Black Friday 2025: a 10-step action plan for your e-commerce business
Friday, November 28, 2025. Mark this date in red on your calendar. It’s the day when traffic on your e-commerce site could explode, sales could reach unprecedented peaks, and months of work could pay off in just a few hours. Or, it could be the day when your site crashes, your offers go unnoticed, and your competitors celebrate. The difference between the two scenarios? It’s decided now, in September.
Black Friday isn’t just 24 hours of discounts, but a whole season that can determine the results of the last quarter. In 2024, in Italy alone, Cyber Week generated almost €3.8 billion in online sales, with over 70% of transactions made digitally. And beware, searches for offers don’t start at the end of November: Google Trends and SEOZoom’s seasonality show unequivocally that user interest begins to grow exponentially as early as mid-October.
In short, you can’t afford to improvise or be unprepared; in fact, you need to get organized now. In this guide, you’ll find 10+1 operational steps: a roadmap that takes you from setting goals to post-sales management, so you arrive at the peak season with a clear plan and not out of breath.
Why prepare now
Black Friday is an event that is planned well in advance. The figures for 2024 speak for themselves: in the United States, online sales exceeded $10.8 billion in a single day, up 10.2% from 2023, and on a global scale, turnover reached $74.4 billion.
And it’s not just about the day of the event: between November 1 and Black Friday 2024, more than $107 billion was spent online in the US. The signs are clear in Europe too: in Spain, 76% of sales on Shopify came from mobile devices, while in the US, smartphones accounted for more than half of all purchases.
Acting now, in mid-September, allows you to take advantage of windows that are still open for email marketing, prepare campaigns with more sustainable advertising costs, and ensure that your site is ready to handle traffic spikes. In other words, by starting today, you build a head start that translates into measurable results in November, not a frantic rush.
The strategic plan in 10 macro-actions: your roadmap from September to November
We have distilled the hundreds of possible micro-activities into 10 strategic macro-areas. Think of these not as a simple list, but as a roadmap that will guide you from planning to execution, leaving nothing to chance and turning pre-event stress into a controlled competitive advantage.
PHASE 1: STRATEGY AND ANALYSIS (to be done immediately, in September)
This is the phase where you lay the foundations for your work.
September is the time to understand what worked last year, which channels were most profitable, where problems occurred, and which commercial margins you can exploit. From there, you can build clear objectives for 2025, update your roadmap, and define an offer that goes beyond generic discounts and focuses on specific products and strategies.
- 2024 post-mortem analysis and 2025 goal setting
Before thinking about new offers, start with last year’s data. Open your analytics tools and reconstruct the picture of Black Friday 2024, answering questions such as
- Which products sold the most? And which had the highest margin?
- Which channels drove the best-converting traffic (SEO, ADS, social media, email)?
- What were the main operational critical issues (slow website, server overload, overwhelmed customer care, logistics problems)?
This data is your gold mine. Starting from here, you can set clear, realistic, and measurable goals for 2025, such as +25% organic revenue, −10% abandoned carts, or +15% average order value.
- Intent mapping and keyword research 2.0
Keyword research based solely on historical volumes is an outdated approach. Today, you need to analyze search intent and surfaces. The process may include:
- Historical data analysis. Start with the previous year’s data, but with SEOZoom, you can understand which “classic” keywords (“Black Friday deals,” “[brand] discounts”) generated value. This is the foundation.
- SERP analysis. Don’t stop at the keyword. Analyze the results page to understand how Google responds. Is it showing videos? “Popular products” boxes? AI Overview? This tells you what type of content to create to be competitive.
- Competitive ADS analysis. With tools such as ADS Insight, you can see which topics your competitors are already paying to cover (or those they covered last Black Friday). The areas they invest their budget in are a powerful indicator of their commercial value and give you a clear indication of which search intentions lead to conversion.
- Social listening. Monitor conversations on TikTok, Instagram, and forums to understand the natural language users use to talk about products and offers, discovering long-tail queries and emerging trends that traditional tools don’t see.
The result is not a static list of keywords, but a map of intentions on which to build your pages, campaigns, and content.
