

But first, a Shopify infrastructure boost

To ensure the resilience and stability of your Shopify store during the peak selling season, preparing and implementing anti-fragile infrastructure are crucial.

During the busiest and most critical sales season of the year, a data platform needs to operate flawlessly, and here are some infrastructure boosts for your Shopify store.

Do the load testing

Load testing in production and simulation are valuable methods to gauge the scalability limits of your data platform.

It involves conducting real-time tests during live operations to see how well your platform performs under heavy loads.

Zalando, for example, has successfully implemented load testing by running simulations in production for all their sales channels. By mimicking data volume patterns from previous sales events, they gained insights into their platform's performance and made necessary adjustments to ensure a smooth customer experience.

Load testing tool that suits your requirements and integrates well with Shopify:

Apache JMeter
LoadRunner
Gatling
Or online services like BlazeMeter or LoadImpact

What are the pros and cons of these tools?

Apache JMeter-

Pros: A widely used open-source tool

Cons: Steeper learning curve compared to some other tools

Suitable for: Small to Enterprise

‍LoadRunner-

Pros: Commercial tool with extensive features and support

Cons: Expensive licensing costs

Suitable for: Enterprise

‍K6-

Pros: Open-source tool with support for various protocols and high-load generation

Cons:Limited reporting and analysis capabilities

Suitable for: Small to Enterprise

‍Gatling-

Pros: Designed for high-performance testing of web applications

Cons: Limited enterprise-level support

Suitable for: Small to Enterprise

‍NeoLoad-

Pros: Commercial tool with advanced features and support

Cons: Expensive licensing costs

Suitable for: Enterprise

‍BlazeMeter-

Pros: Cloud-based tool with scalability and integration with popular CI/CD tools

Cons: Limited customization options

Suitable for: Small to Enterprise

‍Apache Bench (AB)-

Pros: Simple command-line tool for basic load testing

Cons: Limited features and reporting options

Suitable for: Small to Enterprise

‍WebLOAD-

Pros: Commercial tool with support for various web protocols and technologies

Cons: Steeper learning curve compared to some other tools

Suitable for: Small to Enterprise

‍LoadNinja-

Pros: Cloud-based tool with real browser testing capabilities

Cons: Limited advanced features and customization options

Suitable for: Small to Enterprise

‍Silk Performer-

Pros: Commercial tool with a wide range of performance testing features

Cons: Expensive licensing costs

Suitable for: Enterprise

‍Rational Performance Tester-

Pros: Commercial tool with extensive features for web and enterprise application testing

Cons: Complex installation and setup process

Suitable for: Enterprise

👨‍🏫 Pro tip:

Make sure your load testing tool can handle HTTP/HTTPS requests, simulate user behavior accurately, and generate meaningful reports.

Besides, you can use performance monitoring and testing tools:

New Relic
Pingdom
Or Shopify's built-in analytics

to continuously monitor your store's performance and identify your platform’s bottlenecks. Conduct load testing to simulate high-traffic scenarios and optimize your infrastructure accordingly.

👉 Check out this guide to safely scale your data platform for high volumes from Shopify.

eCommerce tech stack to get traffic to your online store

To drive traffic to your eCommerce store during the holiday season, it's important to optimize your website for search engines like Google and Bing.

This can be achieved through SEO techniques, which may seem daunting at first but can be tackled by anyone, even beginners, especially with the help of many available SEO tools out there.

One simple way to optimize your Shopify website for the holiday season is by incorporating relevant keywords into your page titles, headings, product descriptions, and other visible areas that search engine crawlers can scan.

These keywords should align with the terms that potential customers are likely to use when searching for your website or products during the holiday season.

By implementing this strategy, you increase the chances of your website appearing in search results and attracting targeted traffic.

❓ How can I determine which keywords are relevant for my website during the holiday season?

