Black Friday 2026 is Friday 27 November, with Cyber Monday following on the 30th. In Greece, though, Black Friday turned into “Black November” a long time ago: the big retailers open their offers in the first days of the month and shoppers start comparing prices in October. If you run an e-shop, most of what will go right or wrong on the day has already been decided weeks earlier. That is why the right month to start is September.
September: the foundations
A site that can take the traffic
On Black Friday, traffic to an average Greek e-shop multiplies, often three or four times a normal Friday. A site that takes 2 seconds with 50 visitors simply goes down with 500. Measure your speed now, with real data rather than “it opens fast for me”. If your hosting is close to its limits, the upgrade happens in September, not on the Thursday before Black Friday. We have written in detail about how much a slow site costs in sales and about when it is time to change hosting.
A checkout with no obstacles
Every extra step at the checkout is customers walking away, and on Black Friday people have zero patience. Make sure guest checkout exists, that cards go through on mobile with a single tap, that you offer alternative payment methods (IRIS, cash on delivery, Apple Pay and Google Pay if your platform supports them), and that shipping costs appear before the final step. Place test orders from a phone, with a real card, at three different times of day.
Products with proper data
Titles, photos, availability, sizes, delivery time. Whatever is missing from the product page turns into a Messenger question or an abandoned cart. The same goes for the feed you send to Google Merchant Center: products with incomplete data get rejected in exactly the week you need them. And since more and more people ask AI assistants “which one should I buy”, clean and complete product data is now a visibility issue too. More in our guide to GEO and AI search.
October: building your audience
Remarketing lists that fill up from now
The cheapest Black Friday customer is the one who has already visited your site. To find them again in November, the Meta pixel and GA4 need to be recording properly from October, so the lists have volume when you need them. If you start collecting an audience on the Monday of Black Friday week, you will pay dearly for strangers. See the basics of remarketing and how we set it up in Google and Meta campaigns.
Email, SMS and Viber: the channel you own
Ads get more expensive for everyone in November. The email and phone list you have collected is the only channel you do not pay for per click. A simple “sign up for early access to the offers, one day before everyone else” on the site from October works remarkably well. On the day itself, an SMS or Viber message gets read within minutes, something no email manages.
The Black Friday page goes up early
Build the offers page in October, with a stable URL you will keep every year, such as /black-friday. Even with just “offers coming, sign up here”, Google has time to see it and rank it, and you have somewhere to send the first ads. A page that goes live on Black Friday morning is invisible to search.
November: execution
Offers that hold up
Shoppers have learned to spot the “discount” that is the regular price with a different label. The law, in any case, requires every price reduction announcement to show the lowest price of the previous 30 days. A few clean, genuine offers on products you have in stock bring in more than a hundred fake ones. And think about bundles: two products together at a better price raise the average basket without flattening your margin.
Ads start before the week
Campaigns need a few days to learn who to show to. A campaign that opens on Thursday night spends Friday learning. Start at least a week earlier, with a smaller budget, and raise it gradually. And settle the budget for the week early, because cost per click in November is among the highest of the year. Related: how much Google Ads costs in Greece in 2026.
Backup and change freeze
From the week before through to Cyber Monday, nothing gets updated: no plugins, no theme, no versions. A full backup before the week and another one on Thursday night. If you run WordPress, these are the things a maintenance plan takes care of without you having to remember them.
The day: what to watch
Four things, every hour. Site response time, payment errors, stock of the products on offer, and how long you take to answer messages. Whatever slips, you should see it first, not through an unhappy comment on Instagram.
Afterwards: the real profit
Black Friday does not end on Monday. The lists that filled up, the new customers who came in and the data from the campaigns are the material for December and Christmas, which for many e-shops is an even bigger month. A thank-you email, a coupon for a second purchase and remarketing to the new customers, and the week you paid for keeps on delivering.
Want us to run your e-shop through this list before November arrives? Contact us.