- Definition of the offer and product catalog
A smart commercial strategy goes beyond simple price cuts—not everything has to be discounted, and not all discounts are the same. Based on the sales data and margins analyzed earlier, structure the catalog by identifying:
- Hero products: 2-3 products in very high demand with very aggressive discounts, which serve as bait to attract massive traffic to the site.
- Product bundles: packages of complementary products sold together at a special price. This technique is great for increasing the average order value (AOV).
- Time-limited offers (flash sales): offers valid for only a few hours, to create a sense of urgency and stimulate impulse buying during Black Week.
- Tiered discounts: mechanics such as “10% off on $50 spent, 20% off on $100 spent” encourage users to spend more to reach the higher discount threshold.
PHASE 2: TECHNICAL AND CONTENT PREPARATION (October)
October is used to lay two foundations: performance and shopping experience (mobile, checkout, payments, site stability) and editorial oversight (pre-indexed “hub” landing page and supporting content that intercepts informational and commercial intent).
Here you build technical stability, reduce friction in the user journey, and prepare the page that channels traffic from SEO, email, social media, and advertising.
- Optimization of user experience and technical performance
Combine technical preparation and page optimization into one big area: user experience. A slow or confusing site means money left on the table, especially during Black Friday.
- Performance and speed: put the site under stress with realistic tests—the goal is to stay under three seconds on mobile—and verify that the server is ready to handle a peak of 10 times more traffic than normal. Reduce page weight with images in modern formats such as AVIF or WebP, activate a CDN to distribute assets, use server-side compression, and limit third-party scripts. Gradually load what is “below the fold” with lazy loading, minify CSS and JavaScript, set up an efficient cache method (server + CDN), and defer the execution of non-essential scripts with defer/async. For critical content, help the browser with preload and preconnect on fonts, payments, and hero section resources.
- Navigation and checkout: simplify the purchase path. Checkout should be straightforward, flawless, and involve as few steps as possible. In practical terms, this means clear shipping costs and times already on the product page, active guest checkout, and quick wallets in the foreground (Apple Pay, Google Pay). Integrate a Buy Now, Pay Later option where it makes sense and reduce friction with address autocomplete and secure data storage. Keep the shopping cart consistent across devices, prepare microcopy that inspires confidence, and, on the technical side, prefetch the checkout page from the hottest shopping carts to load it faster.
- Mobile-First, Mobile-Only: think as if your site only existed on smartphones—that’s how most of your customers will experience it. Every page, every button, every image must be perfect on the small screen. Readable titles, easy-to-touch buttons, always visible CTAs, the right keyboards in forms, responsive images with srcset, and lazy loading for below-the-fold elements. Check the actual paths in limited network conditions: search for a product, change variants, add to cart, complete the order. If something slows down, optimize it immediately. A skeleton screen helps the perception of speed during heavier loads.
A fast and stable site during Black Week makes purchasing easy and allows you to get the most out of every visit.
- Creating the hub page and supporting content
Don’t scatter your promotions around the site; it’s better to have a single, recognizable entry point. Create a single main landing page (yoursite.com/black-friday) that serves as a hub for all offers, avoiding dispersion and concentrating organic traffic, paid campaigns, links from emails, and social mentions. Put the page online at the beginning of October, so it will have plenty of time to index and accumulate useful signals for ranking before the decisive weeks.
To make it truly effective:
- Optimize it with the keywords and intent you have found. Take care of the structure with a clear title and meta, a concise introduction, highlighted categories, dynamic blocks of offers, and an updated countdown. Add a form to sign up for a “VIP waiting list” and receive offers in advance.
- Prepare redirects from the 2024 version to the 2025 version, so that the new URL benefits from the history and authority already accumulated.
- Integrate relevant structured data (FAQs for promo conditions; Product where you have tabs with price and availability), take care of Open Graph for social sharing, and configure hreflang if you operate in multiple markets, so that Google correctly links the international versions.
