Black Friday eCommerce Checklist: 25 Store Checks Before Peak Season

What we covered in 90 minutes

On 7 October 2026, five ecommerce specialists went through the things that quietly cost online shops money during Black Friday. Not strategy, not predictions. Twenty-five concrete checks across the whole buying journey, from the first click on an ad to the delivered parcel.

If you could not join us live, the recording, the checklist and the partner offers are all below.

Download the 25-check PDF & Partner Offers

One document with all 25 checks in the order they were presented, so you can work through them before your campaign goes live and tick them off as you go.

Workshop recap: what the speakers said

Black Friday is born in October: what five specialists told merchants this year

Ad costs are up, margins are down, and every shop gets the same calendar. On 7 October, Aqurate brought five specialists together for one workshop: theMarketer, Uxify, easySales, Innoship and Aqurate. Each one covered a different stage of the order, from the first email to the returned parcel. By the end, they all agreed on one thing: Black Friday is won before it starts.

The full checklist, all 25 checks, is in the PDF. This recap covers the ideas behind it.

"The right offer, to the right client, at the right time"

Marius from theMarketer started with the inbox, and he started with a warning.

"Black Friday is not just about offering a discount. The goal is to make sure the right offer reaches the right client at the right time."

His advice: don't open your email tool first. Decide what you want Black Friday to do for you, whether that's clearing last season's stock, raising AOV or bringing back customers who stopped buying a year ago. The campaigns come after that. He also brought a number worth testing this year. In November 2025, bulk SMS on theMarketer converted at 3.5%. Automated SMS converted at 11%.

One blink can cost you the sale

Viktoria from Uxify reminded everyone where the traffic lands: on a phone, on mobile data, deep in the site, in a wave right after your 9 AM email.

"32 milliseconds is literally one blink. And that one blink can be very expensive, especially around Black Friday."

She also had a new reason to care about pages that jump around while they load: AI shopping agents. When a banner shifts at the wrong moment, the agent doesn't wait. It moves on to the next store.

"It's even less forgiving than a shopper would be."

Where's the salesperson?

Tudor from Aqurate asked the audience to picture two shops. One has a great campaign out front and nobody inside. The other has a salesperson who asks good questions, brings the right pair and suggests the right extra.

"If we have a very nice campaign bringing people in, but the salesperson is basically non-existent, we've just wasted all the money we put in to bring the person into the shop."

His point: same traffic, same ad budget, same discounts. A small lift in conversion rate and AOV can decide whether your first order is profitable. Timing matters too. Someone still choosing between sneakers doesn't want waterproof spray yet. Once they've decided, they do.

Black Friday isn't a day. It's a morning.

Attila from easySales brought the numbers from the order side. Black Friday brings about 4.6 times a normal October day's orders. Between 8 and 9 AM, merchants get 71% of a normal day's orders in one hour.

"Black Friday is not really a day. It's a morning."

Hiring for the peak doesn't fix it either: two months to find someone, one month to train them, and the peak lasts two weeks. His answer is to take the manual work out now, then test it properly.

"If nothing broke in your test, the test was probably too small."

The brand doesn't end at checkout

Daniel from Innoship covered the last mile, which most shoppers remember longest. Why send your customer to a carrier's tracking page when it can be yours, with your banners and your next campaign on it?

"Everyone helps you sell more. But then comes the return wave."

The biggest mistake? Thinking it's only marketing.

In the Q&A, the question was simple: what mistake do shops make most often on Black Friday?

Tudor: too much effort on bringing traffic in, too little on what happens once it arrives.

"It's so much easier to push someone who has already decided slightly up, or add something to their basket, than to convince someone completely new."

Attila went further:

"The most common mistake is treating Black Friday as a marketing problem, when it's actually an operations problem."

Which brings us back to Attila's closing line, and to the reason we ran this workshop in early October:

"Black Friday is born in October. In November, you just do what you prepared."

[Download the checklist with all 25 checks + watch the full recording]

Where to start if you only have an hour

Twenty-five checks is a lot to look at in one sitting. If you only have an hour, start with the ones that decide whether a shopper can find what they came for: a search bar that returns nothing, a sold-out product at the top of a category page, a checkout with one delivery option.

Those are the cheapest to fix and the most expensive to ignore. You will pay premium prices to bring people to your site in November. What happens in the 30 seconds after they land is the part you can still control.

How Aqurate fits

Aqurate Search understands what a shopper means instead of matching exact words. It handles typos and synonyms and returns results in under 50 milliseconds.

Aqurate Personalize replaces static bestseller lists with AI-driven recommendations across your site and email, with merchandising controls built in so you keep the final say.

Both go live fast on supported platforms, with no developer required. The free trial runs 30 days, and our Black Friday offer gives you 30% off for two months after it.

Watch the full recording

Ninety minutes, including the live Q&A at the end. Each partner covers their own five checks.