This Black Friday checklist is your go-to guide as the biggest shopping day of the year approaches—and with it, the pressure to maximize your sales and revenue.
Consumers set a new record in online holiday spending, reaching $241.4 billion during the 2024 season—a sharp 8.7% rise compared to 2023.
Are you an eCommerce store owner aiming to boost sales and clear inventory during BFCM 2025? Then it’s time to follow this Black Friday checklist and get your store ready for success.
WooCommerce store owners: Turn up to 31% of browsers into loyal customers this Black Friday with personalized discounts using the Discount Rules Pro plugin.
Why are Black Friday Sales Important?
Black Friday sales are important because they offer a major opportunity for businesses, especially eCommerce store, to:
- Boost Revenue: It’s one of the highest-grossing shopping events of the year.
- Clear Inventory: Move old or excess stock before the year ends.
- Acquire New Customers: Attract first-time buyers with strong deals.
- Increase Brand Visibility: Get more traffic and engagement through marketing.
- Encourage Repeat Purchases: Convert seasonal buyers into loyal customers.
- Stay Competitive: Meet or beat rival stores offering similar discounts.
25-Step Black Friday Checklist to Prepare for BFCM Sales
The black Friday checklist helps ensure your store’s preparation for the big sales day event.
Check these 25 points to organize your store, from planning Black Friday campaigns to shipping your products.
Customers have already begun searching for the best discount sales. Start your plan as early as possible to win the big discount day.
1. Research Your Target Audience
People who have an interest and resonate with your business goals are your targeted customers.
Therefore, creating a buyer persona is essential to reach them effectively. This fictional representation, in turn, helps you plan the right offers for those who truly need your products.
2. Set Your Goals
You must decide your campaign goals, such as selling products, budgeting for the campaign, marketing strategies, and other business goals.
3. Decide Your Budget
You can rely on organic marketing strategies to increase your sales.
However, paid advertisements are best for reaching new customers quickly. If you have the budget, go for it.
4. Check Inventory
Before anything else, ask yourself—do you have enough stock to handle a surge in orders?
After all, supply chain issues remain one of the major challenges in online retail. Since all retailers gear up for the seasonal shopping rush, you must ensure your warehouse is fully stocked.
Additionally, your suppliers should be ready to meet your store’s demand without any delays.
5. Create Irresistible Discount Offers
You can quickly grab customers’ attention with irresistible offers. Without offering boring and the same 10% off discounts, test and run different discount deals, such as:
- Buy One Get One (BOGO)
- Bulk Discounts
- Bundle Discounts
- Free Shipping Based On Order Value
- First-Time Order Discount
- Exclusive and early access discounts for subscribers or VIP members, and more.
Personalizing discounts based on customers’ needs and purchase history will enhance their shopping experience and loyalty and help them develop a long-term relationship with your store.
Note:
If you are using the WooCommerce platform to run your online store, you can also download the “Discount Rules for WooCommerce -Pro” plugin to create advanced and automatic discount rules in WooCommerce.
This plugin also allows you to create smart and advanced coupons for customized coupon code offers.
Offer Bulk Discounts or BOGO Deals in WooCommerce Using the Discount Rules Pro to Increase Average Order Value.
6. Test and Optimize Website Speed
Portent reports that eCommerce websites with a 1-2 second loading speed have a 3.05% conversion rate and drop for every delayed second.
Hence, confirm your website loading speed, as it impacts the store conversion rate. You can also double-check your website bandwidth to handle enough traffic.
7. Update ‘Featured Sales’
Update the ‘Featured Sales’ section as appealingly as possible and provide the best offer. This is a chance for people who dream of purchasing your products to claim their favorites.
8. Check Product Listings & Details Pages
Product Listing Pages (PLP) display all products within a specific category or based on filters applied by the user. From there, PLPs guide users to Product Details Pages (PDP), individual pages that showcase detailed information about each product.
Since customers can’t physically see or touch products online, these pages play a crucial role in convincing them to click the “Buy Now” button. Rather than focusing solely on features, highlight the benefits and show how your product can genuinely improve their lives.
9. Redesign Website Visuals
Redesign your website with attention-grabbing banners and offers to inform your customers about the upcoming discount deals.
10. Ease Up the Checkout Process
An easy checkout process helps customers with a successful transaction without abandoning their carts.
Look at your checkout process and make sure that you have a smooth and safe transaction process.
Tip: You can also offer checkout order bumps in WooCommerce to increase the order value of the customers.
11. Provide Mobile-Friendly Experience
Almost half of the online shopping is completed through mobile phones. You can create your brand’s mobile app or optimize your website for mobile-based browsers.
Elevating user experience while browsing and ordering products is key for a successful sale.
12. Utilize Social Media Platforms
To stay competitive, you must adapt to recent trends and explore every possible channel to reach your target customers, and among them, social media stands out as one of the most effective platforms.
Therefore, take time to analyze each social media channel and understand your audience’s needs so you can deliver content that truly resonates.
13. Put Email Marketing Into the Play
Email users regularly check their inboxes to discover exciting discount offers. Therefore, segment your customers based on signup forms or purchase history to send targeted offers that match their interests.
If you’re a WooCommerce store owner, you can easily customize order notifications and other emails using the Email Customizer for WooCommerce plugin to make your messages more engaging.
14. Create Content Guides
One of the most effective ways to stand out from competitors is by using content marketing strategies like writing helpful blog guides or creating engaging video content for YouTube and social media.
15. Gift and Comparison Guides
For some customers, planning gift packs can be a challenging process.
Also, some people will still need clarification about choosing the right product between the two.
Steal this opportunity to create gift ideas and product comparison guides that help people choose the right product for their loved ones.
