Every year, Black Friday brings brands the opportunity to reach new customers and send revenue figures through the roof.
But is revenue alone enough to deem Black Friday a success?
That's what we'll explore in this blog post, looking into what makes a healthy Black Friday for your brand, and the tips that'll help get you there.
Let's dive straight in.
How you measure the success of your Black Friday should go far beyond revenue alone.
Instead of looking at just a top-line revenue figure, you should analyse areas including:
By looking into these areas, you'll get a good sense of what a good Black Friday looks like: one that fulfils orders profitably, rather than just generating more of them.
Black Friday grows year after year, meaning the opportunity for success scales with it.
But how do you ensure real success, and avoid the trap of being satisfied with inflated sales volumes that don't actually deliver that much more profit?
Let's explore some of the ways you can ensure positive performance in the key areas listed above, with some actionable tips you can apply to your brand this peak season.
Customers want convenience, and it's your job to provide it for them. It's also your job to meet your customers where they are.
Mobile spending in the UK hit £16.5 billion across November and December 2025, making up 61.5% of all UK online holiday revenue across the period.
With this in mind, it should be high up your list of priorities to check that your website runs smoothly on mobile, especially product pages, baskets and checkout.
Here's what else you can do to improve the buying experience for potential customers:
We're living in a time where mobile-first isn't just a design preference anymore, but where most UK online holiday spending now happens.
The modern shopper is wise to sneaky discounting tactics and marketing tricks.
IMRG reports that, despite Black Friday growing +1.2% year-on-year in 2025, total market revenue across the week was down -1.2% and Cyber Monday a surprising -3.2%.
This data alone shows us one thing: discounting across the Black Friday period doesn't guarantee success.
Here's how to make your offers land:
The best offer will make the customer feel like they're getting value from the deal while your margins stay protected by the increase in volumes.
In the age of AI, this is a big one. Whether you call it AEO, GEO or anything in between, getting your products referenced by ChatGPT and Claude can result in a sale before the buyer has even visited your website.
But accurate product information isn't some new tactic; it needs to be useful wherever customers discover it, whether through search, social medial, marketplaces or AI tools.
Here's what to do:
Adobe reported a 329% year-on-year increase in UK retail website traffic referred by AI sources during the 2025 holiday shopping period, but it does note that AI referrals remain a relatively small portion of online traffic.
No matter where your customers find you, getting product and delivery information right is a non-negotiable.
Delivery is a big deal for shoppers. They not only want to be kept informed on when their order is likely to arrive, but a poor delivery experience can harm your brand reputation (even if it isn't your fault).
Customers also want convenience when it comes to how their orders are delivered, whether it's cheaper delivery fees for a slightly longer wait or an out-of-home delivery (OOH) for those who prefer to collect their items at a time that suits them.
To get delivery right:
Customers will always prefer a slightly longer delivery estimate over a promise that isn't kept. Keep this front of mind, and have a plan in place for if things go wrong.
Ever placed an order and had radio silence back? Or been unable to keep an eye on when your order's going to arrive?
Customers want to be kept updated, an expectation that's so common it means you'll stick out like a sore thumb if your brand doesn't provide consistent communication.
What you should do to keep customers informed:
More orders through Black Friday likely means more customer queries. Clear post-purchase communication helps customers feel informed and reduces avoidable support requests.
If a product sells faster than expected and your website or marketplace stock records aren't updated in real time, you could end up in a situation where you're selling stock that isn't actually available.
Here's what you should do:
Good inventory management throughout any promotional period is straightforward: knowing what's happening in the moment and being able to respond without damaging the customer experience.
It's important to consider the entire Black Friday promotional window when it comes to your operation, not just the day itself.
IMRG's 2025 figures show that performance varied quite significantly across the Black Friday week: Tuesday revenue was up +4.4% YoY, while Cyber Monday dipped -3.2%. Although these are revenue figures, it shows how performance can vary across the week. Your operation needs to handle anything that comes.
Fulfilment needs to respond to order volume changes whenever they happen, not just on Black Friday itself.
