Black Friday is on 28 November, ten days from today, and Cyber Monday follows on 1 December. At this point it’s too late for big projects, but it’s the perfect time to find the small things that break under pressure: a coupon that doesn’t apply, a payment method that fails on mobile, a popup that covers the checkout button.

Here are 25 checks to run this week. Most take a few minutes. Together they can save you from losing sales at the moment you have the most visitors.

Site and performance (checks 1–5)

1. Take a full backup and test that you can restore it. A backup you’ve never restored is a guess, not a backup. Know exactly where it is and how to roll back if an update goes wrong.

2. Freeze updates. Update WordPress, WooCommerce, your theme and plugins now, test everything, and then stop. Avoid installing or updating anything between now and Tuesday 2 December unless it’s a security fix.

3. Talk to your host. Tell them you expect a traffic spike and when. Ask what your plan can handle and what happens if you exceed it.

4. Test your mobile speed. Run your homepage, sale landing page and a product page through PageSpeed Insights on mobile. Fix the quick wins: oversized images, unused plugins, autoplay video.

5. Check your caching rules. Caching makes busy days survivable, but cart, checkout and my account pages must not be cached. If you changed caching settings recently, test adding to cart as a logged-out visitor.

Checkout and payments (checks 6–10)

6. Place a real test order on your phone. Go from product page to confirmation using mobile data, not your office Wi-Fi. Note anything slow, confusing or broken.

7. Test every payment method you offer. Cards, PayPal, wallets, buy now pay later. Payments that fail silently are one of the most expensive problems on a sales day. If you need a refresher on setup, see our guide to managing WooCommerce payment gateways.

8. Check fraud and payment limits. Ask your payment provider whether higher volumes could trigger holds or reviews, and make sure your account details are verified.

9. Review shipping zones and rates. Confirm that free-shipping thresholds match your offer and that every country you sell to has a working rate under WooCommerce → Settings → Shipping.

10. Remove unnecessary checkout fields. Every extra field is one more reason to give up. If you haven’t reviewed your checkout recently, our guide to customizing the WooCommerce checkout page is a good reference.

Offers and coupons (checks 11–15)

11. Test every coupon code. Apply each one to a real cart. Check minimum spend, excluded products, expiry dates and whether codes can be combined.

12. Check scheduled sale prices. If you’ve scheduled sale prices, confirm the start and end dates and times, and check which time zone your site uses in WordPress’s general settings.

13. Make the offer impossible to misread. “25% off everything except gift cards, ends Monday at midnight” is better than “Huge savings!” Put the conditions on the landing page and in the cart.

14. Protect your margins on bundles and stacking. Work out the worst case: a customer combining a sitewide discount, a coupon and free shipping on a low-margin item. If that loses you money, restrict it now.

15. Add a reason to spend a little more. A free-shipping threshold or gift with purchase set just above your typical order value can raise average order value without deeper discounts. Our article on increasing average order value in WooCommerce has more ideas.

Popups and on-site messages (checks 16–19)

16. Audit every popup that will run. Make a list of all active popups, bars and slide-ins. Turn off anything that isn’t relevant to Black Friday week, so visitors don’t get three offers at once.

17. Keep popups away from cart and checkout. A discount popup on the checkout page can distract people who were already paying, or make them go looking for a better code. Use targeting rules to exclude those pages.

18. Check popups on mobile. Make sure the close button is visible and easy to tap, and the popup doesn’t cover the whole screen. Google has long discouraged intrusive interstitials that block content on mobile.

19. Set up an exit-intent offer for non-buyers only. Exit intent works well on sales days to capture emails from people who are comparing stores. Offer early access to Cyber Monday or a reminder email rather than an extra discount on top of your sale.

iConvert Promoter’s targeting rules (page, device, exit intent, scroll and time on site) make it straightforward to show the right message to the right visitor and hide it everywhere else. Whatever tool you use, the principle is the same: fewer, better-targeted messages.

Email and communication (checks 20–22)

20. Send test versions of every scheduled email. Check links, discount codes, images on mobile and the preview text. Click every button.

21. Exclude buyers from “last chance” emails. Anyone who has bought during the sale shouldn’t get the “hurry, ends tonight” reminder. Check your segments now.

22. Check your transactional emails. Order confirmations, processing and shipped emails will go out in larger numbers than usual. Make sure they send, don’t land in spam, and include delivery times and support contact details.

Stock, fulfilment and support (checks 23–25)

23. Check stock levels and “out of stock” behaviour. Make sure stock management is switched on for sale items and decide whether sold-out products should be hidden or shown with a back-in-stock option.

24. Prepare fulfilment. Order packaging, labels and inserts now. If you’re shipping more than usual, agree pickup times with carriers and plan who packs what.

25. Prepare support answers. Write short answers to the questions you’ll get most: delivery times, returns, discount problems, order changes. Put the most common ones in an FAQ on the landing page, and set an auto-reply that tells customers when they’ll hear back.

A quick timeline for the next ten days

A worked example: finding problems before customers do

Picture a small WooCommerce clothing store running through this checklist on a Tuesday afternoon, ten days out.

• On check 6, the owner places a test order on her phone and notices the “Place order” button sits below a large newsletter slide-in. She excludes the slide-in from the checkout page.
• On check 11, the BF25 code applies to gift cards as well, which would mean selling gift cards at a discount. She adds gift cards to the excluded products.
• On check 12, the sale is scheduled to end at midnight, but the site time zone is set to UTC while her customers are in another time zone. She corrects the site time zone.
• On check 21, the “last chance” email is set to go to the whole list. She creates a segment that excludes anyone with an order since 24 November.

Four small fixes, none taking more than ten minutes, each one avoiding an annoyed customer or lost margin.

During the sale: what to watch

Once the sale is live, check these every few hours:

• New orders coming in at a normal pace (a sudden stop can mean a payment or checkout issue)
• Failed or pending payments in WooCommerce → Orders
• Stock on your top sellers
• Support inbox and social messages
• Site speed on mobile

Have someone else place a small test order on Friday morning too. A fresh pair of eyes catches things you’ve stopped noticing.

You’re ready when…

You’ve placed a test order on your phone, every code works as intended, popups are targeted and off the checkout, emails are scheduled with the right segments, and you know how to restore your site if something breaks. If you can tick those five off, the rest of the list is polish.

Good luck this week. If you need to tidy up your popups before Friday, iConvert Promoter can help you target them properly in a few minutes.