Black friday readiness checklist

The Black Friday weekend rewards preparation rather than reaction, because there is no time to fix anything once it starts. This list is ordered by how far out each task should happen: offers and stock first, then pages, creative and the email calendar, then a rehearsal week with a code freeze, and finally what to watch while the weekend runs and what to write down afterwards.

Two months out: offers and stock

Set the offer for each product line before anything else is built.Why: Creative, emails and landing pages all depend on knowing exactly what the offer is going to be.How: Decide the discount or bundle per line, check the margin at that price including shipping and fees, and put the offers in one shared document.
Reserve stock for the products the campaign will push hardest.Why: Selling out of the hero product on the first morning wastes traffic you have paid for all weekend.How: Forecast units per hero product from last season's pattern, place the purchase order early, and hold a portion back for the final days.
Agree courier cutoff dates and publish them on the site.Why: Shoppers buying gifts choose the store that tells them clearly when the parcel will arrive.How: Confirm the last dispatch date for each service, publish it on the delivery page and product pages, and add a banner as the dates approach.
Raise ad account spending limits and check the billing card.Why: A declined card or an unchanged billing threshold can stop every ad at the busiest hour of the year.How: Increase the account spending limit, confirm the card expiry runs past the season, and add a backup payment method to each ad account.

One month out: build and approvals

Build the sale landing pages now and leave them unlisted.Why: Pages built on the day carry mistakes and have no time to be crawled, cached or tested properly.How: Create the offer collections and pages in advance, keep them out of the navigation and sitemap until launch, and test them with real traffic.
Submit creative for review well before the weekend.Why: Review queues lengthen as the season approaches, and a late rejection cannot be fixed in time.How: Upload the full creative set into paused campaigns early so it clears review, and keep a compliant backup version of every concept.
Schedule the email and SMS calendar with a segment against each send.Why: Deciding who receives what on the day leads to over sending and a spike in unsubscribes.How: Map every send to a segment and a time in a calendar, check no profile exceeds the frequency cap, and build each message in draft ahead.
Warm the list with useful sends in the weeks beforehand.Why: A list that has not been mailed for months will hit filters exactly when the volume matters most.How: Send regular content to engaged subscribers in the run up, clear hard bounces, and raise volume gradually rather than all at once.
Prepare the feed with sale prices and promotion identifiers.Why: Shopping listings still showing the old price on the day lose the click to a store that shows the offer.How: Schedule the price change to sync before the sale opens, use the sale price attribute rather than editing the base price, and check the item preview.

The week before: rehearsal

Load test the store on the theme and apps you will actually run.Why: Traffic peaks expose slow templates and app scripts that never caused a problem at normal volume.How: Run a load test against the sale collection and product templates, remove or defer the slowest scripts, and retest after every change.
Freeze theme and app changes a week before the sale opens.Why: Late edits are the most common cause of a broken checkout on the busiest day of the year.How: Announce a freeze date, move remaining work to a staging theme, and allow only content updates on the live store during the freeze.
Rehearse by placing a discounted test order for each offer type.Why: Codes, automatic discounts and shipping rules interact in ways that only appear at the payment step.How: Run a test order for each offer including a bundle and a gift card, refund each one, and note anything that behaved unexpectedly.
Brief customer support on the offers and the cutoff dates.Why: Question volume rises sharply and slow answers cost orders inside a very short trading window.How: Write saved replies for each offer, the delivery dates and the returns extension, and share the stock position with support every day.

During the weekend and after

Watch stock levels against ad spend through the weekend.Why: Spending on a product that has sold out sends paid traffic to a page that cannot take an order.How: Check units remaining on hero products several times a day, and pause the matching ad groups or product sets as items run down.
Name one person who can pause every channel quickly.Why: A pricing error or a payment outage needs a single fast decision, not a group conversation.How: Name the person, list every account they need access to, and write the pause procedure down before the weekend starts.
Extend the returns window and say so on the site.Why: Gifts bought in November are opened in December, and an unclear policy creates avoidable support load.How: Publish the extended return date on the policy page and in the order confirmation email, and brief support on the exception.
Write up what happened while the detail is still fresh.Why: Next season's plan is only as good as the notes taken during and immediately after this one.How: In the following week record what sold out, which offers converted, which creative tired and what broke, and file it with the sale document.

Questions

Stock and offer decisions need a couple of months. Creative, pages and the email calendar need a few weeks. The final week should be rehearsal rather than building.

No. Pick the lines where margin survives the discount and stock supports the volume, then use bundles or thresholds on the rest to protect the average order value.

Separate campaigns give you a clean budget and a fast way to pause. Keep the everyday campaigns running as well so you can see what the sale actually added.

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Black friday readiness checklist

Two months out: offers and stock

One month out: build and approvals

The week before: rehearsal

During the weekend and after

Questions

When should Black Friday preparation start?

Should I discount everything?

Do I need separate campaigns for the sale?

Related

Your plan is free.