With Black Friday approaching, there’s still time to improve your store’s shopping experience. The best place to start is the journey customers will take from your campaign to checkout.
Can they find the offer? Understand the product? See what delivery will cost? Complete their purchase on a phone?
Small problems at these points can undermine the work you’ve put into attracting visitors. Use this checklist to find and fix them before your busiest trading period.
Only have a day? Start with three checks: place a mobile test order, verify your advertised offers and make delivery costs and timing clear.
1. Place a complete test order on mobile
Run through your store as a first-time customer would, starting from one of your Black Friday ads or emails.
Open the link on your phone, choose a product variant, add it to your cart, apply the promotion and complete checkout. Check that the order confirmation arrives with the correct details.
Pay particular attention to:
- Discount codes that fail or require conditions you haven’t explained.
- Pop-ups that cover buttons or form fields.
- Unexpected delivery charges.
- Payment methods that don’t load or complete.
- Product options that are difficult to select.
Where practical, test on both an iPhone and an Android device. If you offer express payment options, check those paths too.
Check it worked: Complete another order after any fixes. Confirm the total, discount, shipping charge and order details are correct.
2. Make delivery costs and timing easy to find
Customers shouldn’t have to reach the final checkout step to understand delivery costs.
Show your free shipping threshold, relevant delivery charges and dispatch expectations on product pages or in the cart. Make the wording specific enough to be useful.
For example, “Dispatches within two business days” tells customers more than “Fast shipping”. Distinguish dispatch time from the estimated time in transit, and avoid promising arrival dates your fulfilment team cannot support.
If regional exclusions or oversized-item charges apply, make them visible near the offer.
Check it worked: Add products below and above your free shipping threshold, then test a few delivery locations. The charges should match your messaging.
3. Explain the Black Friday offer clearly
Review your homepage banner, sale page, product pages, emails and ads together. They should describe the same promotion.
Customers should be able to tell:
- Which products qualify.
- Whether they need a discount code.
- Whether a minimum spend applies.
- When the offer ends, including the time zone.
- Whether exclusions or limits apply.
If selected products are discounted, make that clear wherever you advertise the sale. If the discount applies automatically, say so.
Check it worked: Ask someone who hasn’t worked on the campaign to explain the offer after looking at the landing page. Any uncertainty points to copy you can improve.
4. Answer missing questions on your busiest product pages
Start with products receiving the most campaign traffic or generating the most sales. Review the information a customer needs before buying.
Depending on what you sell, that could include dimensions, sizing, materials, compatibility, care instructions or what comes in the box.
Use recent customer service questions to identify gaps. If shoppers repeatedly ask whether an accessory is included, put the answer beside the product description or purchase controls.
Keep critical details easy to scan, especially on mobile.
Check it worked: Someone unfamiliar with the product should be able to choose the right option and explain what they’ll receive without contacting support.
5. Check every campaign link and landing page
A compelling offer loses its value if the link leads to the wrong collection, an unavailable product or a page showing a different price.
Click through each scheduled email, active ad and promotional banner. Check the destination, product availability and offer wording.
Where possible, send shoppers directly to the relevant product or sale collection. Make sure campaign tracking parameters still lead to a working page.
Check it worked: Preview the actual campaign and follow its links on mobile. Confirm the advertised offer is immediately visible at the destination.
6. Make sale products easy to browse
Give visitors a clear route to your Black Friday offers through your main navigation or a prominent homepage link.
Review the sale collection on mobile. Put relevant, available products near the top and check that filters help customers narrow the selection.
Useful filters might include size, product type, price or availability. Remove empty categories and avoid making shoppers scroll through large numbers of sold-out items.
Check it worked: Starting from your homepage, find a discounted product in a specific size or category. Note any unnecessary steps or dead ends.
7. Remove obvious mobile distractions and slow-loading assets
Focus on problems you can identify and fix quickly.
Large campaign images, autoplay video and overlapping promotional widgets can make a page harder to use. Resize oversized images appropriately and check that key text and buttons remain visible as the page loads.
Review pop-ups as a group. A newsletter prompt, cookie banner and sale announcement may each seem reasonable in isolation but compete for the same small screen.
Keep changes targeted and verify them after publishing.
Check it worked: Open your main campaign pages on a phone using a mobile connection. Confirm you can see the offer, dismiss overlays and interact with the page comfortably.
8. Test your abandoned-checkout emails
Review your existing checkout recovery messages before the sale starts.
Check that product links work, the copy reflects your current delivery information and any promotional codes remain valid for the intended send window.
Watch for automated messages that promise an additional discount your Black Friday promotion cannot accommodate. Also review emails scheduled to arrive after the sale ends: their wording should not imply that an expired offer is still available.
Check it worked: Trigger a test flow using your platform’s testing process and inspect the messages on mobile. Follow the recovery link and verify the resulting cart and offer.
9. Put reassurance near the purchase decision
Make it easy for customers to find genuine product reviews, contact details and a plain-language summary of your returns policy.
If sale items have different return conditions, explain those before purchase. Check that reassurance messages reflect your actual service: support hours, delivery estimates and return promises should all be accurate.
Place useful information where uncertainty arises—for example, a sizing guide near the size selector or a returns link near the add-to-cart button.
Check it worked: Review a product page as a new visitor. Can you quickly work out who to contact, whether the item suits your needs and what happens if you need to return it?
10. Verify stock and promotion rules
Check inventory for the products you’re promoting most heavily. Confirm that unavailable variants are clearly labelled and that your store handles out-of-stock purchases as intended.
Test how your Black Friday promotion interacts with existing discounts, loyalty rewards and free shipping rules.
For representative orders, review the selling price against product costs, fulfilment costs and promotional benefits. Include combinations such as a discounted product with free shipping or an additional welcome code.
Check it worked: Build several realistic carts and compare the checkout totals with your intended pricing. Fix unexpected discount combinations before sending more traffic.
What to postpone until after Black Friday
Major theme changes, platform migrations and unfamiliar checkout apps need time for testing. Unless they resolve a critical issue, schedule them after the sale.
For each change you make now, record what you changed, test the affected customer journey and keep a way to reverse it.
Your final review should follow one complete path: open the campaign, find the product, understand the offer and place the order. Fix anything that makes that journey confusing or difficult.