Do the competitor analysis: tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs can help you analyze competitors’ organic and paid keyword strategies.
Test some keyword research tools: utilize keyword research tools to expand your list of potential keywords and get insights into search volume, competition, and related keywords.
Focus on long-tail keywords: to have a higher chance of attracting targeted traffic and conversions. For example, instead of targeting "gifts," you can target "unique holiday gifts for gamers".
Discover search trends (using Google Trends): analyze search trends during the holiday season to identify popular and emerging keywords.
Analyze your customer insights: consider your target audience's preferences and behaviors and think about the keywords they would use when searching for products or solutions related to your business during the holiday season.

Still have no idea of what holiday keywords or SEO content to leverage? Try out these SEO tools below, with our quick summary and comparisons:

Surfer SEO (AI)

‍AI-powered content optimization tool
On-page SEO suggestions based on data analysis
Competitor analysis and SERP (Search Engine Results Page) analysis
Relatively high pricing for advanced plans
Users praise its content optimization capabilities and AI-driven features

‍Google Analytics - Free

Robust web analytics tool
Detailed insights into website traffic, user behavior, conversions, and more
Integration with other Google services like Google Ads and Search Console
Steep learning curve for beginners
Widely used and trusted tool for tracking website performance and user behavior

‍Semrush

Comprehensive suite of SEO tools
Keyword research, competitor analysis, backlink analysis, and site audit features
Social media, PPC (Pay-Per-Click) research management tools
Pricing may be prohibitive for small businesses
Users appreciate the wide range of features and accuracy of data provided

‍KeywordInsights (AI)‍

AI-powered keyword research and content optimization tool
Provides data-driven insights for effective content creation and SEO optimization
Competitor analysis and SERP analysis
Limited user reviews available
Users appreciate the AI-driven 4.5 features for keyword research and content

In addition to focusing on your holiday SEO strategy, it's important to consider other channels that can drive quality traffic to your store. Explore various marketing channels such as:

Facebook ads
Google ads
Instagram ads
Shoppable pins
Email marketing, and more.

A tip here is to determine the most effective marketing channel, conduct tests and analyze the results. Experiment with different sales messaging and visuals to find the combination that performs best for your target audience.

Source: SixAds

eCommerce tech stack to automate your store during peak season

Running your Shopify store during the busiest selling season of the year - especially with thousands of product units - can be overwhelming. You can simplify your workload and reduce stress for you and your team with automation tools.

Nobody enjoys manual work. Cut it down whenever you can!

AI content generator tools

You can use these tools for holiday product descriptions, product pages, title or slogan suggestions, ad content, etc.

Imagine saving hours of work with an AI tool that can generate the mistake-free marketing copy you desire.

If you’re using the Shopify Magic tool, you can quickly create prompts (your product’s keywords) for Shopify Magic to generate a descriptive introduction of your listing. You can even choose the tone of voice and set other requirements too. Take a look:

There are several AI-powered content generators available for you. Check them out:

Copysmith-

Pros: AI-powered content generation that helps create engaging and persuasive descriptions as well as ad content.

Cons: It might take a long time to audit and polish AI content generated by this tool

Writesonic-

Pros: AI-generated content for various purposes, including e-commerce product descriptions. Offers customization options and flexibility in generating content.

Cons: Edits and customizations are credit-based, which is costly, even when you just make some minor adjustments.

Conversion.ai-

Pros: AI-powered content generation for product descriptions and other types of content. Focuses on conversion-focused descriptions.

Cons: Instructions are a little complicated, and you still need to edit your content. Not suitable for long-form copy.

MarketMuse-

Pros: AI-powered content generation with a focus on content strategy and optimization. Helps ensure SEO best practices and valuable product descriptions.

Cons: Bad usability and expensive

Copy.ai-

Pros: AI content generation for e-commerce product descriptions and other purposes. Offers a range of templates and options for creating compelling content.

Cons: Output production is slow. Steep pricing when compared to the content quality and quantity you get from the app.

Please note that the comparisons in the table above provide you with a general overview only. You should try these tools and do additional research into user reviews and ratings for each specific AI content generator.

