Black Friday 2026: 10 Tips to Prepare Your eCommerce Store

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have become two of the most important dates on the Australian retail calendar.

In 2026, Black Friday falls on Friday, 27 November, followed by Cyber Monday on Monday, 30 November. However, the reality is that Black Friday is no longer confined to a single weekend. Many retailers now begin promoting offers days or even weeks beforehand, turning November into an extended period of highly competitive online shopping.

For Australian eCommerce businesses, that creates a significant opportunity, but simply adding a discount code to your website and sending an email on Black Friday morning is unlikely to be enough.

Australian shoppers are becoming increasingly price-conscious and selective. According to the Australia Post eCommerce Report 2026, Australians spent $82.6 billion online during 2025, an increase of 14% year-on-year. At the same time, average basket sizes have been declining as consumers shop more frequently while looking harder for value.

A successful Black Friday campaign therefore needs to consider much more than the size of your discount.

Your website, stock, pricing, advertising, email marketing, fulfilment and customer experience all need to work together.

Here are 10 areas I recommend preparing before Black Friday arrives.

1. Start Planning Your Black Friday Campaign Early

One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is leaving their Black Friday campaign until November.

Customers are starting their research earlier, retailers are launching promotions earlier, and advertising becomes increasingly competitive as Black Friday approaches.

Ideally, you should begin preparing your campaign several weeks before your promotion goes live.

Start by creating a simple campaign timeline that covers:

• Black Friday teaser campaigns
• Email subscriber or VIP early access
• Your official sale launch
• Black Friday weekend
• Cyber Monday
• Final sale reminders
• Post-sale customer follow-ups

You don’t necessarily need to discount products throughout this entire period.

You might tease the promotion first, offer early access to existing customers, launch your main Black Friday offer, then introduce a slightly different Cyber Monday incentive.

Planning this beforehand allows your marketing to feel coordinated rather than rushed.

It also gives you time to test your website, advertising, emails and promotions properly before customers arrive.

2. Decide What You Actually Want Black Friday to Achieve

It’s easy to focus on revenue during Black Friday, but more revenue doesn’t necessarily mean more profit.

Before choosing your promotion, decide what you want the campaign to achieve.

For example, your goal might be to:

• Generate more overall revenue
• Acquire new customers
• Increase average order value
• Move excess or ageing stock
• Increase repeat purchases
• Grow your email or SMS database
• Introduce customers to a new product range

Your strategy should then support that goal.

If increasing average order value is important, a spend-and-save promotion or free shipping threshold may perform better than simply discounting every product.

If you’re trying to move particular stock, create bundles or targeted discounts around those products.

If customer acquisition is the priority, you may be prepared to accept a lower margin on a customer’s first purchase because you have a strong strategy for generating repeat business afterwards.

Most importantly, calculate the real cost of your offer.

Consider your product margin, payment processing fees, shipping, packaging, advertising costs, returns and any additional fulfilment costs before deciding how aggressively you can discount.

A busy Black Friday that generates hundreds of unprofitable orders isn’t necessarily a successful one.

3. Choose Your Products and Prepare Your Inventory

Not every product needs to be part of your Black Friday promotion.

Start by reviewing your sales data and identifying:

• Your best-selling products
• High-margin products
• Products commonly purchased together
• Slow-moving stock
• Products likely to be purchased as Christmas gifts
• Products that can encourage future repeat purchases

Once you know what you want to promote, make sure you have enough stock available.

Speak with suppliers early if you need additional inventory. Supplier lead times and freight delays can become more problematic as retailers begin preparing for Christmas.

You should also check that your website accurately reflects your inventory.

There’s nothing more frustrating for a customer than placing an order during a major sale only to discover several days later that the item isn’t actually available.

If stock is limited, being transparent about availability can also help customers make a quicker purchasing decision without relying on artificial urgency.

4. Create an Offer That Is Valuable, Simple and Genuine

You don’t necessarily need the biggest discount on the internet to have a successful Black Friday.

You need an offer customers can quickly understand and genuinely see value in.

