Black Friday and the run-up to Christmas are among the busiest periods of the year for many online stores. It\u2019s not just website traffic and order volumes that increase \u2013 your website, warehouse, customer service team and delivery partners all come under additional pressure. <\/p>\n\n
That\u2019s why seasonal preparation shouldn\u2019t be limited to promotional offers and advertising campaigns. Even a well-planned campaign won\u2019t help if a customer lands on a slow product page, can\u2019t apply a discount or only finds out after placing an order that it won\u2019t arrive before Christmas. <\/p>\n\n
In its 2026 Black Friday preparation guide<\/a>, Shopify also highlights areas beyond marketing, including store performance, checkout, order fulfilment and customer retention after the campaign.<\/p>\n\n So, what should you check before the busiest sales period of the year begins?<\/p>\n\n Start with the pages you expect to send the most campaign traffic to. This won\u2019t necessarily be your homepage \u2013 individual product pages, collections and campaign landing pages are often more important. <\/p>\n\n Open them on your phone and check whether they load quickly, product variants are easy to select, the purchase button is easy to find and nothing gets in the way of browsing.<\/p>\n\n For a technical overview, you can use Google PageSpeed Insights<\/a> and Core Web Vitals<\/a>. If your store runs on Shopify, you can also use its Web Performance<\/a> reports. These provide insight into loading speed, interactivity and visual stability, and can help you understand whether theme, app or code changes have affected store performance. <\/p>\n\n Technical metrics alone aren\u2019t enough, though. Before the campaign starts, go through the entire purchase journey yourself on a mobile device \u2013 from the advertised product page to the cart and checkout. This often reveals issues that performance scores alone won\u2019t show. <\/p>\n\n If you\u2019re planning several promotions at the same time, it isn\u2019t enough to check whether each one works individually \u2013 you also need to test how they behave together in real purchase scenarios. Check whether discounts are applied to the correct products, whether they can be combined with other discount codes, how discounts affect free-shipping thresholds and whether the final amount shown in the cart is always correct. <\/p>\n\n Shopify<\/a> allows different types of discounts to be combined, but the combinations available depend on the discount type and your store settings. One area that deserves particular attention is how discounts affect your free-shipping threshold. <\/p>\n\n For example, if you offer free shipping on orders over \u20ac50 and a customer adds \u20ac55 worth of products to their cart but receives a \u20ac10 discount, the final cart value becomes \u20ac45. In that case, the order would no longer qualify for free shipping. You can read more about this in Shopify\u2019s free-shipping discount documentation<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n Before launching the campaign, also check the start and end times of your promotions, which products they apply to and any exclusions you have set.<\/p>\n\n If most of your advertising budget will be focused on a small number of products, their stock levels deserve particularly close attention. Don\u2019t look only at the total inventory for each product. Check the availability of the most popular variants too \u2013 sizes, colours, configurations or other options. A product may still appear to be in stock even though its most popular variant is almost sold out. <\/p>\n\n When planning inventory, use sales data from previous periods to understand which products performed best during promotions, which variants sold out first and which items take longer to restock. This can help you estimate where you may need additional inventory during the season. <\/p>\n\n It\u2019s also worth deciding in advance what you\u2019ll do if the main product in your campaign does sell out. You might redirect advertising to a similar product, another variant or a prepared alternative offer. Having that plan ready before the campaign begins means you won\u2019t need to make rushed decisions while your ads are already running. <\/p>\n\n Before the sales peak, check more than just your product pages. Test the entire ordering process \u2013 from adding a product to the cart through to receiving the order confirmation.<\/p>\n\n Place a test order and make sure the correct price appears in the cart, planned discounts are applied, your main payment methods work, delivery charges are calculated correctly, inventory is updated after the purchase and the customer receives the correct order confirmation email.<\/p>\n\n1. Check your most important pages on mobile<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n
2. Test your promotions and discounts in advance<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n
3. Review the inventory of the products you plan to promote<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n
4. Complete a test purchase from start to finish<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n