BFCM Debrief: How to measure your Black Friday performance

​​Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) are the most anticipated shopping events of the year and in recent times have transformed from a weekend event to an entire season. Spanning from 1 November to 2 December, this month of shopping offers businesses a golden opportunity to boost sales and attract new customers.

However, the success of your BFCM campaign isn't just about the deals you offer and the revenue you bring in; it's also about how well you measure your performance.

Whether you’re a seasoned eCommerce veteran or this is your first rodeo, we wanted to share helpful information to help you meaningfully analyse your performance. That’s why we invited world-leading eCommerce expert Paul Waddy to share his insights on evaluating BFCM metrics, avoiding the common mistakes merchants make after BFCM and the eCommerce trends that will shape 2025. 

Watch the webinar on-demand right here, then read on as we go deeper into the metrics that should shape every BFCM debrief.

Watch the on-demand webinar

9 key eCommerce metrics to evaluate success 

When you’re selling online, you have a LOT of data at your disposal. If you’ve ever found yourself zoning out while trying to make sense of a dashboard or spreadsheet loaded with numbers, you’re not alone!

To help you cut through the noise, lets recap the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you evaluate your BFCM results. And don’t worry, in the next section, we’ll give you tips for how to draw insights from them! 

1. Total Sales Revenue

Total Sales Revenue is the total amount of money that you’ve brought in from sales over a particular period. This is generally the number that merchants will keep their eyes glued to throughout BFCM. It’s a straightforward indicator that money is coming in, but should not be viewed in isolation - as it only tells part of the story!

2. Average Order Value (AOV)

AOV is the average amount spent per customer transaction. Higher AOVs indicate that your customers are purchasing more items or higher-priced items, so ideally, you always want this number going up.

3. Conversion Rate

Your conversion rate generally refers to the percentage of website visitors who make a purchase. Conversion rates can give some insights into the effectiveness of your customer experience (which touches everything from your website, to your marketing and your checkout process). If people are coming to your website but then failing to convert into customers, it’s likely time to improve your customer experience. 

4. Sales by Category/Product

Which categories or products are your customers repeatedly adding to cart? Breaking down your revenue by categories or products allows you to understand more about customers and what they’re looking for when they engage with your brand. This also can help you to manage future inventory and upcoming promotional strategies.

5. Sales by Channel

How did your customers come to find you? Did they come straight to your website, or did they come through social media or web search? Maybe they clicked a link in a promotional email or text? Understanding sales by channel can help you get a better sense of where your customers are, and where you might want to spend more time marketing to them in the future.

6. Cart Abandonment Rate

Cart abandonment is a merchant’s worst nightmare, and for good reason! After getting so close to making a sale, your customer has fallen at the final hurdle and left items in their cart without completing their purchase. 

This rate is generally calculated by comparing the number of abandoned carts to the number of completed carts. 

One of the biggest reasons for cart abandonment is flaws or friction within the checkout process. This might include; offering limited payment methods, insecure checkouts, or a lack of multi-currency pricing for international shoppers. 

Airwallex can help solve cart abandonment issues, empowering you to show multi-currency pricing and accept a variety of local payment methods in over 180 countries. Learn more about how Airwallex Payments and Plug-ins can create a seamless experience for your customers. 

7. Gross Margin 

Your gross margin is the difference between your total sales revenue and the cost of goods sold, and is generally expressed as a percentage. 

For example, if your total sales revenue for the month is $100,000, and the cost of the goods sold is $60,000. Your venue less goods price will be $40,000, or a 40% gross margin. This means that 40% of your revenue is available to cover other expenses and contribute to your net profit. 

8. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

Your ROAS is the revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising. ROAS can help you understand the effectiveness and profitability of your ad campaigns. 

To calculate ROAS follow the formula of the revenue from your ad campaign, divided by the cost of the ad campaign. A ROAS greater than 1 indicates that you are generating more revenue than the cost of ads. 

9. Customer reviews

Ok, so this isn’t quite a metric - but your customers can help tell the story that your numbers are outlining. 

Customer feedback, positive or negative, is so valuable to merchants. When the chaos of BFCM is over, we recommend taking the time to digest the reviews, comments and messages that remark on your customer experience, product and marketing. 

Paul’s top tips for analysing your numbers

So we’ve covered the numbers and why they’re important, now it’s time to dive deeper into your analysis. But where do you start? 

We’ve picked out some of Paul’s top tips from our webinar above to help you get those analytical juices flowing. 

Look for ways to preserve your net profit

“A lot of brands will have really big revenue months and, depending on how they've managed their business, can actually end up having really poor profitability months. 

“Things that you've got to watch out for, of course, you can expect me to say conversion rate and average order value and card abandonment rate. What are your COGS (cost of goods sold) going to be at the end of November when half of your revenue or more comes at a 15%, 25%, 30% average discount? 

“The tip that I would give businesses is your COGS will get worse, that's fine, but understand where they'll be and drop your marketing spend down accordingly to preserve a bit of net profit. So if your COGS get 5% worse, drop your marketing spend down 5% to balance out that net profit to maintain that net profit.”

Evaluate how your sales bounce back after BFCM

“How far have your daily sales dropped after your discounting period? Now, if you're a brand that's back to average daily sales, you're doing really, really well. If you're a brand that's been discounting and after the end of cyber week, your sales have dropped to, let's say, 25% of normal you're way too dependent on that discount.

“You've gone too deep, too hard, too long. Maybe your BAU pricing is too high. So you want to look at really how quickly you bounce back after this month or last month to normal full price sales. And really this will all come out in the wash at the end of the quarter.”

Consider inventory control during planning

“The planning has not been great for some brands who have not forecasted correctly. They might be holding too much inventory now. So what you'll see is a lot of brands go again on the 15th and you see those brands going hard and deep and you know they've over ordered and they've got their forecasting wrong. 

“Or it could go the other way where you've under ordered and your December sales will be so low because you've sold out of your grade a product at 20%, 30% off. So the inventory control is really where I think the money is made in planning”

Overseas expansion could be the key to unlocking true growth

“Of the brands that I work with who have accelerated rapidly in the last 12 months. A lot of it has come from overseas expansion.

"I'm talking about the brands that have gone to $100 million, let's say $30 million a year and beyond. Now if you're in Australia and you're doing $20-$30Ml and you want to kick onto $100M, you're probably going to be doing that in the US. 

"When I started a long time ago, to localise was a huge, huge project to get local currency. And now using the likes of Airwallex, you can settle in local currency without having an entity in those countries. And that's what these guys are doing. 

"A lot of them do tend to be turning on things at checkout like local payments and settlement in local currency. [They say] we're going to have a proper crack at international here and it pays off when you get it right, that's where you go to that next kind of stratosphere of over $100 million a year in rev.”

2025 is going to be big!

Now you know your numbers and you’re armed with expert tips, it’s time to run your analysis and pull out truly helpful insights to shape your year ahead. 

Could 2025 be the year that you go global? Our incredible Business Accounts and Payments tools can help!

Discover for yourself why Australian eCommerce businesses everywhere are making the switch, and scaling rapidly with our next-generation tools. Sign up for a Business Account today. 

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