Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Holiday Season: what online merchants need to get right in October

In just a few years, Black Friday (27 November 2026) has gone from a one-day sale to a fixture that dominates the end of the year. Between Cyber Monday (Monday 30 November 2026) and the Black Week some merchants now run, offers stretch across several days – sometimes several weeks. Black Friday has become the starting gun for a peak season that runs all the way to Christmas.

The day itself still matters most. On Black Friday 2025, Payplug merchants processed 63% more transactions than on an average November day, with sales value up 8% year on year (Payplug data, 2025, weighted by the number of Payplug merchants active over the period).

It’s not a day you can afford to get wrong: a sale lost on Black Friday is rarely won back. So how do you make sure everything holds up on the day? Gautier Toulemonde, Account Manager at Payplug, shares the checks to run – and the mistakes he sees merchants make most often.

The October fundamentals

Getting your online store ready for peak season starts with a handful of fundamentals. Tick these off first, and you’ll go into the busiest weeks of the year with confidence.

Website and catalogue: get ready for the surge

Your website is the single most critical factor on Black Friday. It has to handle far more traffic than at any other time of year – especially on mobile. So how can you be sure it will?

Load tests confirm that your site can absorb the extra traffic and still run normally.

Your product pages need attention too: make sure they’re up to date, that prices and stock levels are in sync, and that your promotional pages are built well ahead of time.

Logistics and customer service: prepare for the rush of orders

Secure stock of your best-sellers well in advance and confirm your carriers’ delivery capacity for the period. You can then display clear order cut-off dates for on-time delivery – especially in the run-up to Christmas.

Extra customer service cover will also help you respond to customers quickly. And if you change your delivery or returns policy for peak season, remember to update your FAQ and your terms and conditions of sale on your site.

Promotions and payments: stay compliant

For promotions, the reference price rule applies: any discount must be calculated against the lowest price charged in the previous 30 days. The terms of each offer must be clear and prominently displayed.

One thing to factor in this year: the revised EU Consumer Credit Directive (CCD2) applies from 20 November 2026 – one week before Black Friday. The direct impact? Most split payment offers will fall within the scope of consumer credit rules. If you offer split payments, check that your BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later) provider is compliant.

Run a pre-mortem: imagine what could break

You’re probably familiar with the post-mortem: looking back after the event to work out what went wrong. We suggest reversing the exercise and running it before peak season. Think through what could break – then find ways to stop it happening.

Map out your potential points of failure

For each building block – website, payments, carriers, customer service – list everything that could go down: overloaded servers, failed connections, a provider unable to accept certain payment methods… For each one, check that your plan A can take the load, and have a plan B ready.

On the payments side, Gautier recommends checking four things:

• Do you have a backup host? If your hosting provider goes down, your site goes offline – and customers can neither order nor pay.
• Does your payment provider have a backup PSP? If there’s an outage, payments need to keep going through.
• Can your PSP automatically retry a declined payment? Some declines are caused by a temporary technical glitch and can be recovered without the customer ever noticing.
• Do you have an alternative payment method? If one stops working, customers need to be able to choose another.

Offer the right payment methods

Make sure you also offer the payment methods customers expect in each of your markets – Apple Pay in France, Bancontact in Belgium or Bizum in Spain, for example. Remember: one in four shoppers has abandoned a purchase because their preferred payment method wasn’t available.

At Schott(new tab), for instance, a broader range of payment methods played a direct role in lifting average transaction value (ATV) from €120 to €176. By adding premium cards such as American Express, along with Apple Pay – and Bancontact for its Belgian customers – and optimising payments across the board, the brand grew its e-commerce revenue by 30% in a year, including a 17% increase directly attributed to payments.

Split payments are worth benchmarking too, especially when it comes to fees.

Test in real-world conditions

Testing your website is good. Testing the full purchase journey, end to end, is better. Repeat the exercise with variations – on mobile, with a different payment method, and so on – just as you would with load tests.

And don’t push anything live just before the peak. Do what the big retailers do: set a code freeze several weeks ahead.

“During peak season, the whole of e-commerce is under strain. One misplaced comma in a line of code is enough to sink everything.” 

Blind spots: what merchants overlook when preparing

Brief your providers and check your limits

Do you need to notify your payment provider about Black Friday? Not necessarily.

“Black Friday is a market-wide peak, so it’s up to the PSP to anticipate it. A product drop is a different story: then you do need to let them know. It stops the platform from going down and makes sure payments go through.”

So any one-off event – a product drop, a collection launch, a flash sale – should be flagged in advance, because a sudden spike in load can hit your conversion rate.

Even if you don’t need to notify your PSP about peak season itself, it’s always worth checking your transaction limits – a spike could push you over them – and reviewing your anti-fraud rules.

Plan for Black Friday itself

Who is monitoring what? Who makes the call if something goes wrong? Settle these questions before peak season kicks off.

As for metrics, keep a close, real-time eye on your payment acceptance rate and your conversion rate.

A successful peak is a well-prepared peak. List what could break, fix what you can, and have a fallback for the rest: that’s the best way to go into peak season. Discover our dedicated checklist.

Of all the building blocks to check, payments – and authentication in particular – deserve special attention. Look out for our next article, where we share our advice on getting them right.