The BFCM playbook: convert and collect reviews during the spike

Black Friday Cyber Monday brings more first-time shoppers to your product pages than any other weekend of the year. Many of them have never bought from you, and reviews are often what they read before they decide. The catch is timing: reviews from those orders arrive after the sale is over, so the proof that sells the peak has to be in place before it starts.

This playbook splits the work into three stages: the weeks before the sale, the sale itself, and the weeks after. Every step uses settings that already exist in Quoli.

Before the sale

Check the pages that will carry the traffic

List the products you plan to promote and open each product page on a phone. Check that the star rating sits near the title, that reviews load below the description and that photo reviews are easy to find. Products with few reviews are the ones to work on first.

Ask recent buyers for reviews

If a promoted product is short on reviews, check that requests are going out for its recent orders, then ask more customers by hand. Manual review requests let you ask any customer for a review, and every plan includes 50 a month. A reminder goes to customers who have not replied, and rewards can be higher for a photo or video review than for text alone.

Prepare ads from customer photos

When every store is shouting about discounts, a real customer photo stands out. With Quoli UGC Ads you can build ads from your best photo reviews that keep the customer's own words, download them in story, portrait and square sizes, and test them against your brand creative before the sale starts.

Put highlights next to the buy button

Nuggets show short quotes from your own reviews beside the buy button, so shoppers see what customers liked without scrolling. On Shopify Plus, Checkout Reviews carries the same proof into checkout.

During the sale

Reply to new reviews quickly

Reviews that arrive during the sale sit at the top of your product pages, where the most shoppers will see them. Reply promptly, especially to critical ones. On Advanced and Unlimited plans, Draft with QI writes a reply in your brand voice for your team to edit and publish.

Check your publishing rules

If you publish reviews automatically by star rating, confirm the rule still fits before volume climbs. With the QI confidence check enabled, reviews with abusive wording wait for your team instead of going live.

Watch the store as a shopper would

Open your top product pages on a phone each day of the sale. Look for widgets that fail to load, prices that scroll out of view and banners that cover the buy button. Small problems cost the most when traffic is at its peak.

After the sale

Time requests for when the product arrives

Holiday orders take longer to deliver, and many are gifts. Time review requests from delivery rather than purchase, so customers have the product in hand when you ask. Quoli reads delivery status from Shopify tracking, AfterShip or Track by Loop, and you choose a delay of up to 30 days.

Ask for photos and video

Enable the photo request in Settings, then Collect and publish. It asks customers who left a text-only review to add a photo or video, and those photos become product page proof and ad creative for the months ahead.

Put the new reviews to work

As reviews from holiday orders land, refresh the places shoppers see first: your best-selling product pages, your homepage and your ads. The Review published trigger in Shopify Flow can also pass new reviews to Klaviyo for your email flows.

A simple BFCM calendar

• Two weeks before: audit the product pages you will promote and ask recent buyers to review products with few reviews.
• One week before: prepare UGC ads, add Nuggets beside the buy button and check both on mobile.
• The day before: check your publishing rules and agree who replies to reviews over the weekend.
• During the sale: reply to new reviews and check your top pages on a phone each day.
• After the sale: time requests from delivery, ask for photos and refresh pages and ads with new reviews.

Nuggets and UGC Ads are on Growth and up. Draft with QI and the QI confidence check are on Advanced and Unlimited. Quoli has a free forever plan, and paid plans start with a 14-day trial. For the wider testing plan, read the CRO guide.