That might include:

• Percentage discounts
• Dollar-value discounts
• Spend-and-save promotions
• Product bundles
• Buy-one-get-one promotions
• Free gifts with qualifying purchases
• Free or discounted shipping
• Exclusive VIP offers

Try to avoid making the promotion unnecessarily complicated.

If customers need to read several paragraphs of conditions before understanding how your Black Friday offer works, there is a good chance you’ll lose some of them along the way.

There is another increasingly important consideration for Australian retailers: make sure your sale claims are genuine.

The ACCC has been actively examining Black Friday advertising and announced in April 2026 that it was investigating several retailers following its 2025 Black Friday sweep. Around half of the 50 retailers reviewed had advertising claims that raised concerns.

Particular areas of concern have included misleading:

• “Was / now” pricing
• “Up to X% off” promotions
• “Sitewide” or “storewide” discount claims
• Recommended retail price comparisons
• Countdown timers
• Limited-time promotions that don’t actually finish when advertised

Australian businesses must not create a misleading impression about the price of a product or the amount a customer is saving.

Urgency can be an effective marketing tool, but it should always be genuine.

5. Make Sure Your Website Is Ready for Increased Traffic

Your Black Friday marketing can do everything right and still fail if your website isn’t ready.

A slow, confusing or unreliable website becomes particularly costly during high-intent shopping periods because customers know there are dozens of competing offers only a few clicks away.

Before Black Friday, I recommend checking:

• Website loading speed
• Mobile performance
• Hosting resources
• Caching and CDN configuration
• Product page performance
• Site search
• Product filtering
• Cart functionality
• Coupon codes
• Shipping calculations
• Payment gateways
• Transactional emails
• Analytics and conversion tracking

Pay particular attention to your mobile shopping experience.

Don’t just test the homepage on your phone. Go through the complete customer journey yourself.

Find a product, choose a variation, add it to the cart, apply a promotion, calculate shipping and complete a test purchase.

Look for unnecessary steps, confusing fields or anything that might slow the customer down.

I also recommend avoiding unnecessary website updates immediately before your sale begins. Major plugin updates, theme changes or new functionality are much better tested beforehand than introduced on Black Friday morning.

Make a complete website backup before the campaign starts as well.

6. Make Your Black Friday Offers Easy to Find

When somebody arrives on your website during Black Friday, they shouldn’t have to search for your sale.

Make the promotion obvious.

Consider updating your website with:

• A Black Friday announcement bar
• Homepage promotional banners
• Sale badges on eligible products
• A dedicated Black Friday landing page
• Promotional product categories
• Featured product sections
• Clear calls to action

Your Black Friday landing page can be particularly useful because it gives you one central destination for email campaigns, Google Ads, Meta advertising, social media and other marketing channels.

It’s also worth improving the information customers need immediately before making a purchase.

Make sure product pages clearly communicate things such as:

• Product features and benefits
• Sizes or variations
• Stock availability
• Shipping costs
• Estimated delivery
• Returns information
• Warranty information
• Customer reviews
• Secure payment options

Black Friday shouldn’t mean covering your website in flashing banners, countdown timers and pop-ups.

The objective is to make purchasing easier, not more distracting.

7. Start Building Your Email and SMS Audience Before Black Friday

Your existing customer database can be one of your most valuable Black Friday marketing assets.

Unlike paid advertising, you aren’t paying every time you want to communicate with someone who has already chosen to hear from your business.

Start building anticipation before the sale.

You could encourage visitors to sign up to:

“Get early access to our Black Friday sale.”

That gives customers a clear reason to subscribe while allowing you to grow your marketing database before your campaign begins.

From there, consider creating several audience segments.

For example:

• Existing customers
• VIP or high-value customers
• Recent customers
• Previous Black Friday customers
• Engaged subscribers
• Customers interested in particular product categories
• Customers who haven’t purchased recently

This allows you to send more relevant campaigns rather than sending exactly the same message to everybody.

Your automated email flows should also be checked before Black Friday.

