black friday cyber monday

The Ultimate BFCM Checklist: Is Your Adelaide E-commerce Site Ready?

Here in Adelaide, the winter chill is still in the air, but in the world of e-commerce, the heat is already on for the holiday season. The single biggest mistake an online store can make is waiting until October to prepare for Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM). By then, it’s often too late.

A successful Q4 is built on the solid foundation you lay in Q3. A smooth, fast, and secure experience during the year’s busiest shopping period can be the difference between record-breaking revenue and a season of frustrating crashes and abandoned carts.

To help you get started, we’ve created the ultimate checklist for auditing your e-commerce website. Go through these five key areas now to ensure you’re ready for the rush.

1. Performance Under Pressure: Can Your Site Handle the Rush?

A sudden 5x or 10x spike in traffic is a great problem to have, but it will bring a poorly prepared website to its knees. Slow load times frustrate customers and lead directly to lost sales.

  • Check Your Hosting Plan: Contact your hosting provider. Discuss your plans for BFCM and ask if your current plan can handle a significant, sustained traffic surge.
  • Test Page Load Speed: Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to test your homepage, category pages, and product pages. Aim for a load time of under 3 seconds.
  • Optimize Your Images: Large, uncompressed images are the most common cause of slow websites. Ensure all product and marketing images are properly sized and compressed for the web.
  • Review Third-Party Scripts: Every app, plugin, or tracking code (e.g., Facebook Pixel, analytics) adds to your load time. Audit your scripts and remove any you no longer need.

2. The Mobile Gauntlet: Is Your Store Truly Thumb-Friendly?

Over half of all holiday shopping traffic now comes from mobile devices. A clunky mobile experience is no longer acceptable.

  • Complete a Full Test Purchase on Your Phone: Don’t just look at the homepage. Add items to your cart, navigate the menu, apply a discount code, and complete the entire checkout process on a mobile device.
  • Check Tap Target Sizes: Are buttons and links easy to tap with a thumb? Or are they frustratingly small and close together?
  • Test Your Pop-Ups: Can promotional pop-ups be closed easily on a small screen, or do they trap your mobile users?
  • Navigate the Menu: Is your mobile navigation menu intuitive and easy to use?

3. The Conversion Path: Is Your Checkout Losing You Money?

The average cart abandonment rate hovers around 70%. Most of those sales are lost during the checkout process due to friction and unexpected surprises.

  • Offer Guest Checkout: Do not force customers to create an account to make a purchase. This is a major conversion killer.
  • Remove Unnecessary Fields: Do you really need their phone number or a second address line? Eliminate every field that isn’t absolutely essential to completing the order.
  • Display Express Payment Options: Make sure Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal are prominently displayed. These options build trust and allow for a frictionless one-tap purchase.
  • Be Transparent with Shipping Costs: Display shipping costs as early in the process as possible. A surprise shipping fee is the #1 reason for cart abandonment.

4. Fort Knox Security: Building Trust During the Busiest Season

Customer trust is paramount. A security issue during the holiday season is a public relations disaster waiting to happen.

  • Update Everything: Ensure your e-commerce platform (WordPress, BigCommerce, etc.), plugins, and apps are all updated to the latest versions to patch any security vulnerabilities.
  • Verify Your SSL Certificate: Double-check that your SSL certificate is active and properly configured across your entire site. The “padlock” icon in the browser is a powerful trust signal.
  • Review Staff Permissions: Limit admin access to your site’s backend to only those who absolutely need it.

5. Marketing Readiness: Are Your Promotions Ready to Launch?

Finally, all the technical preparation needs to support your marketing efforts.

  • Create and Test Coupon Codes: Generate your BFCM discount codes now and test them to ensure they work as expected.
  • Prepare Digital Assets: Design all your homepage banners, category graphics, and pop-ups in advance so they are ready to be uploaded.
  • Confirm Scheduling Capabilities: Can your website’s content management system easily schedule a “sale price” or a promotional banner to go live at a specific time? Test this functionality.

Your Expert Partner in Holiday Readiness

This checklist might seem like a lot, and that’s because it is. Ensuring your website is technically sound and strategically optimized for the most important sales period of the year is a significant undertaking.

This is where a strategic partner can make all the difference.

A7Designs offers a comprehensive Pre-Holiday E-commerce Audit specifically for Adelaide businesses. We perform a deep dive into your site’s performance, mobile usability, checkout process, and security. We’ll identify weak spots, provide a clear report on what needs to be fixed, and create an action plan to get it done.

Contact us today to book your audit and ensure your website is in peak condition to win the 2025 holiday season.