Black Friday and the systems behind it

Black Friday is a well-known shopping event that takes place at the end of November. This year it falls on 27 November, but how long the promotions last depends on the shop. For some, the sale will end the same day. For others, it will run until Sunday. And some shops start much earlier, a week or even a month before. This is what happens in Poland among some of the larger, more established retailers, where the biggest discounts now often begin in early November or even in the last days of October.

Why does it matter already in October?

Black Friday and the run-up to Christmas bring a sudden surge of visitors, and with them more orders, more customer questions, and more returns. All of that also means more data, which the software behind the shop must handle at the busiest time of the year.

American figures show what such a stretched calendar does to spending. US consumers spent $44.2B online during Cyber Week 2025, but $137.4B between November 1st and December 1st. Most of the money, in other words, was spent away from the headline days.

That is why October is the last moment to decide how long the promotion will run, which products or services it will cover and what the shop should look like while it lasts.

Is Black Friday still worth it?

On a global scale, the event keeps growing. Online Black Friday spending reached $79B worldwide in 2025, around 6% more than a year earlier.

Europe paints a more mixed picture. Average basket values grew fastest in Sweden, Germany, and Poland, while Italy, France and the UK grew more slowly. Yet in one major affiliate network, Cyber Weekend sales fell by 4% in Germany and by 5% in Poland, even as the UK, Italy, France, Spain, and the Netherlands moved up. Larger baskets do not automatically mean more sales, and the result is never guaranteed.

So is it worth investing in promotions and in improving the shop? That depends on the sector and on how the shop performed at the end of previous years. The overall trend, though, is hard to ignore: the demand is there for those who are ready to serve it.

What can last year’s numbers tell you?

The best place to start is your own traffic from last season. On which day, or in which week, between early November and the second half of December did sales jump the most? Which products sold best? Which pages attracted the most visitors? And where along the purchase path did customers run into problems?

It pays to look at the hours, not just the days. Data from Polish online shops shows that just over half of fourth-quarter purchases happen during working hours, between 8am and 5pm. The busiest single hour, however, tends to come in the evening, around 8pm or 9pm. So the shop must carry a steady load all day and still have headroom for the evening spike, with the team ready for both.

Once that picture is clear, it is time to look at the technical side of the shop.

Can your current system take the extra load?

Let us assume we are running promotions, bundles, or volume discounts on part of the range. We announce on our marketing channels almost a month in advance that we are celebrating on a given day or week, and traffic really does go up. That does not always translate into a matching rise in revenue.

• One visitor gives up because the discounted offer is not visible straight away.
• Another leaves because their preferred delivery option is missing, while a competitor offers it.
• A third abandons the basket because they cannot pay the way they are used to.

That last point matters more every year. The buy now, pay later market is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 23.15% in the UK until 2031, with Poland close behind at 21.3%. Paying in instalments is fast becoming a standard expectation across Europe, and a checkout without it can quietly send customers elsewhere.

In the worst case, the server cannot cope with the load and some customers leave not by choice, but because of technical problems.

How do you prevent a Black Friday breakdown?

Begin with a load test that covers the entire purchase path: home page, product page, basket and checkout. Run it on mobile as well as desktop. On Cyber Monday 2025, smartphones accounted for 57.5% of online sales in the US, so a slow mobile checkout is far from a minor flaw.

Share the results with your technology provider or implementation partner. If the infrastructure does not scale automatically, agree in advance who will add capacity, and when.

Then set a cut-off date for changes. November and December are the wrong time for a redesign, a new integration or a large release, because any fault will surface exactly when traffic is highest. After the cut-off, only critical fixes should go live.

Promotional landing pages deserve the same discipline. Heavy imagery and a stack of pop-ups slow the page down and pull attention away from the purchase.

For shops selling in the EU, there is also a legal detail worth automating. Under the Omnibus Directive, a reduced price should generally be shown alongside the lowest price applied in the 30 days before the discount, and the discount calculated from that figure. With hundreds of products on sale, checking this by hand is an invitation to mistakes.

Will the back office keep up?

A fast storefront is only half the job. Once orders start coming in, they must be picked, packed and shipped, and stock levels must stay accurate across every channel. An ERP system should process this data continuously rather than in batches. Otherwise, the shop may keep selling products that are already gone.

A good moment to start is around eight weeks before the peak: review last season’s sales, identify the products that bring in most of the revenue, raise minimum stock for them, set separate safety buffers for each sales channel and switch on low-stock alerts.

Automation is where the real savings lie. Xentral, a German ERP provider, offers a telling comparison: for a shop handling around 200 orders a day, two temporary workers for six weeks of peak season would cost roughly €3,000 to €6,000, including recruitment and onboarding. Setting up the ERP to automate the same work takes four to eight hours, depending on the modules already in place, and the configuration can be reused every year.

Customer service is under the same pressure. Most peak-season enquiries concern delivery status and returns. AI tools can sort them and suggest replies, provided they draw on an up-to-date knowledge base with product information and return rules.

What should happen, and when?

With Black Friday about seven weeks away, the preparation can be split into four stages:

• Now: analyse last season, choose the products for the promotion, raise stock for best sellers, run the load test and review payment and delivery options for each market you sell to.
• Four weeks out: automate labels and stock alerts, set channel buffers, check Omnibus-compliant pricing and finish the landing pages. This is also the last moment for larger changes to the shop.
• The final week: freeze changes, test processes with sample orders and enquiries, agree who handles which problems and update delivery times in every channel.
• After the peak: restore standard settings and record what worked, so that next year’s planning starts from data.

What happens after the last parcel ships?

The season does not end with the Christmas deliveries. In December 2025, 61.4% of sales value in the shops analysed by one Polish e-commerce platform came from first-time customers. Many of them will not come back unless they are given a reason to.

Newsletter sign-up at checkout, January remarketing campaigns and welcome codes for a second purchase are simple ways to turn seasonal buyers into regular ones. A reminder about unused gift cards is another good excuse to get in touch.

Is your shop ready for the crowds?

Crowds of shoppers are exactly what every shop hopes for, if it can handle them. A good campaign can bring the traffic, but whether that traffic turns into revenue depends on performance, payments, logistics and well-connected systems. October is still quiet enough to check each of them calmly. By late November, there will be no time left to fix what does not work.

Want a team on your side when the traffic hits? With our Commerce Operations Retainer, we look after your shop's stability and development all year round, including the busiest weeks of the season. Let's talk before November begins.