Adding to what we touched on in tip four, it's important to give customers the ability to choose and manage delivery services.
It's up to your brand to consider whether different products and destinations need different delivery services, and putting the operational foundations in place to make this available to customers.
Here's what to check:
A flexible delivery operation gives brands more ways to keep orders moving when conditions change, and gives buyers power to tailor the customer experience to their liking.
When it comes to peak, time is precious. So the more time you can give back to your team, the better.
As order volumes spike, spending time on manual order entry, stock updates and tracking administration become much harder to keep on top of – in fact, it can result in being all you do.
With this in mind, here's how automation can help:
The benefits of automation go far beyond processing orders faster. It also helps reduce the amount of intervention required from the brand when Black Friday gets busy.
Returns are an important part of your overall brand experience, but many businesses treat them as a separate entity.
A simple returns process doesn't just keep customers happy after they've received your product, it can actually encourage them to buy in the first place.
A study in the US found that 93% of consumers review a retailer's returns policy at least occasionally before making a purchase.
Plus, four out of five shoppers say easy returns options can encourage them to buy from a new brand, and 97% say a positive returns experience makes them more likely to repurchase from a brand in the future.
With that in mind, here's how to nail returns:
It's also wise to remember that Black Friday purchases could be intended as Christmas gifts, so customers may pay particular attention to returns.
Extending returns periods isn't a universal requirement, but something that should be considered depending on your brand, product category and costs.
Of course, the responsibility of everything we've listed above doesn't sit with your brand alone (and if it does, good luck).
By having the right fulfilment partner, much of the peak season pressure can be taken off your brand's shoulders, giving you room to breathe and deal with the issues that deserve your attention.
Let's break down some of the key areas where a fulfilment provider can make a difference when order volumes are at their highest.
| Capability | Impact |
| Scalable fulfilment capacity | Ability to handle higher order volumes and react more swiftly to rapid changes in demand |
| Real-time visibility | Allows your brand to check stock levels, order statuses and inventory movement without requesting manual updates |
| Connected technology | Improves how orders flow between your website, sales channels and fulfilment, keeping everything moving automatically |
| Reliable order processing | The processes, performance measures and escalation procedures that maintain picking and dispatch reliability |
|
Carrier flexibility |
The more suitable shipping services the provider can offer, the better a brand can react to disruption |
| Returns management | The processes that decide how returns are received, inspected, processed and made available for resale |
If your fulfilment partner takes these off your plate, and does them well, Black Friday becomes a whole lot more enjoyable.
fulfilmentcrowd helps hundreds of brands deliver on Black Friday every year by supporting them across three key areas of peak season fulfilment.
Our global partner network of fulfilment centres all run on the same processes and technology, ensuring reliable order accuracy all year round.
It's a scalable setup that maintains SLA performance throughout peak season, no matter where our customers' customers are located.
Plus, with dedicated workflows for DTC, B2B and marketplace setups, we give brands the room to grow in peak season – however they wish.
With countless integration opportunities – whether that's your standard Shopify connection or ERP system – we bring everything into one system.
As well as benefitting from one partner across a global network of warehouses, we help to bring everything you need into a single platform.
By managing inventory information, order management and more in real time, our technology gives a central location for brands to stay on top of their operation when volumes spike.
The support brands receive from fulfilmentcrowd doesn't end after dispatch.
With global returns process and a proven process for managing and resolving bad delivery events, we've built the tools to help you preserve all-important customer experience during peak.
And, what's more, you'll still manage everything in one platform – while your customers get a white-label service that keeps you on brand.
Your team should be able to focus on customers and sales during Black Friday. Leave the operational stuff to us.
Black Friday success is about way more than just the sale. By looking beyond revenue alone, you'll get a sense of what you've actually achieved during the period, giving you a much better chance to grow from it.
Remember the essentials: clear offers, easy checkout experiences, accurate stock information, realistic delivery promises and reliable fulfilment.
A positive experience during peak can turn a one-off promotional customer into a repeat buyer. That's the goal, and hopefully the tips we've shared help get you there.