How to Prepare for 2027 Ecommerce Black Friday - Last Minute BF Preparation Checklist 

Accurate stock levels and correct stock codes are vital throughout the year. However, during peak periods, such as Black Friday, the margin for error is reduced due to the influx of orders coming from multiple sources – including the website, app or TikTok shop. 

Stock levels and codes should be checked 6 to 8 weeks before Black Friday to ensure all reported numbers match your physical stock to avoid overstocking or overselling.  Barcode scanners or RFID tags.  

It’s important to also identify stock that is running low. Automated alerts can be set up to notify you when a certain item reaches a set threshold.  

Mintsoft's Stock Take feature improves stock accuracy with confidence, as each count is tracked, validated, and auditable. Second counts can be triggered automatically if discrepancies occur, ensuring your stock numbers are always up to date. 

We spoke to Ed Warren, Founder of Kecks, about how Mintsoft’s Stock Take has transformed his stock takes during peak times. 

“Stocktaking used to be quite a painful experience for us because there was never a clear way to do it. But with the new module, it's much easier. You can start the stocktake, pause it, go away. If it’s still on the scanner, you come back and pick up where you left off. Stocktaking for us is always like an end-of-the-day thing.  

The way it is now maybe would save us hours a week. We used to do it with a lot of CSV work and printing sheets off and location contents checks. By the time you maybe got around to doing that, you'd sold stuff out of location, so it never tallied up” 

Ensuring your website can cope with a sudden surge in traffic is vital when preparing for Black Friday. According to Akamai, website visitors increase by 57% on Black Friday compared to typical levels.  

To prepare and test your website, you should: 

• Run stress tests on a separate staging environment. Never run tests on your live production site.  
• Simulate real user journeys using tools such as Microsoft Clarity to mimic user paths (browsing products, adding items to the basket and completing checkout)  
• Analyse your previous highest traffic numbers and average response times.  
• Monitor server response times, error frequency and memory utilisation during the test. 

Product navigation should be a user friction-free experience, allowing a customer to easily find what they’re looking for. If this is a difficult process, customers are less likely to make a purchase.  

To simplify your product navigation, consider adding:  

• Intent-based labels, such as ‘winter jumpers’ or ‘denim jackets’, over generic terms like ‘products’, make finding a specific category easier 
• Smart filtering allows a customer to narrow down exactly what they’re looking for, including price, size and colour 
• Only include five to seven categories on main menu to prevent choice paralysis 
• Include breadcrumb trails to allow customers to easily navigate back to products they’ve previously looked at 

According to Link Mobility, on average, 70% of carts are abandoned. This can be due to surprise costs (delivery charges, taxes or handling fees), checkout friction, payment limits or unclear returns policies.  

Abandoned cart nudges are gentle reminders designed to bring customers back. Best practices include: 

• Send out the first reminder within a couple of hours to regain interest 
• Offer perks, such as free shipping or small discounts, if margins allow 
• Include product images and customer reviews on cart reminders 

Email automation platforms such as Klaviyo or Mailchimp can trigger these sequences automatically based on cart abandonment events. 

Black Friday is the peak, but the shopping season runs well into December. For Mintsoft ecommerce customers, November is the biggest month, with over 1.5 million orders placed vs. 1.15 million orders in December 2025 – a 31% difference.  

While marketing, promotions and stock availability need to be sharp in November, businesses should focus on retention and repeat purchases in December. This can be done by: 

• Run post-Black Friday promotions continue the excitement into the Christmas period. Special deals or discounts on items that weren’t included in the Black Friday sales can create returning customers. 
• Use festive social media and email marketing can create a sense of urgency and excitement – whether that’s a giveaway or gift guides.  
• Collaborations with influencers are a great way to showcase your products to a wider audience in a way that connects with their audience. 

Overstocking or understocking are large risks when preparing for a sale. Before ordering stock from suppliers, it’s important to understand which are your faster- and slower-selling SKUs. 

The main causes of overstocking and understocking are: 

• Poor or lack of forecasting  
• Bulk orders 
• Long lead times 

Demand forecasting allows you to predict customer demand based on historical data, market trends and promotion impact to understand what your customers need. Having a realistic amount of stock prevents you from running out of a popular product or having excess stock – keeping customer satisfaction high and your warehouse efficient.   

When an influx of orders comes in, you must staff strategically by: 

• Cross-training the core team allows staff to pivot to another task if order increases overwhelm the floor.  
• Hiring temporary staff, such as pickers and packers, before Black Friday hits allows you to secure reliable staff and get ahead of staff shortages.  
• Flexible scheduling, such as rotating shifts or 24/7 coverage, allows orders to keep moving from checkout to dispatch without delays.  

Our data shows that in 2025, orders built through the week to a Black Friday peak of 87,121 and stayed elevated across the weekend (63-68k per day) and remained high on Cyber Monday (80,489). 

Meanwhile, Monday 24 Nov 2025 saw 75,507 orders dispatched, more than were actually placed that day (53,537), as the warehouse cleared pre-built stock. The biggest dispatch day was Cyber Monday at 94,393, as teams worked through the weekend backlog. 

Ecommerce businesses need to plan for a dispatch curve that lags the order curve by 1-2 days. Our data shows the highest dispatch day for customers is Cyber Monday, not Black Friday, as the team clears the weekend backlog.

Unfortunately, after Black Friday and Christmas comes the ‘returns peak season’ in January, with returns rising by 44.5% from December to February. It’s important to get your returns processes in place before the influx hits.  

Your return strategy should be simple for your business and customers. Consider streamlining your processes by: 

• Consider automating refund initiation once the return is received and graded, reducing manual processing time. 
• Automate refunds and exchanges as soon as the postage label is scanned to improve turnaround.  
• Quickly grade returned goods to route them to the correct location (primary inventory, secondary liquidation markets or refurbishments) and get them back on the shelves quicker.  

Mintsoft’s returns management allows you to take control of your ecommerce returns management – making getting stock out of the returns bin and back on the shelves quickly with full transparency.