Black Friday has changed a lot in recent years. It used to be a single day of chaos and discounts. Now it’s a multi-week event that starts in early November, peaks in late November, and bleeds into December. And increasingly, it’s not just for big retailers; independent businesses, service providers, and local shops are all getting involved.
If you’re planning to run any kind of promotion or sale, your website needs to be ready for it. Not ‘ready’ in a technical sense, necessarily, but ready in the sense that a customer who lands on it knows exactly what to do and why they should do it.
Here are four things worth checking this month.
1. Your homepage — does it tell people what’s happening?
During Black Friday and the pre-Christmas period, your homepage should do more work than usual. If you’re running a promotion, it should be immediately visible, not buried in a menu or mentioned in a banner that people scroll past.
You don’t need to redesign your site. A clear, prominent message near the top of your homepage- whether that’s a banner, a section, or even just a well-placed paragraph is often enough. What’s the offer? When does it end? What do people need to do?
2. Your speed — is it holding you back?
Website speed matters all year, but it matters more during busy periods when there’s more competition for people’s attention. If your site takes more than a few seconds to load, a meaningful percentage of visitors will leave before they’ve seen anything.
Run your site through Google’s PageSpeed Insights, it’s free and see where you stand. If you’re below 70 on mobile, it’s worth asking your web developer about the quick wins. Often a few simple changes (image compression, removing unused plugins) make a noticeable difference.
3. Your contact and checkout process — is it frictionless?
This is the one that costs businesses the most and gets checked the least. At least once before Black Friday, go through your own website as a customer would. Try to make an enquiry. Try to buy something. Try to find your phone number or email address.
Where do you have to work to do something that should be simple? That friction is costing you customers. Common culprits:
- Contact forms that don’t work properly on mobile
- A checkout that requires account creation before purchasing
- No clear information about delivery times or returns
- A phone number that’s on the footer but nowhere obvious on mobile
Fix the worst offenders before the busy period starts.
4. Your messaging — does it match what people are actually looking for?
In October and November, people’s intentions change. They’re thinking about gifts, about deals, about getting things sorted before Christmas. Does your website speak to that?
You don’t need to overhaul your copy. But adding a line or two to your key pages, something that acknowledges the season and addresses the questions people have at this time of year, can make your site feel more relevant. ‘Looking for a gift?’ or ‘Book before December for guaranteed availability’ are simple, but they work because they meet people where they are.
The broader point
Your website isn’t a one-and-done project. It needs a bit of attention as the seasons change, as your business evolves, and as your customers’ needs shift. October is one of the best times to do this kind of review, because you still have time to make changes before the volume picks up.
You don’t need a full redesign. You need to look at your site with fresh eyes, fix the things that aren’t working, and make sure the story it tells matches the business you’ve built. That’s enough to make a real difference over the next three months.