Black Friday preparation often starts with discounts, campaign creative, email flows and ads. There is plenty to plan.
But when did you last work through the store that those campaigns are sending customers to? Or check exactly what your tracking events are recording?
The offer might be ready but the storefront needs to be ready, too.
Black Friday shopping starts before Black Friday
The CTO at an ecommerce company I worked at once mentioned that shoppers build their wishlists ahead of Black Friday, saving that one thing they really want in the hope it goes on sale.
It got me thinking: how much of Black Friday is actually planned spending? And what could merchants learn from how shoppers prepare?
Black Friday is a sale on a global scale, and spending continues to grow. Salesforce reported $79 billion in global Black Friday sales in 2025, up 6% year on year.[1]
There will always be impulse purchases. But for many shoppers, the purchase is something they have been considering for weeks.
BCG’s 2025 survey of more than 10,000 consumers across 10 countries in Europe, North America and Australia found that 77% delay purchases earlier in the year to take advantage of Black Friday and related promotions. Nearly 60% begin researching deals in October or early November.[2]
That visitor who browses and leaves may be comparing products, checking sizing or deciding what to come back for.
Your store needs to help them make that decision before the sale begins.
Can customers save the products they want?
Giftster’s Holiday Shopping Index, published in August 2026 using its 2025 platform activity, found that items added to wishlists increased 118% in October compared with September. More than 5.2 million items were added in November.[3]
This is holiday activity on a gifting platform, so it doesn’t tell us how many customers use a merchant’s own wishlist. It does show people collecting and refining product choices ahead of purchasing.
For your store, the question is practical: can customers easily save what they want and find it again?
If you have a wishlist, test it on mobile. Save a product, leave and return. Check whether the selected size and colour are retained, whether login requirements are clear, and whether adding the saved item to cart works as expected.
If you’re considering a wishlist app, give your team time to assess, integrate and test it before peak season. The feature needs to work with your theme and customer journey to be useful.
Is your Black Friday offer easy to understand?
I’ve seen complicated bundles, hidden deals and collection pages with so many badges and messages that it becomes difficult to know where to look.
A customer shouldn’t need to work out how your promotion works.
DHL’s 2025 survey of 24,000 online shoppers across 24 countries found that 71% were motivated by discounts and savings, yet only 50% completely or mostly trusted retailers’ Black Friday offers and prices.[4]
Put yourself in the position of someone arriving on your collection page for the first time. Can they see which products are included, what they will save and whether a code is required?
If there’s a bundle offer, are the qualifying products and conditions clear? Does the cart explain why a discount has or hasn’t applied?
There may be several things your team wants to communicate. Agree on what the customer needs to see first, then give the remaining details a clear place.
More badges don’t automatically make the offer clearer.
Does the journey from campaign to checkout work?
Sinch’s 2026 survey of 2,501 shoppers across eight countries found that 58% want Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotional messaging to start at least a month beforehand. That rises to 82% for at least two weeks beforehand.[5]
These are communication preferences, but they reinforce the value of preparing the destination pages early.
Click through your campaigns as a customer would. Does the email link land on the right collection or product? Does the offer match what the customer sees there?
Then continue through the journey: search, filter, choose a variant, add to cart, apply the promotion and complete an authorised test order.
Include wishlists, bundles, quick-add buttons and any custom cart functionality your store uses. Test on mobile as well as desktop.
The useful question is whether a customer can complete the whole journey easily.
What are your tracking events actually recording?
Before you increase campaign spend, check what your analytics and advertising platforms are being told.
When did your team last validate the actions behind events such as add to cart, begin checkout and purchase? Have theme changes, new apps or custom features affected them?
For example, an add-to-cart event should reflect a successful addition to the cart. If it fires on a button click even when the action fails, the report can give you a misleading picture.
Check that purchase events aren’t recording the same transaction repeatedly, and validate transaction IDs, values and currencies where consent permits collection.
This matters beyond reporting. Google Ads can use primary conversion actions for bidding when a campaign optimises towards the associated goal.[6] Review which actions your campaigns use, and any event-based audiences, with your tracking and paid media teams.
A tracking tool being installed isn’t enough to establish that the data is accurate.
Have you checked storefront performance and dependencies?
“Will the site manage the traffic?” is a reasonable question, but for a Shopify store, preparation should also focus on the theme, apps and integrations that support the experience.
Shopify identifies themes, apps, images and additional code among the factors that can affect storefront performance.[7]
Review your performance reports, test important page types on mobile and investigate known problems. Check the apps and external services behind search, bundles, wishlists and custom functionality.
Agree on who will monitor issues during the sale and who can respond if something breaks.
A working feature today still deserves attention if customers will depend on it throughout peak season.
Where should your team start?
Start with three priorities:
- 01Work through the customer journey. From researching and saving a product to returning and purchasing.
- 02Validate the tracking. Confirm what key events record and what your campaigns optimise towards.
- 03Resolve the problems that could interrupt a purchase. Prioritise unclear promotions, bugs, performance issues and unreliable functionality.
At Commerce Collective, we work with established ecommerce teams to get more from Shopify. We can help work through that to-do list, advise on priorities, fix bugs and integrate features such as wishlists, with testing across the customer journey.
Our Shopify Store Health Check is a useful starting point. Working through the findings is what makes the preparation count.
Your customers may already be planning what to buy. Give the storefront the same attention you’re giving the campaign.