You know that scene in every heist movie where the team isn’t planning anymore, they’re just doing final checks?
“Are we good?” “Is this locked?” “Did you cross-check everything?”
That’s exactly where we are right now.
With about ten days left before Black Friday and Cyber Monday, this is not the moment to build new ideas or test unproven tactics.
This is the moment where stability matters more than creativity. Your discount logic, your bundles, your inventory, your website flow, and your backup plan if a best-seller sells out.
Alright, let’s keep it simple.
Here is the last-minute checklist that actually matters, the things worth double-checking before the traffic hits, and everything starts moving fast.
If there is one thing shoppers should never feel on Black Friday, it is confusion. Your main offer needs to show up the same way everywhere: homepage banner, announcement bar, first pop-up when the visitor opens the website.
Remember, testing is important!
For example, take Crocs. When you open their site, the main banner shows “Up to 60% Off Select Styles.” The pop-up bar that appears below repeats the same message. Everything matches, and the customer sees one clear promotion.
Even if you run extra promos for specific collections or loyalty members, keep your main Black Friday offer consistent across your homepage, announcement bar, and first pop-up. Also, tiered discounts are an easy way to increase cart value while protecting your margins. A simple structure like 10% off $75+ and 15% off $100+ encourages shoppers to add one more item to reach the next level.
Most Black Friday shoppers will not land on your homepage. Most arrive through product pages, creator links, Google Shopping results, email clicks, or TikTok Shop. So, focus on the pages people actually land on, because that first screen decides whether they stay or leave. Make sure your most visited pages check out on the basics:
For the weekend itself, adding one simple extra on top of your main discount works well. It could be a bonus box, a mystery gift unlocked at a certain spend, or a spin-and-win reward that only appears during these peak days.
A bit of randomness makes the discount feel earned, not just given, which increases customer engagement and keeps people on the page longer. Research also shows that surprise or random offers get higher engagement than flat 15% discounts because shoppers feel like they discovered something special.
Just like FabFitFun used their free $250 bonus box, you can anchor the bonus around something clear and valuable and display it on both the homepage and the pop-up so shoppers don’t miss it.
A simple “limited time” or “ends at midnight” creates enough FOMO to push people to check out while the bonus is active.
Do a quick check on your hero products, the items that normally drive most of your revenue or get the highest ad spend. Make sure the inventory numbers match what your ads and homepage are pushing. If something is running low, adjust your campaigns now instead of letting customers hit an out-of-stock page during peak traffic.
It also helps to have a backup ready. If your top product sells out, what’s the closest alternative you can switch your ads, bundles, or homepage blocks to?
Before you push any promos live, make sure your site can actually handle the traffic. Do a quick walkthrough the way a customer would: open the homepage, tap into a product, add it to cart, and move through checkout on both mobile and desktop.
And yes, test it in incognito, on a different browser, and on a different device. You do not want any cached version of your site hiding a real issue. If you want to go one level deeper, get a few people who are not familiar with your site to run through the flow. Ask them to land on a page, pick a product, add it to cart, and check out. Do not guide them. Just watch where they pause, what confuses them, or where they get stuck.
Even a quick run-through with someone new can reveal things you’ve gotten used to and stopped noticing. And you really don’t want to wake up after the weekend trying to figure out why you lost an extra $10k in potential sales, only to realize the purchase button on a key product page wasn’t working on mobile.
A few things to check:
Catching small issues here saves you from bigger problems once traffic starts to pick up.
Make sure shoppers can pay the way they prefer. Confirm that cards, wallets, PayPal, Shop Pay, Apple Pay, and any buy now pay later options are active and working.
Adobe forecasts that shoppers will use BNPL for $20.2 billion in online spending this holiday season. So, having it visible at checkout can help support higher-value carts.
Also make sure guest checkouts are available. Sometimes even asking someone to create a new account is enough to lose the sale.
Chargebacks tend to rise during high-traffic weekends simply because orders move fast, customers move faster, and any small gap in communication becomes a dispute later.
So this is the moment to double-check the basics:
Even simple clarity removes a huge amount of unnecessary disputes.
Post-purchase matters as much as pre-purchase. Make your return window, delivery timelines and offer accidental damage coverage for high-ticket items can remove hesitation and make customers more confident about checking out.
Porch piracy always spikes during holiday weeks because packages are delivered in huge volumes and often left unattended.
A 2024 report found that porch pirates stole about 12 billion dollars worth of packages in the past year, with nearly 58 million Americans dealing with a missing delivery in the last twelve months.
And it only gets worse during high-traffic shopping periods like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Prime Day. This is why it helps to offer shipping protection at checkout because it gives you and your customers a simple way to stay protected.
Along with everything on the site, make sure the rest of your channels are ready. Send a simple email and SMS run-through of your offer, line up any creator or influencer posts you’ve planned, and keep your social pages updated with the same messaging.
If you use Pinterest, refresh your boards or pins with your Black Friday visuals so anyone searching for gift ideas can see what you’re offering right away.
So, yeah! this is the point where everything’s set, and all that’s left is the weekend doing what it does. Just that quick moment where you glance over everything until it feels like, “Okay, this actually feels solid.”
And that matters, because Black Friday moves fast and shoppers move even faster.
