Black Friday Preparation Checklist for Ecommerce Stores

When is Black Friday 2026, and when should you start preparing?

This year Black Friday falls on Friday 27 November and Cyber Monday on Monday 30 November. In Turkey the sales don't fit into a single day: discounts start at the beginning of November as Efsane Kasım ("Legendary November"), Kara Cuma (the local name for Black Friday) or under a brand's own campaign name, and run to the end of the month. So build your preparation calendar around the day your own campaign opens, not around 27 November.

In short: four weeks is good, two weeks is workable, and if you only have one week left, do just the most critical jobs. The table below shows when each job should be finished.

Which products and how much stock should you go in with?

You don't have to discount every product. For most stores the healthier approach is to split the range into three groups: a few strong deal products that bring in traffic, the bestsellers that make most of the revenue, and complementary products that get added to the cart. A deal product brings people to the site; a complementary product raises the basket value.

The most common stock mistake we see is a product named in the campaign message selling out in the first hours. Everyone who arrives afterwards sees an empty page, and customer service is flooded with "where is the product" questions. Make a forecast from last year's November sales and this year's growth; for products with long lead times, place the order now.

• Manage stock in one place. If you sell both on your own site and on a marketplace, test stock synchronization before the campaign. The same product being sold on two channels when you don't have it means cancellations and bad reviews.
• Hide or flag sold-out products. If a product you've been pushing in ads and messages sells out, pause the ad and move an alternative to the front.
• Prepare bundles and sets. They raise the average basket with less margin loss than discounting items one by one.

If you use Chatopya, daily sales summaries, bestsellers and stock alerts can reach your team on WhatsApp; on a busy day, seeing the situation without opening the panel helps.

How should you set the discount? Watch the 10-day rule

This is the most critical topic for stores in Turkey. Since 1 August 2026, the "price before the discount" in discount sales advertising is taken as the lowest price applied in the 10 days before the date the discount starts. Conditional campaign ads are also covered (Turkey's Ministry of Trade, 29 July 2026).

What does that mean in practice? Raising the price a few days before the campaign and then writing "50% off" doesn't work; the percentage you show has to be calculated against the lowest price of the last 10 days. The rule applies not only to the label on your site but also to the "X% off" line in emails, SMS, social media and WhatsApp messages.

Write the campaign terms clearly too: which products it covers, until what date, whether it stacks with a coupon, whether shipping is free. Vague terms produce both complaints and unnecessary questions for customer service.

Are your site and payment setup ready for the rush?

If the site slows down on campaign day or the checkout page throws errors, your whole ad budget goes to waste. With two weeks to go, check the following:

• Speed: Do the home page, campaign page, product page and cart load quickly on mobile? Shrink heavy images and switch off plugins you don't need.
• Capacity: Tell your infrastructure or hosting provider the traffic you expect, starting now. If you use a ready-made ecommerce platform, ask for its campaign-period recommendations.
• Payment: Place a test order with every payment method: card, installments, bank transfer, cash on delivery, whatever you offer. Check that the 3D Secure verification screen opens properly on mobile.
• Coupon and cart rules: Do coupons combine with each other and with cart discounts the way you expect? A rule set up wrongly either wipes out your profit or angers the customer.
• Code freeze: Stop new development on the site a week before the campaign. A last-minute change is one of the most common causes of outages.

Don't underestimate the cart. According to Baymard Institute's list, which combines 50 studies, on average 70.22% of online carts don't end in a purchase. In its US survey, the most common reason for abandoning a cart was unexpected extra costs at 40%, followed by slow delivery at 20% (Baymard Institute, 22 September 2025). This is global data, not specific to Turkey, but the lesson is the same: don't let the shipping fee and delivery time be a surprise on the checkout page. We cover ways to bring back shoppers who left items in the cart in our abandoned cart guide.

How should you plan shipping, delivery and returns?

Shipping carriers are busy in Black Friday week too. When your orders multiply and dispatch from the warehouse is late, the customer remembers the delay, not the discount.

• Talk to your shipping carrier. Settle in advance the number of parcels you expect, the pickup times and, if needed, extra pickup days.
• Work out your packing capacity. How many orders can you pack per day? Arrange temporary help if needed and build up your stock of boxes and packaging.
• Be honest about delivery times. If a delivery that normally takes two days will take longer in campaign week, say so on the product page and in the cart. A realistic date brings fewer complaints than an optimistic promise.
• Make the return policy visible. The return period, fees and steps should be readable before payment. In the same Baymard survey, finding the return policy unsatisfactory is among the reasons for cart abandonment, at 13%.

