Black Friday is here, and your dashboard is already moving nonstop, right?
Traffic is up, carts are filling and orders are coming in faster than usual. It always looks great while it’s happening.
But once things slow down, you start to figure out what those numbers actually mean.
As Warren Buffett said, “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” Black Friday works the same way. The sale is immediate, but the value only becomes clear after customers receive their orders.
This is also the point where returns start coming in, and holiday returns usually climb higher than normal, around 17% more than the yearly average. They show up slowly and often change the way the weekend looks in hindsight.
Then you start seeing what customers say once their packages arrive. The delays, the quality issues, the “this was not what I expected” messages. These signals tell you far more than the revenue spike ever does.
So, if you are trying to figure out whether your Black Friday actually worked, this is when the real picture starts to show.
Let’s look at the signals that show how the season really performed, starting with returns and chargebacks before the usual traffic metrics.
With more sales comes a higher chance of chargebacks. Not every dispute is fraud; many come from simple confusion, delayed updates or first-party misuse.
Around 70–79% of chargebacks come from everyday shoppers. And while you can’t stop intentional misuse, you can reduce avoidable disputes by tightening the experience around them.
Here are a few things that help:
Some disputes are genuine fraud and others are avoidable. Clean communication and proper documentation help you handle both.
Peak-season discounts compress decision windows and encourage a “buy now, decide later” mindset. Add gifting, incorrect sizing and impulse purchases, and January often turns into what many call “Returnuary.” Loop Returns data even shows that in the week after Christmas, return volumes rose 12.2% year over year, which tells you how big the post-holiday wave can get.
With trends like bracketing (over half of Gen Z openly says they order multiple sizes with the intention of returning some), you’ll naturally see more items coming back.
And the way you handle those returns matters, 76% of shoppers choose where to shop based on free returns, and 67% won’t come back after a bad return experience.
Here’s what to keep an eye on:
Returns aren’t just a post-holiday headache, they show where expectations didn’t match reality and where your Black Friday demand was strong, weak, or simply rushed.
Black Friday always brings a mix of shoppers. Some people come in with a plan and build thoughtful carts. Others click the first big discount they see and disappear. Looking at the carts they built tells you which group showed up for you.
If your average cart value went up or stayed stable during the rush, that’s a strong sign shopper weren’t just cherry-picking the cheapest item.
A drop in cart value usually means:
Holiday shoppers often buy multiple items when the site experience is smooth and the offer makes sense. If carts had more items than usual, it means shoppers bundled products or found complementary items worth adding.
This is a useful way to see if your catalog/bundles worked well together.
One of the cleanest signals is simple: Did shoppers only add items that were discounted? If 100 percent of Black Friday carts were made up of discounted SKUs, the offer pulled them in, not the product.
But if shoppers added items with: minimal discounts, no discounts or full-price additions Then you’ve got product-driven demand, not just deal-driven demand. A lot of Black Friday carts look full on the surface. Meaningful carts show what shoppers actually wanted not just what was on sale. This tells you whether you had strong product-market fit during the rush or you just priced everything to move.
A good starting point is to look at how shoppers behaved once they landed on your site. Here’s what to look at:
Pages per session is another simple way to understand interest. If shoppers moved through more than one or two pages, it usually means they were:
Higher page depth on Black Friday is almost always a good sign.
Product detail pages dwell tells you whether shoppers were actually evaluating your product. If they spent time reading details or scrolling through photos, that’s real intent. If PDP views were extremely short, that usually points to quick price checks.
Scroll depth shows whether your content matched what shoppers expected
Black Friday always pulls in a wide mix of people, but the real value comes from understanding who actually walked through the door. New customers help you grow. Returning customers tell you whether your brand is strong enough to bring people back even during the loudest sale of the year.
Here’s what to look at:
A higher number of first-time buyers usually means your offer reached new audiences. A strong returning customer presence means something different:
your existing customers trusted you enough to shop with you again, even when everyone is shouting about discounts.
Look at how each group behaved:
This helps you understand if your Black Friday appeal was broad or if certain segments carried the day.
Year-over-year comparisons are less about reviewing every metric again and more about spotting directional shifts. The goal isn’t to repeat what you already checked, it’s to understand whether this Black Friday was stronger, weaker or simply different from last year.
Did more people show up compared to last year, and did they come through the same channels? If certain channels grew (email, organic, returning customers), it signals healthier demand.
Instead of rechecking engagement, ask: Was this year’s traffic more serious than last year’s?
Look for:
Compare: discount depth vs last year, revenue per visitor, average order value, cost per order (shipping, fulfillment, ads) and refund value. Two years can have similar revenue but very different outcomes depending on offer structure and demand patterns.
High traffic is good, but it only matters if people moved from browsing to checkout. Check your overall conversion rate and then look at how different channels performed email, ads, social, organic. If some channels brought traffic but barely converted, that’s a clear sign those visitors weren’t the right fit, or your landing flow didn’t match their expectations.
And if certain channels converted stronger than last year, that’s where you know your real audience came from. Conversion tells you not just who showed up, but who found enough value to follow through.
This is when people stop talking like shoppers and start talking like owners, and that shift tells you a lot about how Black Friday actually went.
Support tickets, early reviews and social posts tell you exactly how customers felt once their orders arrived, whether that’s missing items, sizing issues, color mismatch or packaging concerns.
These real-world reactions show you if the product lived up to the Black Friday promise or if there are gaps you need to fix.
Black Friday looks great at the moment, but the real results show up later in what customers kept, what they returned, what they said and whether they chose to come back. When those signals line up, that’s when you know the weekend truly worked.
So as the dust settles, the real question is simple: did Black Friday create buyers you can keep, or just shoppers passing through for a discount?