16. Give a Chance to Paid Ads
Since you are competing with big brands for this bargaining Friday sale, paid ads are a good investment for your business as they quickly reach your target market compared to organic marketing. However, you must ensure that paid ads are implemented within your planned budget.
17. Retargeting to increase sales
With new people arriving at your store, use this chance to build brand awareness and encourage them to subscribe to your newsletters or follow up on social media.
After the end of holiday sales, you can use a retargeting strategy to bring the visitors back to your website.
18. Optimize Shipping Process
Delivering products on time is crucial to increasing customer loyalty toward your brand. Even if you are tired of having more orders to ship, have a separate delivery team to smooth your shipping process.
Nowadays, big online companies assure customers of quick delivery. Though you may not compete with popular brands, remember to deliver your products on time to increase trust.
19. Improve Return Policy
A clear return policy is one of the key factors that influence a buyer’s decision.
Unlike physical stores where customers can try products before purchasing, online shoppers rely on trust. That’s why a flexible return policy gives them the confidence to try your product, knowing they can get a refund if it doesn’t meet their expectations.
As a result, this reassurance can speed up their buying decision.
During your Black Friday online campaign, consider extending the return window, allowing customers to return gifts if needed.
At the same time, focus on offering high-quality products tailored to customer needs to help reduce return rates.
20. Follow Up on Abandoned Carts
Every eCommerce store owner hates abandoned carts; you’re no exception. You can find many abandoned carts during holiday sales.
Customers leave their carts for many reasons. They could be unhappy with an offer, face issues during the payment process, find the best deals at different websites, or forget to purchase the products in their carts.
With a simple email notification, send a reminder about their cart abandonment.
Tip: Learn the 7 proven ways to convert abandoned carts into revenue.
21. Arrange Your Customer Service
Customer service should be a top priority on sales day. Having a dedicated and friendly support team can significantly boost your sales.
To connect instantly with customers, use live chat tools on your website.
While chatbots are useful for automating basic support tasks, nothing beats real human interaction for providing the best service.
22. Train Your Team
Every employee in your business plays a crucial role during big sales events. Therefore, everyone should share equal responsibility to ensure the campaign runs smoothly. To prepare, train your team to handle high traffic on the big day.
Remember, be ready for the unexpected! While Plan A aims for success, it doesn’t always go as planned. Thus, having a reliable Plan B will help you continue your campaign without stress.
Having backup strategies simplifies the selling process.
For example, maintain excess stock of best-sellers and combine fast- and slow-moving items into bundled offers to maximize sales.
23. Plan for Technical Problems
During high-traffic sales events, your website may face issues like overload, repeated requests, crashes, or checkout problems.
Therefore, have a dedicated development team ready to quickly resolve any technical glitches on sales day.
24. Plan for Long Lines
A successful sale is measured by attracting more customers, increasing average order value, and receiving more orders.
With this in mind, when customers rush to claim their offers, you must be fully prepared to handle the demand, ensuring smooth supply chain operations and clear communication throughout.
25. Follow-up campaigns
Keep customers engaged with post-Black Friday promotions to sustain momentum.
Additionally, evaluate your sales performance to spot trends and areas for improvement. Use these insights to update your strategy and build long-term customer relationships.
(The following step is optional and can be tailored according to your available budget and resources.)
26. Virtual Try-On and Search
Leverage computer vision and augmented reality (AR) technologies to enhance the pre-purchase experience, thereby reducing post-purchase returns.
For instance, implement Virtual Try-On (VTO) for products like clothing, eyeglasses, or makeup, allowing customers to visualize items on themselves.
Additionally, integrate image and voice search capabilities so customers can easily find products by uploading a photo or describing them verbally.
Together, these features improve the overall shopping experience and help lower return rates.
Complete this Black Friday checklist to boost sales and grow your online store successfully.
Offer personalized discounts only to specific customers/ roles or create discounts over the amount using Discount Rules Pro to increase sales.
Conclusion
Implement these Black Friday checklist steps to prepare your online store for the big sale day and increase your sales and revenue.
As well, use digital marketing tools like Google Analytics, Search Console, and heat map software to analyze the performance of your WooCommerce website and app during shopping day sales.
Also, if you are on WooCommerce platform, don’t forget to customize your discount strategy using the “Discount Rules for WooCommerce -Pro” plugin, as personalized discounts create a path for enhanced customer experience and increased sales.
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Frequently Asked Question
The first Friday after Thanksgiving in the United States is celebrated as Black Friday, which starts the year’s holiday shopping season.
The Friday sales extend till Monday (the Cyber Monday sale) or for a week (the Cyber Week sale).
For all businesses, especially e-commerce businesses of all sizes and industries, Black Friday has become one of the most profitable days in Cyber Week sales.
Black Friday is coming on 28th November 2025 (Friday), the last friday of November. Cyber Monday sale is on 1st December, 2025 (Monday).
Usually, Black Friday sales start on Friday. But nowadays, online store owners begin sales on Wednesday, called the Black Week sale, to grab the audience’s attention.
Also, products and marketing preparation can start from October to run a successful promotional event on Black Friday.
A Black Friday (marketing) strategy helps online store owners create business and marketing goals to increase sales on the big sale day.
To begin with, plan your sales campaign early
Check and update inventory
Meanwhile, revamp your website
Set up strong customer support
Create compelling discount offers
Following this, ensure smooth checkout and timely delivery
Finally use marketing tactics to boost AOV and sales.
The top-most selling categories on Black Friday are Electronics, Clothing/ Accessories, Beauty products, Home appliances, and maybe toys and games.
However, brands of all sizes and niches can drive sales and revenue, if Black Friday strategy is implemented rightly.