- Align the publication with a small calendar: T-45 online landing page, T-30 first support articles, T-21 interlinking enhancement, T-14 relaunch on social media. Prepare variants for ADV and email and align UTM naming for consistent tracking.
Alongside the main page, work on supporting content that intercepts long-tail queries and informational or comparative needs (“best smartphones on offer for Black Friday 2025,” “gift ideas under $100”). These articles do not compete with the landing page, but reinforce it by bringing new traffic and internal links. Also plan for content such as user tutorials and enhanced FAQs (shipping, returns, warranties).
A well-built landing page supported by targeted content becomes the center of gravity of your Black Friday strategy, the point where traffic, campaigns, and user trust converge.
PHASE 3: MULTICHANNEL PLANNING AND LAUNCH (late October – November)
This is the phase where you turn preparation and content into actual campaigns. You need to decide how to distribute your budget across channels, launch campaigns before CPCs rise too high, create hype with email and social media, and, above all, speak differently to different segments of your audience.
The work done in September and October now takes shape in concrete, multi-channel actions.
- Integrated ADS strategy planning
In a competitive event like Black Friday, it’s almost impossible to stand out with organic traffic alone. SEA and ADS become even more essential components of your strategy than usual—but of course, you have to take into account that advertising costs are rising and competition is more aggressive. That’s why planning must start earlier, differentiating the types of investment and considering:
- Remarketing campaigns, to reconnect with users who have already visited the site or abandoned a shopping cart, customizing the creative based on the product viewed.
- Performance Max campaigns, to maximize coverage across the entire Google ecosystem (Search, Shopping, YouTube, Discover).
- Social campaigns (Meta, TikTok), to intercept latent demand and create hype with eye-catching video creatives or vertical carousels.
- Budget: set a clear budget, knowing that the cost per click will increase dramatically during the week of the event. Starting earlier with brand awareness campaigns can help mitigate costs, and then focus the rest on remarketing and brand defense on the big days.
A useful tip? Now is the time to use SEOZoom Ads Insights to analyze the copy and formats your competitors are investing in, discovering where to focus your budget and how to differentiate your creative content.
- Building multi-channel hype
At the end of October, you need to start “warming up” your audience. Launch a teaser campaign on social media, send the first emails to your list announcing the arrival of exceptional discounts, create curiosity by showing previews of the products on offer, and strongly encourage users to sign up to the VIP list for early access. Exclusivity is a very powerful psychological lever.
- Email marketing. Warm-up sequences: teaser → early access → countdown → last call. Take care of deliverability and segmentation as early as October.
- Social media. Posts and reels showing product previews, countdowns, and exclusive messages for those who register.
- Channel integration. All content must push towards the VIP list or Black Friday hub to centralize conversions.
Here too, you can use SEOZoom: with the new Social section, you can check which of your competitors’ content is generating the most engagement, and you can adapt the tone and format to scale visibility.
- Advanced segmentation and personalization
Don’t communicate with everyone in the same way, as users don’t all have the same purchasing behavior. Personalization is key because it increases conversion rates and reduces acquisition costs. Segment your audiences and tailor your messages:
- Loyal customers: Offer 24-hour early access or an extra discount as a thank you for their loyalty and continuity.
- Customers who bought last year: Remind them of their positive experience and give them a preview of this year’s new products.
- New subscribers: make their first experience with your brand feel special with a dedicated welcome offer that encourages their first purchase.
- Recover abandoned carts: targeted creatives featuring the product left in the cart, enhanced by time-limited incentives.
With messages and offers tailored to different audiences, you can transform your campaigns from generic communications into concrete levers for conversion.
PHASE 4: MANAGEMENT AND AFTER-SALES (November and beyond)
The moment of truth has arrived. But be careful: the user experience does not end with a click on the “Buy” button! You make the real difference in how you manage operational peaks and how you turn occasional buyers into regular customers.
This phase involves customer care, logistics, the ability to monitor data in real time, and a well-structured retention plan. And then, spoiler alert, you also need a plan B, because on the busiest days, something can go wrong: being prepared to handle the unexpected prevents you from compromising customer trust.
