Black Friday 2024 falls on November 29, with Cyber Monday on December 2. That’s just over nine weeks from today. It sounds like plenty of time, but the stores that do well over that weekend usually made their big decisions in October, not in the last week of November.

Here’s a week-by-week plan for small and mid-size WooCommerce stores. It’s built backwards from the weekend itself, so each stage has enough time to be done properly.

The plan at a glance

Weeks 1–2 (now to early October): decide what you’re selling and why

Look at last year

Open your WooCommerce reports for the last two weeks of November and the first week of December last year. Note:

• Which products sold most
• Which days and times had the most orders
• Your conversion rate and average order value compared with a normal week
• Which offers or codes were used most
• Anything that went wrong: stockouts, slow pages, payment issues, late shipping

If this is your first holiday season, look at your best-selling products over the last three months instead.

Set a realistic goal

Pick one or two numbers to aim for, such as revenue, orders, or new email subscribers. A goal makes later decisions easier. If the goal is new customers, you’ll plan differently than if the goal is clearing old stock.

Choose your offer, with margins in mind

Before you decide on “30% off everything”, do the maths. For each product you’ll discount, work out what’s left after product cost, shipping, payment fees and any ad spend.

Say a product sells for $50 and costs you $22 to make and $8 to ship. At full price, you keep $20 before fees. At 30% off ($35), you keep $5. Unless that product brings in customers who come back, that’s a lot of work for very little.

Options that often protect margin better than a flat site-wide discount:

• Tiered offers: spend $75, get 10% off; spend $120, get 20% off
• Gift with purchase above a certain order value
• Bundles at a modest discount
• Free shipping for the weekend
• Early access for email subscribers rather than a bigger discount

Whatever you choose, make it simple enough to explain in one line.

Weeks 3–4 (early to mid October): stock, shipping and site health

Stock and suppliers

• Place reorders now for anything you expect to sell out. Many suppliers slow down in November.
• Decide what happens when a product sells out: hide it, show “sold out”, or collect back-in-stock requests.
• Check stock levels in WooCommerce match reality. A quick physical count of your best sellers is worth the hour.

Shipping

• Confirm your carriers’ holiday cutoff dates as soon as they publish them.
• Decide your own last order date for pre-Christmas delivery. You’ll need it for banners and emails in December.
• Check your shipping zones and rates under WooCommerce → Settings → Shipping. If you’re offering free shipping for the weekend, work out how you’ll set that up (a coupon, a minimum order amount, or a temporary rule).

Site health

• Update WordPress, WooCommerce, your theme and plugins now, while you have time to fix anything that breaks. Don’t leave this until November.
• Check page speed on your home page, key category pages and best-selling products.
• Ask your hosting provider whether your plan can handle a traffic spike, and what happens if it doesn’t.
• Test your checkout end to end with every payment method.
• Make sure backups are running and that you know how to restore one.

Weeks 5–6 (mid October to early November): grow the list

Most of your Black Friday sales will likely come from people who already know you: past customers and subscribers. The larger and warmer that list is by late November, the less you’ll depend on expensive ads during the most expensive week of the year for ads.

Launch an early-access signup

Create a simple signup offer: “Join the list and get our Black Friday deals a day early.” It’s honest, it costs you nothing extra, and it gives people a concrete reason to subscribe now.

Promote it with:

• A popup on your site (more on this below)
• A banner on your home page
• Posts on your social channels
• A line in your order confirmation emails

Use targeted popups rather than one site-wide box

A single popup that fires on every page after five seconds annoys people. A few targeted ones work better:

• Exit intent on product pages: “Leaving? Get early access to our Black Friday sale.”
• Scroll-based on blog posts: after someone reads most of an article, offer the early-access list.
• Returning visitors: someone on their third visit is more interested than a first-timer; show them the offer.
• Mobile-friendly format: a small slide-in or bottom bar instead of a full-screen overlay on phones.

iConvert Promoter handles these targeting rules (exit intent, scroll depth, page, device and more) with ready-made templates, but most popup tools offer some version of them. The key is to limit how often each visitor sees a popup.

Warm up your list

Don’t let the list go quiet in October and then send five sale emails in a row. Keep up a normal rhythm: a useful product guide, a new arrival, a behind-the-scenes story. This also helps your sending reputation before the high-volume weekend, which matters more since Gmail and Yahoo tightened their bulk sender requirements earlier this year.

Weeks 7–8 (early to mid November): build and test

Landing page

Create a dedicated Black Friday page rather than sending all traffic to your home page. It should include:

• The offer, stated clearly at the top
• Start and end dates and times, with time zone
• Featured products or categories
• Any terms (minimum spend, exclusions) in plain language
• Shipping cutoff information

Build it as a draft now and publish it when the sale starts.

Coupons and pricing

Set up codes or scheduled sale prices in advance. WooCommerce lets you schedule sale prices on individual products, and coupons can have usage limits and expiry dates. Test every code. Our guide to creating WooCommerce coupon codes covers the settings in detail.

Emails

Draft the whole sequence now:

1. Early access announcement to subscribers
2. Sale is live
3. Reminder mid-weekend
4. Cyber Monday
5. Last chance

Schedule them in your email tool and send a test of each to yourself on desktop and mobile.

Popups for the sale itself

Prepare the popups you’ll switch on during the sale: a banner or slide-in announcing the offer, a free-shipping threshold reminder in the cart, and an exit-intent popup that reminds people the sale ends soon. Set start and end dates so they turn off on their own.

Week 9 (the week before): freeze and final checks

Stop making changes to your site about a week before Black Friday. No new plugins, no theme updates, no “quick tweaks”. If something breaks now, you have no time to find the cause.

Final checklist:

• [ ] Test orders placed with every payment method
• [ ] All coupon codes tested, including expiry
• [ ] Landing page ready as a draft
• [ ] Popups scheduled with correct dates
• [ ] Emails scheduled and tested
• [ ] Stock levels checked
• [ ] Customer service replies prepared for common questions (shipping times, returns, order changes)
• [ ] Someone available to monitor the site over the weekend

Black Friday to Cyber Monday: launch and monitor

On the day, watch a few things closely:

• Orders coming in. A sudden stop usually means something is broken.
• Payment errors. Check your gateway dashboard.
• Stock levels on best sellers.
• Site speed. Load your own store on your phone regularly.

Adjust if needed. If a product sells out, update the landing page and popups. If one offer clearly outperforms another, feature it more prominently for Cyber Monday.

The week after: follow up and take notes

• Send thank-you emails to new customers and ask for reviews once orders arrive.
• Switch off every sale popup and banner.
• Write down what worked and what didn’t, while it’s fresh. Next year’s plan starts from these notes.

For more on planning the rest of the season, our earlier post on holiday-proofing your Christmas marketing campaign is a useful companion.

Your first move this week

If you do only one thing this week, decide on your offer and check the margins behind it. Every other step, from popups to emails to stock, depends on that decision. Then put the rest of this plan in your calendar, one block per stage.

When you’re ready to set up early-access and sale popups, iConvert Promoter has templates and targeting rules built for exactly this kind of campaign.

Flavius Noja

Flavius is an online marketing specialist with experience in the digital field. He is passionate about everything that means the online world, sports, but also crypto.