Black Friday is November 27 and Cyber Monday is November 30. If your website needs work before the holidays, the window to do it safely is closing. Most stores lock down changes the week before Thanksgiving.
What the forecasts say
- Online holiday sales up about 8%. Practical Ecommerce projects U.S. online sales from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31 to rise around 8% from last year, when Adobe tracked $257.8 billion.
- AI is sending real buyers. Shoppers who arrive from generative AI tools converted 31% better than other visitors last holiday season, according to Adobe, and the forecast is at least 25% better this year.
- Buy now, pay later keeps growing. BNPL is projected to finance more than $22 billion in U.S. online holiday purchases.
The four-week checklist
- Week 1: speed and mobile. Test your key pages on a phone over cellular data. Compress large images, remove unused plugins and fix anything that takes more than a few seconds to load.
- Week 2: be easy for AI to read. Clear product names, honest descriptions, prices, shipping cutoffs and return policies in plain text, not just in images. Add an FAQ that answers the questions customers actually ask. This is what AI assistants pull from when they recommend a store.
- Week 3: checkout. Run a real test order. Offer the payment options your customers expect, including a pay-over-time option if your processor supports it, and make sure confirmation emails arrive.
- Week 4: freeze and back up. Take a full backup, stop making major changes, and post your holiday hours and shipping deadlines on the homepage.
Don’t forget security
Holiday traffic attracts bots and card-testing attacks. Update WordPress, your theme and plugins now, before the freeze. And remember that PHP 8.2 loses security support on December 31, so plan that upgrade for the quiet week after the holidays.
Want a second set of eyes? Fenway Web will run a free holiday-readiness check on your site, covering speed, mobile, checkout and security, and send you a prioritized fix list. Request a check →
Sources: Practical Ecommerce. Written by the Ecosystem Intelligence Desk.