AI image and video generation tools

No time to re-create the festive look for your product images or collections?

AI image and video generation tools to the rescue!

There are several AI-powered images and video generation tools available that can help you automate the process of creating visuals for lively holiday product pages.

Lumen5-

Transform text into engaging videos
Automatic generation of visuals, animations, and text overlays
Simplifies the process of creating product videos
AI-powered automation saves time and effort
Limited customization options for visuals
Output quality may vary based on input text

Adobe Sensei-

Background removal and image enhancement
Video editing automation
Wide range of AI-powered image and video generation capabilities
Integration with other Adobe tools
Requires familiarity with Adobe's ecosystem
May have a learning curve for new users

Clarifai-

Image and video recognition for automation
Generation of relevant visuals based on specific criteria or styles
Efficient automation of product image and video generation
Customizable AI-powered recognition capabilities
Limited information available on specific user experiences
Some advanced features may require technical expertise

Renderforest-

Customizable video templates and tools
Integration of text, images, and animations
Provides a user-friendly platform for automated video production
Offers a variety of templates for different purposes
Limited control over AI-generated visuals
Customization options may be limited for certain templates

Deepart.io-

Transformation of images based on artistic styles or filters
Enables the creation of unique and visually appealing product images
Offers a range of artistic effects and styles
Focuses primarily on image transformation rather than video generation
May have limitations in terms of customization and output quality

eCommerce tools to boost holiday sales

Tools to dig into Analytics and Reporting

When it comes to getting ready for Black Friday (BFCM), one important step is to look back and learn from past experiences. If you have all your data conveniently stored in a Customer Data and Experience Platform, this process becomes easier and faster.

While there are many built-in Shopify analytics to look at and review, make sure you do extra work with the following metrics for the upcoming holiday:

Customer behaviors (i.e. peak shopping hours)
Predictive trends
Popular products
Key customers’ demographic

🔓 Unlock the power of data with Boost AI's insightful analytics feature for Shopify!

Get all store data and insights in one place and gain actionable insights into your shoppers' search and filter behaviors, allowing you to understand their preferences like never before.

Try Free Now

Tools to boost the shopping experience and convert customers

Want more sales? More customers?

Enter: search relevance and product recommendations.

During the holiday selling season, the true power of promotions lies beyond simple discounts.

It resides in delivering relevant values to each individual customer.

By harnessing the force of search result relevance and personalized product recommendations, your store can create compelling shopping experiences tailored to the unique needs and preferences of your customers.

Shopify search with optimal relevance tool: Boost AI Search & Discovery

Boost AI search brings about the ultimate solution for Shopify stores seeking optimal search relevance.

With our advanced AI-powered tool, you can revolutionize the search experience for your customers, ensuring they find exactly what they're looking for effortlessly.

But don't just take our word for it. Our proven track record boasts significant improvements in search performance, resulting in higher conversion rates, increased customer satisfaction, and, ultimately, a boost in revenue.

That’s not all about the AI power in Boost app.

Our app comes with a robust selection of 9 popular recommendation types, including 2 powered by advanced artificial intelligence.

Boost harnesses the power of customer behavior analysis to deliver highly relevant product recommendations. By leveraging machine learning, Boost delves into each customer's preferences and purchase history, enabling it to suggest products that are most likely to captivate their interest.

Join the elite ranks of successful Shopify stores that have harnessed the power of Boost AI Search & Discovery to deliver unparalleled search relevance and drive exceptional business growth.

Try Free Now

Gear up your store for BFCM sales success!

By now, you might be almost ready for BFCM and probably having the final look at the last-minute holiday selling checklist already.

But hey, it's never too early to dive into your Black Friday and Cyber Monday growth strategies. Start implementing the best eCommerce tech stack above to maximize your holiday season returns. Time to sleigh those sales!

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Doki Nguyen

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Content Marketing Specialist

June 17, 2024

•

7 min read

How To Leverage BFCM Sales With The Best eCommerce Tech Stack (AI Tools Included)

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