Black Friday 2025: 6 Quick Fixes for Your eCommerce Strategy

Black Friday 2024 taught us some valuable lessons you can use to optimise your peak season eCommerce strategy in 2025.

Looking at the stats from The Black Friday Report, we found that while sales peaked on Black Friday, they began to build up from early November. This provides yet further evidence that Cyber Weekend is becoming more of a Cyber Month.

Orders were also up by 10% for Black Friday YoY, highlighting the continued popularity of the event.

With the event bringing so many opportunities for sales, crafting an effective Black Friday strategy should be your top priority.

You may have already considered your promotions, but ensuring your site can keep up with the demand is equally important.

Getting ahead with your Black Friday planning will put your site in a good position to avoid missing out on conversions.

What is Black Friday?

Originating in America, Black Friday has grown in popularity in the UK, with shoppers making the most of major discounts before Christmas.

How long does Black Friday last?

Despite the Black Friday vs Cyber Monday debate, there is no competition. Both dates are extremely important for your website, with many retailers discounting throughout the whole of November.

When is Black Friday this year?

This year, the key eCommerce date falls on Friday 28th November 2025.

Why should you update your eCommerce strategy?

Last year, consumer spending began steadily increasing from early November, beginning to rise more rapidly following Singles Day on the 11th. This differs from previous Black Fridays, where spending has been more focused on the Cyber Weekend.

Instead of waiting until Black Friday to search for a deal, consumers are likely to show high purchase intent from the start of the month. To turn this intent into revenue for your brand, you’ll need to adapt your strategy to this change in consumer behaviour.

Additionally, with almost 13,500 physical store closures across 2024, many retailers will be putting their all into driving sales online.¹ This means that you’ll need to work harder to stand out in an even more congested and competitive market.

With buyer behaviour around Black Friday and Cyber Monday evolving each year, updating your eCommerce strategy will help you fulfil the needs of your customers.

So, let’s take a look at some of the quick fixes you can use to improve your Black Friday strategy.

Suggested reading: Want to learn more about increasing your overall conversion rate? Check out our article on quick wins to drive eCommerce sales.

How to optimise your eCommerce strategy for Black Friday

1. Use data and AI to inform your strategy

Leveraging shopper data is crucial to ensuring your Black Friday and Cyber Monday strategy succeeds.

It can help your brand adapt and react to consumer behaviour in real-time, helping you maximise engagement and conversions.

However, manually managing shopper data, for example, when segmenting emails, can bring a whole host of challenges, including being time-consuming. Luckily, there are now AI-powered tools that can do most of the work for you.

Solutions like Salesfire AI can track your shoppers’ behaviour on-site and use their real-time activity to trigger relevant content across your website, email, and SMS. These tools make it easy to deliver the right messaging at the right time, without spending hours on segmentation.

Harnessing AI is key during Black Friday, when you need to work quickly, and more traffic means more data to manage.

Suggested watching: Do you use Klaviyo for email retargeting? Watch our webinar to discover how AI identification could generate extra revenue from your email flows.

2. Create a user-friendly experience

What does your current user journey look like? 

From your homepage to checkout and everything in between, it’s crucial to optimise all touchpoints that your shoppers interact with.

You want to make it as easy as possible for your shoppers to find what they’re looking for and then navigate to the checkout.

For example, if you’re setting up specific Black Friday pay-per-click ads, consider also putting together a dedicated landing page. This can help to reduce bounces and maximise the value of each click, as shoppers can easily locate the products from the ad.

Another element of your site that influences how quickly shoppers find products is your on-site search.

Consider using an AI-powered search function that will return accurate results for your shoppers almost immediately.

By helping shoppers discover products speedily, you can get them through the checkout before their purchase intent drops off.

3. Make sure your promotions are front and centre

You’ve set up your promotional codes, your PPC ads are primed, and your stock is ready to go. Now it’s time to highlight your deals on-site.

Promoting your Black Friday deals effectively across your site can be easily overlooked during this busy time.

Your Black Friday advertising needs to be displayed throughout the entire site, not just on your homepage alone. This is because if a shopper enters your site through a landing page, they could miss your promotions entirely.

Using an on-site messaging tool can help maximise the visibility of your deals. These solutions track your shoppers’ behaviour to display promotional campaigns at the optimal moments in their journey.

By making visitors aware of your Black Friday deals at the right time, you can drive conversions and encourage shoppers to build bigger baskets.

4. Think beyond discounts

At a time of fierce competition and tight profit margins, anything that differentiates you is crucial for success.

While the deals draw people to your brand around Black Friday, it’s the brand experience that will make them stay. 

Consumers expect a seamless online shopping experience, with over 50% saying a difficult shopping experience negatively impacts their brand loyalty.² So a poor shopping experience during Black Friday could prevent a shopper from returning to buy from you in the future.

You can create effortless customer journeys by aligning your messaging across your marketing channels, highlighting your USPs and utilising personalisation.

Consider displaying personalised product recommendations within your emails, on product pages, and at checkout. This can help nurture shopper relationships and drive sales, as you’re showing products the user is likely to be interested in.

Your brand’s deals, USPs and customer experience are all things that will influence your shoppers’ decisions this Black Friday. So, to secure sales, make sure your website and marketing channels are representing your brand in the best light possible.

5. Maximise the opportunity for impulse purchases

The urgency of finding the best Black Friday deals significantly increases conversion rates.

Shoppers will check out much quicker to avoid missing out on their favourite products and gift ideas at limited-time low prices.

With visitors more likely to make impulse purchases, you need a Black Friday strategy that helps you seize these opportunities.

SMS marketing can be great for cutting through the Black Friday noise and reaching your shoppers with urgent, conversion-driving messaging.

SMS requires you to be short and snappy, which can be great for promoting flash sales or limited-time discounts. Reaching shoppers directly in their pockets or hands, SMS can encourage immediate action that increases your Black Friday conversion rate.

Suggested reading: Learn how to send effective SMS campaigns in our ‘Beginner’s Guide to SMS Marketing’.

6. Send engaging retargeting emails

While sales are likely your main Black Friday goal, all hope is not lost if shoppers don’t convert immediately.

Make sure you’re capturing email addresses from your Black Friday traffic, as this will ensure you can reach them again later.

Pro tip: Offering a monetary discount, such as £5 off, can incentivise more shoppers to subscribe to your email marketing.

Once you’ve secured a shopper’s email address, you can then send emails to follow up on their Black Friday visit.

Browse and cart abandonment email flows are essential to include within your Black Friday strategy. These can remind distracted shoppers of the items they left behind, encouraging them to return to your site and convert.

Retargeting emails can allow you to generate revenue from shoppers who otherwise may disappear forever.

Suggested reading: Check your campaigns follow email marketing best practices ahead of Black Friday. The copy, images and functionality of your emails all directly impact how well shoppers engage with your campaigns, meaning optimising these is key.

You’re Black Friday ready

By now, you should have a good idea of how to make the most of the surge in traffic through your site.

By offering a great online shopping experience for Black Friday, you’ll not only boost sales but also build up your repeat customer base.

It’s also important to remember that it isn’t all about discounts. Optimising the entire customer journey with our quick fixes, from first visit to post-purchase, can help you truly succeed this Black Friday.

1 UK: Nearly 13,500 retail stores closed in 2024, independents hit hardest | FashionUnited

2 Customer experience is critical to loyalty, and many executives miss the mark | PwC