Welcome to Conversion Party. This week, we’ve got…

• 🕳️ CRO Deep Dive: We analyzed 377.9M page views. Here’s what drove BFCM sales

• 🗺️ Goings On: Not nothin’

• 🤟Community love spotlight -  Ben Zettler | Helping brands grow w/ Email/SMS + Ads + Websites
  

🕳️ CRO Deep Dive
BFCM 2025 — The Data-Backed CRO Lessons You Need for 2026

Discover the strategies and tactics you need to optimize for more revenue in ecommerce. In this section we explore data-driven approaches, real world examples, and proven best practices to help you drive more sales and revenue.

Another BFCM in the books, and the data is wild.

Across Heatmap powered ecommerce sites, we tracked:

• 377.9M page views

• 62.7M sessions

• 474M events (clicks)

• 4.0M conversions

• $504.7M in revenue

This dataset reveals exactly how shoppers behaved across the biggest buying weekend of the year, and, more importantly, what you should optimize heading into 2026.

Here are the 5 most profitable CRO takeaways from our BFCM analysis.

1️⃣ Product Pages Are the Real Conversion Battleground

Why: 77.5% of sessions included product page views, the strongest indicator of buying intent we’ve ever recorded.

Shoppers weren’t browsing. They were hunting for products.

🛠️ Your 2026 Optimization Checklist:

• Optimize product images and videos

• Use benefit-driven copy

• Add trust badges near ATC

• Make ATC sticky on mobile

• Test button text, layout, and pricing formats

If you improve one thing before next year, make it your PDPs.

2️⃣ Black Friday Still Dominates, But Sunday Was a Sleeper Hit

Black Friday delivered:

• 1.12M conversions

• $147.6M revenue

• Highest AOV at $131

But the surprise?

👉 Sunday had the highest product page intent (82.21% of sessions).

People were primed to convert.

🛠️ What to do in 2026:

• Launch your strongest offer Thursday PM → Friday AM

• Add “last chance” bundles Saturday evening

• Push urgency messaging Sunday when high-intent traffic peaks

Most brands treat Saturday/Sunday as “coast days”, the data says the opposite.

3️⃣ Cyber Monday Is Still a Monster (Don’t Sleep on It)

Cyber Monday delivered:

• 883K conversions

• $112.2M in revenue

• 21.90% conversion rate

Many shoppers wait until Monday to buy after comparing across brands all weekend.

🛠️ Optimize Monday for:

• Cart recovery messaging

• Strong “ends tonight” reminder

• Sweeteners (free gift, free expedited shipping, extended returns)

Monday matters almost as much as Friday.

4️⃣ Your Funnel Bottlenecks Are Where You Lose the Most Money

Across 151.6M tracked funnel events:

• Product views: 48.5M

• Add to carts: 11.9M

• Checkout starts: 6.6M

The biggest jump?
👉 Add-to-cart actions spiked 88.98% on Black Friday
👉 Checkout starts surged 97.66%

Shoppers were READY to buy, but funnel friction stops them.

🛠️ Your 2026 Fix List:

• Compress checkout steps

• Auto-apply discounts

• Offer 1-tap pay options

• Remove unnecessary form fields

• Improve error messaging

Small UX improvements → massive revenue lift at scale.

5️⃣ Use Your Data Early, September Is Your New CRO Start Line

The brands that won BFCM 2025 did the work 6–10 weeks ahead:

September–October:
Offer planning, PDP testing, checkout friction audits

Early November:
Load testing, mobile tuning, final product page refinements

Week Before BFCM:
QA, inventory prep, cart recovery flows, urgency copy

🛠️ Pro Tip:
Use Heatmap's element-level revenue data to identify exactly which page elements are driving (or killing) conversions long before BFCM week hits.

The Bottom Line

Shoppers this year were high-intent, mobile-first, and product-focused.

Your mission for 2026:

Make it stupid-easy for them to buy.
Faster PDPs. Clearer offers. Cleaner checkout. Stronger weekend-long momentum.

Data-backed CRO will continue to be the biggest differentiator between brands that survive BFCM… and those that dominate it.

👉 Want the full breakdown of all the data? Read the complete BFCM 2025 Insights Report here.

Want to apply these insights now?

Run your homepage through the AI CRO Site Scanner and instantly see:

✔️ Where you’re losing conversions
✔️ Which elements drive the most revenue
✔️ What to fix first for the highest ROI
✔️ A prioritized action plan for 2026

Need help turning your insights into action?

Book a free call with our CRO team, we’ll review your report, identify your biggest revenue levers, and build your 2026 optimization roadmap.

Bonus: 150-Point CRO Checklist

If you’ve scanned your site, now it’s time to actually fix things.

Our 150-Point Ecommerce CRO Checklist is the ultimate playbook to solve the exact issues your report flags.

👉 GET THE FREE CRO CHECKLIST HERE

Ready to uncover the hidden friction points on your site?

Sign up for a free to get the behavioral data and insights you need to make smart, data-backed decisions.

Want to learn more about other success stories? 
📖 Read more about them here →

🗺️ GOINGS ON
Not Nothin’

Stay in the loop with our latest partner activations, from webinars and in-person meetups to fresh content collaborations. We’ll highlight upcoming events, share key takeaways from recent gatherings, and give you an inside look at what’s brewing in our network.

The BFCM Survival Guide
A playbook for a multi-million dollar weekend

BFCM is the biggest, and most brutal weekend of the year.

Ad costs spike. Sites crash. Margins vanish.

So we partnered with TxtCart, Alia, Campaign Monitor, Growave, Platter, Chargeflow, Atlas, and New Seas to create The BFCM Survival Guide, a playbook for a multi-million-dollar weekend.

Inside, you’ll learn how to:

→ Stress-proof your tech stack before traffic hits
→ Recover more carts and protect your margins
→ Turn BFCM momentum into year-round revenue

Free ChatGPT shopping optimizer for Shopify products

Is Your Store Ready for AI Shoppers?

The way customers shop is changing, and AI search is becoming the new window display. Is your Shopify store optimized to be found when shoppers ask ChatGPT for recommendations?

The team at Instant created a free ChatGPT Shopping Readiness Tool that instantly analyzes your Shopify product pages and shows you exactly what's missing. Just paste your store URL and get a comprehensive breakdown to ensure your products appear in AI shopping recommendations.

→ Paste your store URL and get a personalized readiness report
→ See the specific fixes you need to implement now
→ Optimize your store to show up better in AI search results

 🤟 COMMUNITY LOVE

Our featured tweet of the week, where we share bite-sized insights or a quick tip that’s making waves in the world of e-commerce. Consider it your fast track to staying updated on what’s trending.