October 30, 2026
Black Friday and Cyber Monday bring some of the busiest trading days of the year for most eCommerce stores. They can also be some of the most stressful, especially if changes are being rushed onto the website at the last minute, or problems are only discovered when customers start to find them.
We've supported eCommerce teams through many peak seasons, and the stores that have the calmest Black Friday are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. They're the ones that made their decisions early, tested everything twice and agreed who would do what if something went wrong.
To help, we've put together a step-by-step to-do list for Shopify, Magento and Adobe Commerce stores. Most of it applies whichever platform you're on, and where a task is specific to one platform, we've said so. If you'd like more detail on any area, our guide to optimising your site for Black Friday goes deeper into development, UX and marketing.
Four weeks to go: plan your offer
This week is about decisions rather than development. Getting these settled now means your developers, marketing team and warehouse are all working towards the same plan.
Check your margins before you set your discounts. A deep discount can look good on a banner but leave you with very little once advertising, delivery and returns are paid for. Our article on why Black Friday can hurt your profitability covers the costs that are easy to overlook.
Decide what's on offer and for how long. Will you run a single day, a full week or a promotion that lasts through to Cyber Monday? Agree the products, the discount levels and the exact start and end times.
Review your stock. Make sure you have enough of the products you're promoting, and decide in advance what happens to their pages if they sell out. We've written about how to handle out-of-stock product pages if you'd like some ideas.
Create or refresh your Black Friday landing page. If you use the same URL every year, such as /black-friday, it can build up search visibility over time. Get it live early with a "coming soon" message and an email sign-up form.
Plan your emails and social posts. Draft your campaign calendar now, including teaser emails for subscribers who sign up early.
Confirm your delivery cut-offs and returns policy. Customers will want to know when orders will arrive and whether Christmas gifts can be returned in January.
Three weeks to go: get your platform ready
This is the week for technical housekeeping. Any updates you need should be applied now, while there's still time to test them properly.
All platforms
Check your analytics and tracking. Make sure GA4, your ad platform pixels and any conversion tracking are recording sales correctly. It's much harder to judge how Black Friday went if the data is wrong.
Test your payment methods. Check that every payment option works, including digital wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, and buy now, pay later providers.
Review your fraud settings. Order volumes rise sharply, and so do fraudulent orders. Check your fraud rules are in place without being so strict that they block genuine customers.
Shopify
Audit your apps. Every app can add scripts that slow your store down. Remove any you no longer use, and check the ones you rely on are up to date.
Duplicate your live theme. Keep a copy of your current theme so you can make Black Friday changes safely and switch back quickly if you need to.
Set up your discounts in advance. Shopify lets you schedule discounts with start and end dates, so they can go live automatically rather than relying on someone to switch them on at midnight.
Magento and Adobe Commerce
Apply the latest security patches. Get any outstanding Magento security patches applied and tested now, so you're not running known vulnerabilities through your busiest period.
Update your extensions. Check third-party extensions for updates and compatibility issues, and remove any you no longer need.
Check your hosting capacity. Talk to your hosting provider about the traffic you're expecting and whether your server resources need increasing. If you're on Adobe Commerce Cloud, it's worth contacting Adobe ahead of your peak period too.
Check cron jobs and indexers. Make sure scheduled tasks are running and indexers are healthy, as problems here can cause wrong prices, missing products or delayed order emails.
Set up your price rules. Create your catalogue and cart price rules with the right dates and times, and test them on a staging site first.
If you'd rather have an expert pair of eyes on all of this, our Magento support and maintenance team can work through these checks with you.
Two weeks to go: test everything and freeze your code
By now, your offer is planned and your platform is up to date. These two weeks are for making sure it all holds up under pressure.
Check your site speed. Shoppers have less patience than usual on Black Friday, and a slow page can send them straight to a competitor. Look at your Core Web Vitals, compress large images and remove scripts you don't need. Our article on Magento site speed explains which changes make the most difference.
Run a load test. If you're on Magento or Adobe Commerce, test how your store performs with several times your usual traffic, so you find any weak points before your customers do. Shopify manages hosting for you, but it's still worth checking how your theme and apps perform when the store is busy.
Test your checkout from start to finish. Place test orders on desktop and mobile, using different payment methods, discount codes and delivery options. Check that confirmation emails arrive and orders reach your warehouse or order management system.
Check your mobile experience. Most Black Friday browsing happens on phones, so make sure menus, filters, product pages and checkout are easy to use on a small screen.
Check your site search. Make sure searches for your promoted products return the right results, and that common misspellings still find them.
Agree a code freeze. Pick a date, ideally around 10 days before Black Friday, after which no new features or non-essential changes go live. It's the simplest way to avoid a last-minute update causing problems on your busiest day.
The week before: final checks and your team
With your code frozen, this week is about preparing people as much as the website.
Take a full backup. Make sure you have a recent backup of your store and database, and that you know how to restore it.
Check your scheduled promotions one last time. Confirm that discounts, price rules, banners and landing pages are set to go live and end at the right times, in the right time zone.
Agree who's on call. Decide who will monitor the site, who can make changes and who should be contacted if something goes wrong, including your developers and hosting provider. Share phone numbers rather than relying on email.
Brief your customer service team. Give them the details of every offer, your delivery cut-offs and your returns policy, and prepare answers to the questions they're likely to get.
Prepare your warehouse. Make sure packaging, labels and staff are ready for the extra orders, and that stock levels on the website match what's on the shelves.
Write a backup plan. Agree what you'll do if a payment provider goes down, a product sells out early or the site slows down, so nobody has to make those decisions under pressure.
On the day: watch, respond and resist the urge to tinker
If you've worked through the rest of this list, Black Friday itself should be about keeping an eye on things rather than fixing them.
Check your offers went live. As soon as your promotion starts, visit the site as a customer and check that prices, discount codes and banners are all showing correctly.
Monitor your site. Keep an eye on speed, error rates and server load if you're on Magento or Adobe Commerce, and on your apps and checkout if you're on Shopify.
Watch your orders and payments. A sudden drop in orders can be the first sign that something has gone wrong with checkout or a payment provider.
Keep stock levels accurate. Update or hide products that sell out, and point customers towards alternatives where you can.
Avoid unplanned changes. It can be tempting to tweak things during the day, but unless something is broken, it's safer to stick to the plan you've already tested.
Keep your customers informed. If there's a problem, such as a delivery delay, let customers know quickly through your website, email and social media.
After Black Friday: review and plan for next year
Once Cyber Monday is over, take some time to look back while it's all still fresh.
End your promotions cleanly. Make sure discounts, banners and countdown timers have switched off, and that full prices are showing again.
Keep your landing page live. Update it with a "see you next year" message and an email sign-up form, rather than removing it, so it keeps its search visibility for next November.
Follow up with new customers. Send a thank you email and give first-time buyers a reason to come back, ideally one that doesn't depend on another discount.
Review your results. Look at sales, margins, conversion rate, average order value and returns, and compare them with last year.
Write down what went wrong and what worked. A short list of lessons learned will make next year's preparation much easier.
Getting ready for Black Friday with Develo
Black Friday can be a stressful time for eCommerce teams, but most of that stress comes from leaving things too late. Working through a list like this one, a week at a time, puts you in a much stronger position on the day.
If you'd like help getting your store ready, whether that's speeding up your site, applying patches and running checks before your code freeze, or making sure your checkout is ready for the extra traffic, get in touch with the Develo team. We work with Magento and Adobe Commerce stores every day, and we'd be happy to talk through what your store needs before 27 November.
Last updated: November 3, 2026