Black Friday falls on 27 November this year, with Cyber Monday on the 30th. That gives you roughly three weeks: enough to prepare properly, not enough to start big projects. The checklist below is split into technical and marketing work, roughly in order of priority. Anything you can't finish in time, park it for next year rather than shipping it half-done.
Rule number one: a code freeze
Pick a date now (around 20 November is sensible) after which nothing changes on the site except bug fixes. No new plugins, no theme updates, no "quick tweak to the checkout". Most Black Friday disasters we see aren't caused by traffic. They're caused by something that changed the Thursday before.
Technical preparation
1. Hosting and load capacity
- Talk to your hosting provider now, not on Friday. Ask what happens if you exceed your plan's resources: throttling, overage charges, or suspension?
- On WooCommerce, make sure you have an object cache (Redis or Memcached) and that your page cache isn't serving the wrong cart to the wrong person.
- Put a CDN in front of images and static assets if you haven't already.
- Run a basic load test on staging to see where things break. Even a simple tool will tell you whether you can handle dozens of simultaneous checkouts.
2. Page speed
A slow category page costs more on sale day than on any other day. Check Core Web Vitals on your key templates: LCP under 2.5 seconds, INP under 200ms, CLS under 0.1. The quickest wins at this time of year:
- Compress and correctly size your campaign banners (this is usually where a 3MB PNG sneaks in).
- Remove scripts you don't need: old pixels, chat widgets nobody answers, sliders.
- Countdown timers and popups are fine, as long as they don't shift the layout.
If you want a hand with this, see our speed and Core Web Vitals service.
3. Checkout and payments
- Place test orders with every payment method you offer: cards, IRIS, Apple/Google Pay, cash on delivery, PayPal.
- Confirm with your bank or payment provider that there are no transaction limits that could cut you off on a peak day.
- Test that coupons work and don't stack where they shouldn't (discount on top of discount on top of free shipping).
- Check your transactional emails (order confirmation, shipping, cancellation). Are they landing in spam?
4. Feeds for Skroutz, BestPrice and Google Shopping
Black Friday week is when Greek shoppers compare prices more than ever. If your feed updates once a day, your sale prices will show up late. Worse, Skroutz might show one price and your site another.
- Increase the feed refresh frequency during the sale.
- Make sure availability is accurate. A product that sells out but still shows as "available immediately" on Skroutz leads to cancellations and bad reviews.
- In Google Merchant Center, use the sale price attribute with start and end dates instead of manually changing the regular price.
More on this in our product feeds service.
5. Backups and a recovery plan
Take a full backup before the code freeze and daily backups during the week. Write down who does what if the site goes down: who you call, where the credentials are, how a restore works.
Pricing and the rules
In Greece, as across the EU, when you announce a price reduction the reference price must be the lowest price the product had during a period before the discount (typically the previous 30 days). In practice:
- Don't raise prices in early November so you can "cut" them on Black Friday. Beyond being shady, it's easy to check.
- Make sure your platform keeps a price history or that you can document the reference price.
- Check the current rules on sales and promotions, as the details do change.
This is not legal advice. For your specific situation, talk to your accountant or a lawyer.
Marketing preparation
6. Decide what you'll offer (and what you won't)
Not everything needs to be discounted. A sensible approach for a small shop:
- A few "hero" products at a genuinely good price to drive traffic.
- Bundles instead of deep discounts, to protect your margin.
- Free shipping over a threshold as an alternative to a price cut.
- Excluding low-margin products entirely.
Do the maths: after the discount, shipping, payment fees and Skroutz commission, do you still make money on each order?
7. Build the email list before the day
Black Friday sales depend heavily on the list you already have. Between now and the 27th:
- Add a "notify me about the deals" form to the homepage and blog.
- Send a teaser email the week before.
- Schedule the week's emails: launch, reminder, "last hours", Cyber Monday.
- Check that your abandoned cart emails are working. You'll have plenty of abandoned carts this week.
8. A landing page
Create a page (e.g. /black-friday) early, with a "coming soon" message and a sign-up form. That gives Google time to index it, and you can reuse the same URL every year instead of creating a new one.
9. Advertising
- Raise budgets gradually, not all at once on Friday morning. The algorithms need time to adjust.
- Prepare creatives now and get them through ad review early.
- Expect cost per click to rise this week. Retargeting people who already know you usually performs better than cold traffic.
10. Shipping and customer service
- Tell ACS, ELTA, Geniki Taxydromiki or whichever courier you use about the expected volume.
- Show realistic dispatch times. "Ships in 2–3 working days" and keeping it beats "same-day dispatch" and missing it.
- Stock up on packaging and, if needed, line up extra hands for packing.
- Prepare canned replies to the common questions: when will it arrive, how do returns work, does the coupon apply?
After Black Friday
Keep notes while the week is running: what broke, what sold, which email performed, which page was slow. Those notes are the most valuable input for next year. And remember that the Christmas season follows straight after, with its own shipping deadlines. Our guide to shipping strategy and the free-shipping threshold is a good refresher before then.
The short version
- Code freeze from around 20 November
- Hosting, cache and CDN checked
- Core Web Vitals on key pages
- Test orders with every payment method
- More frequent feed updates and accurate stock
- Backups and a recovery plan
- Reference prices that follow the rules
- Offers with a positive margin
- Emails scheduled, abandoned cart flow live
- Landing page on a permanent URL
- Courier briefed, realistic dispatch times
If you'd like a second pair of eyes on your shop before peak week, get in touch. A check now costs far less than a site that goes down on Friday morning.