- Preparing customer support and logistics
A sales peak means an inevitable peak in support requests (“where’s my package?”, “how do returns work?”) and orders to be fulfilled. Be prepared with dedicated processes and resources:
- Customer care: organize your team, perhaps temporarily strengthening it or arranging extra shifts. Use chatbots for frequently asked questions and prepare clear, easy-to-find FAQs on key pages (shipping, returns, delivery times).
- Logistics: make sure your warehouse is ready to handle 10 times the normal volume of shipments and that carriers can guarantee acceptable delivery times. Define clear SLAs for deliveries and returns extended until January.
- Transparency: Proactively communicate any delays—a timely message can prevent frustration, complaints, and negative reviews.
Clear warehouse and customer service organization makes for a smooth experience and keeps confidence high even in times of increased pressure.
- Live monitoring, post-event analysis, and retention strategy
During Black Week, monitor performance in real time to make adjustments if necessary. But the most important work begins the day after Cyber Monday.
- Real-time monitoring: set up dashboards with key KPIs (traffic, CVR, AOV, technical errors, available stock) and update the data at hourly intervals.
- Post-event analysis: do your “post-mortem.” Analyze all data related to channels, campaigns, offers, and customer care: what worked? What didn’t? Which channels performed best? This information will form the basis for planning for 2026.
- Retention strategy: Activate a strategy immediately to turn bargain hunters into loyal customers. Send post-purchase emails to thank them and ask for a review, offer a discount voucher for a second purchase in January (a typically “slow” month), and include them in a valuable nurturing flow.
Black Friday doesn’t end with the transaction, it starts there. Measuring in real time and leveraging event data allows you to optimize choices on the fly and build relationships that last beyond the peak season.
- Contingency plan: anticipate the unexpected
Even with the best planning, the unexpected can happen. Having a contingency plan ready allows you to handle it without losing credibility.
- Servers and performance: plan for fallbacks with a lightweight static page and an on-call technical support plan.
- Payments: integrate multiple providers (e.g., Stripe + PayPal) so you’re not left exposed in case of blockages.
- Logistics: have agreements with multiple carriers and a predefined message to activate if there are delays.
- Communication: prepare email and social media post templates to update customers in case of problems, demonstrating transparency and attention.
Is your e-commerce ready?
Preparing for Black Friday means arriving in November with a roadmap already in place and a plan that brings together data, technology, communication, and customer relations.
If you start in September, each phase becomes manageable with less anxiety: analyze last year’s results, define your offer with clarity, test your website, plan campaigns and content, and strengthen logistics and support. That way, in November, you won’t find yourself chasing problems, but you’ll have clear processes for managing sales, support, and logistics.
Black Friday 2025 will be a challenging transition, but with a 10+1 step roadmap, it becomes an opportunity to consolidate sales and retain customers even after the peak season.
Operational FAQs about Black Friday for e-commerce
- When should I start preparing my e-commerce site for Black Friday?
It’s best to start in September: you’ll have time to analyze data, define goals and offers, create the landing page, and plan campaigns before advertising costs rise.
- How important is technical performance during Black Friday?
Very important: 53% of mobile users abandon a site that takes more than 3 seconds to load (source: Google). Optimizing speed, checkout, and mobile usability reduces abandonment and increases conversions.
- How do I choose which products to discount?
Work on margins and acquisition strategies: use loss leaders to attract traffic, bundles to increase average ticket size, flash sales to stimulate impulse buying, and progressive discounts to encourage higher spending.
- How much budget should I allocate to advertising for Black Friday?
There is no single figure: it depends on your industry and margins. In general, plan a portion for awareness in advance and focus the bulk on remarketing and brand defense on busy days.
- How can I retain customers acquired during Black Friday?
With thank-you emails, incentives to repurchase in the following months, nurturing campaigns, and simplified returns. Turning a one-time buyer into a repeat customer is the real ROI of the peak season.
- Do I really need a contingency plan?
Yes: technical or logistical problems can occur at peak times. Having technical fallbacks, alternative payment gateways, and emergency communication messages ready allows you to minimize damage.