Sending the customer a message automatically when an order is placed and when the shipping status changes cuts down "where is my parcel" questions considerably. You can find how to set that up step by step in our order tracking article.

How do you prepare customer service for the rush?

Most of the questions that arrive in campaign week are the same: size, stock, campaign terms, delivery time, returns. Writing the answers down beforehand makes life easier for both your team and your bot.

1. Prepare a Q&A list. Write down the 20-30 questions asked most in your last campaign, with their answers. Add this year's campaign terms as well.
2. Make a shift and handover plan. Decide how many people work at which hours, and who gets angry customers or return requests.
3. Update your saved replies. Copy-paste replies shouldn't contain details that change when the campaign ends, or they should be updated after the campaign.
4. Bring your channels together in one place. If WhatsApp, Instagram, site chat and marketplace questions sit on separate screens, something will certainly slip through on a busy day.

An AI-powered bot can answer frequent questions 24/7 from the business's own information and hand over to an agent what it can't resolve. We explain when to load your campaign terms into it and which questions to leave to a human in customer service with a chatbot on Black Friday. If you use WhatsApp, one cost note: since 1 October 2026, replies sent within 24 hours after a customer writes are also charged; 1,000 replies per month per number are free, and after that you're charged per message (Meta). A busy week can exceed that limit, so set your budget accordingly.

Which channels should you use to announce the campaign?

Email, SMS, social media, ads and WhatsApp don't replace each other; each does a different job well. Ads reach new people, email carries long content, and WhatsApp gives you fast, personal conversation with customers who have given permission. What matters is not sending the same person the same message through five channels on the same day.

• Work with a permission-based list. In Turkey, sending a commercial electronic message to a recipient who is not a merchant or tradesperson requires prior consent, and consents are kept in the İYS (Turkey's commercial message registry). Clean your list before the campaign; we cover this in detail in is sending bulk messages legal.
• Make a calendar and limit the frequency. A teaser, the campaign launch and a last-hours reminder are enough for most customers. On WhatsApp, Meta limits the number of marketing messages a person can receive from all businesses based on that person's engagement; because everyone is messaging in November, this limit can affect you too.
• Start the jobs that need approval early. Review of ad creatives and approval of WhatsApp template messages can take time; don't leave them to the last day.
• Segment. Different messages, such as early access for loyal customers, a reminder for people who left items in the cart, and a first-order offer for new customers, bring fewer complaints and more interest than the same text sent to everyone.

For a step-by-step plan and ready message examples on WhatsApp, see the Black Friday WhatsApp campaign guide, and for ten ways to turn the channel into sales, see our main guide.

What should you do about fake campaigns and fraud?

Heavy discount periods are also when fake sites and accounts imitating brands work hardest. If your customer shops from a fake account opened in your name and gets burned, your brand pays the bill.

• State your official web address, social media accounts and customer service number clearly on the campaign page.
• Tell customers on which channels you never ask for a password, card details or payment.
• During the campaign, watch for new accounts and ads carrying your brand name, and report them to the relevant platform when you see them.

What should you measure?

When the campaign ends, saying "it went well" isn't enough; you need numbers for next year. Write down your goals before you start, and add UTM tags carrying the channel information to your links so you can see what each channel brought in.

• Revenue, number of orders and average basket value
• Conversion rate and cart abandonment rate
• Revenue and ad spend by channel
• Cancellation and return rate
• First response time and satisfaction in customer service

What should you do after Black Friday?

The work doesn't end on the evening of 27 November. Delivering orders on time, resolving return requests quickly and moving on to Cyber Monday (30 November) all happen in the same week. Turning a customer who came for the first time with a discount into a second order is where the real gain is made. You can find the plan for that in our article on customer loyalty after Black Friday.

Black Friday preparation checklist

A short list to share with your team:

• Campaign dates, goal and budget are set
• Campaign products are chosen, stock and supplier orders are placed
• Marketplace and site stock are synchronized and tested
• Discount rates are calculated against the lowest price of the last 10 days, price history is recorded
• Campaign terms are written clearly as a single text
• Site speed is tested on mobile, the infrastructure provider knows the expected traffic
• A test order has been placed with every payment method, coupon rules are tried
• New development stopped one week before the campaign
• Capacity and pickup times are settled with the shipping carrier, packaging stock is ready
• Delivery time and return policy are visible in the cart and on the product page
• Q&A list, saved replies and shift plan are ready
• Order and shipping notifications are working
• The permission-based list is cleaned, the sending calendar and segments are set
• Ad creatives and message templates are approved
• Official channels are announced on the campaign page
• Measurement goals and UTM tags are ready

Frequently asked questions