Make sure important automations such as abandoned cart, abandoned checkout, browse abandonment and welcome emails are functioning correctly.

These campaigns can recover revenue without requiring you to manually chase individual customers.

8. Coordinate Your Advertising and Social Media

Black Friday is an extremely noisy advertising period.

Customers will be seeing promotions across Google, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, email, marketplaces and countless other websites.

Consistency helps your campaign stand out.

Your Black Friday branding, messaging and offer should feel like the same campaign wherever someone encounters it.

Prepare your creative assets beforehand, including:

• Website banners
• Social media graphics
• Video content
• Google Ads creative
• Meta Ads creative
• Email graphics
• Product imagery

If you’re running paid advertising, don’t rely entirely on reaching people who have never heard of your business.

Black Friday is an excellent time to reconnect with people who already know your brand through remarketing campaigns.

Depending on your tracking setup, audiences could include previous website visitors, product viewers, cart abandoners and existing customers.

You should also check that your Google Merchant Center or other product feeds are accurate before the sale begins if you’re running Shopping campaigns.

Incorrect prices, stock availability or promotional information can quickly undermine an otherwise well-planned campaign.

9. Prepare Shipping, Fulfilment, Returns and Customer Support

Getting the order is only half the job.

Your Black Friday customer experience continues until the product arrives and the customer is happy with their purchase.

Australia Post’s latest eCommerce research highlights how important delivery choice and certainty have become to online shoppers. Around 69% of shoppers want multiple delivery options available at checkout, while faster delivery becomes particularly important for time-sensitive purchases.

Before your campaign begins, make sure you understand how increased order volumes will affect your business.

Consider:

• Available stock
• Packing materials
• Staff availability
• Courier collection schedules
• Dispatch times
• Express shipping
• Click and collect
• Christmas delivery cut-offs
• Returns and exchanges
• Customer service capacity

Communicate expected dispatch and delivery times clearly.

If your normal next-day dispatch becomes three-day dispatch during Black Friday, tell customers before they order rather than leaving them wondering where their parcel is.

Clear communication can prevent a large number of unnecessary customer service enquiries.

10. Track Your Results and Turn Black Friday Buyers Into Repeat Customers
One of the biggest opportunities from Black Friday actually happens after Black Friday.

You’ll hopefully have a new group of customers who have now experienced your products and your business for the first time.

Don’t disappear once their order has been delivered.

Instead, think about how you can turn those customers into repeat buyers.

You might use:

• Post-purchase email campaigns
• Product recommendations
• Replenishment reminders
• Review requests
• Loyalty programs
• Referral incentives
• Exclusive customer offers
• Christmas campaigns
• New product announcements

You should also make sure your analytics are working before the sale begins.

Depending on your website and marketing setup, this may include platforms such as Google Analytics 4, Google Tag Manager, Meta Pixel, Meta Conversions API, Microsoft Advertising UET and your eCommerce platform‘s own reporting tools.

Important metrics to review include:

• Revenue
• Number of orders
• Conversion rate
• Average order value
• Advertising cost
• Return on ad spend
• New versus returning customers
• Cart abandonment
• Email revenue
• Best-selling products
• Website traffic sources

Don’t simply compare Black Friday revenue with an ordinary weekend.

Compare your results against previous Black Friday campaigns and consider the additional advertising, discounts and fulfilment costs required to generate that revenue.

This gives you far more useful information when planning next year’s campaign.

Black Friday Success Comes Down to Preparation

Black Friday presents a huge opportunity for Australian eCommerce businesses, but it’s also one of the most competitive times of the year.

The businesses that perform well aren’t necessarily those offering the biggest discount.

They’re often the businesses that have prepared properly.

They know what they’re promoting, understand their margins, have stock ready, provide a fast and easy shopping experience, communicate clearly with customers and have their marketing campaigns prepared before the rush begins.

Start early, test everything and think beyond the initial transaction.

A successful Black Friday campaign shouldn’t simply generate a temporary spike in sales. Done properly, it can introduce your business to thousands of new customers and create relationships that continue well beyond the holiday shopping period.