If you want to optimise your webshop for Q4, October is a much easier month than the week of Black Friday. This year Black Friday falls on November 27, which leaves seven weeks from the day we publish this. What you postpone has to be done when traffic is highest and a mistake costs the most. Below is what we check first, in which order, and what it should look like when it is done.
Why October is the month to start
The shoppers are there. Dutch consumers spent €35.7 billion online in 2025, spread over 347 million purchases, according to the Thuiswinkel Market Monitor. And 92 percent of people aged 12 and over bought something online in the past twelve months, says Statistics Netherlands (CBS). The question is whether your shop holds up when they all arrive in the same weeks.
The peak is six weeks, not one day
Thuiswinkel.org advises shops to spread promotions over Singles Day (November 11), Black Friday (November 27), Sinterklaas and Christmas instead of putting everything on one date. For your shop that means a long run of busy days, with every campaign sending visitors to the same product pages and the same checkout.
Set a freeze date
Agree on a date after which only fixes go live. We use one week before Black Friday, which is November 20. Everything that needs testing, such as payments, delivery options and discount codes, has to be finished before that date. A new plugin installed on November 25 is the classic way to lose a good weekend.
Speed: the first place where revenue leaks
Speed is the one fix with published numbers behind it. In an A/B test by Vodafone, a 31 percent better LCP (from 8.3 to 5.7 seconds) gave 8 percent more sales and an 11 percent higher share of visits with something in the cart. A Google-commissioned study by 55 and Deloitte found that a mobile site that is just 0.1 second faster raised retail conversion by 8.4 percent and spending by 9.2 percent. That study dates from the end of 2019 and covers large brand sites, so read it as a direction and not as a promise for your shop.
Measure the pages that earn money
Do not stop at the homepage. Test a category page, a product page and the checkout, on a phone with mobile data. Google calls an LCP of 2.5 seconds or less good, measured at the 75th percentile of visits. Our blog on Core Web Vitals explains how to read these numbers.
Check what you added this year
Product review widgets, chat tools, tracking pixels and campaign pop-ups all load extra code. List everything that loads on the product page and the checkout, and remove what you do not use. Removing a script is often quicker than tuning images for another hour.
Show stock and delivery times honestly
Thuiswinkel.org is clear on this: tell customers completely, correctly and upfront what the expected delivery time is, what can be delayed and what is in stock, in a prominent place. The consumer authority ACM supervises compliance with consumer rights, and Thuiswinkel.org reports many complaints about late parcels in busy periods.
Three things to fix in October
First, make sure the stock in your shop matches the stock in your system, so you do not sell what you do not have. Second, show the delivery time on the product page and in the checkout, not only in the footer. Third, ask your carrier what they expect and share your own forecast with them, so you can adjust the delivery promise in time if it gets tight.
Checkout: fewer obstacles, familiar payment methods
The Baymard Institute collects the reasons why shoppers leave without paying. In its overview of 50 studies, the average cart abandonment rate is 70.22 percent. These are the main reasons, leaving out people who were just browsing:
Almost all of these are in your hands. Extra costs and slow delivery come back in the previous section. Add to that a forced account (offer a guest checkout), a long form and errors that appear halfway. Baymard finds that a good checkout has 12 to 14 form elements, where the average US shop shows 23.48 by default. Count yours.
Payment methods your buyer knows
A Dutch buyer expects iDEAL, and a Belgian buyer expects Bancontact. Show the methods before the last step, not after the address form. Then pay with every method once, in a live test with a small amount, and check that the confirmation email and the order in your system are correct. Our blog on the future of iDEAL explains where the Dutch payment landscape is heading.
What we saw in two shops we built
Neither is a seasonal shop, but both follow the same rule: the buyer sees what they need to decide before they pay. At Pallethandel Den Bosch prices show with and without VAT, the delivery cost follows the postal code in the checkout, and payment runs through iDEAL, Bancontact and cards. TreasureTrade was rebuilt as a new template on the existing live environment, with every product, order and setting kept in place. That is the kind of change to make well before the peak, not in November.
What to check, and when
| When | Focus | Done when |
|---|---|---|
| 6 weeks before (Oct 16) | Speed, stock feed | LCP 2.5 s or less on mobile |
| 4 weeks before (Oct 30) | Checkout, payments | Every method test-paid |
| 2 weeks before (Nov 13) | Delivery promise | Carrier forecast shared |
| 1 week before (Nov 20) | Freeze | Only fixes go live |
| Black Friday week | Watching | Orders checked daily |
Dates based on Black Friday on November 27, 2026.
How JKC Media helps with this
We build WooCommerce webshops that are meant to sell, from the product page to the checkout. If you want to know where your own shop stands before the peak, start with our free webshop scan. It looks at the route to checkout, payment, speed and findability, and the European rules for selling to consumers, and it ends with concrete steps and not automatically a rebuild. If you want a test order placed, we only do that with your permission. For the numbers behind your checkout, read how to measure and improve your conversion rate.
Frequently asked questions: how to optimise your webshop for Q4
When should I start preparing my webshop for Black Friday?
Seven weeks before is a comfortable start, which is mid-October for Black Friday on November 27, 2026. Settle speed and checkout first, share a forecast with your carrier two weeks before, and freeze changes one week before.
How fast should a webshop load?
Google rates an LCP of 2.5 seconds or less as good, measured on at least three quarters of visits. Test your category pages, product pages and checkout on a phone, not only the homepage.
What is a good conversion rate for a webshop?
There is no single number, because it depends on what you sell, your prices and how many visitors are new. A more useful comparison is your own shop: November against last year, and this October against your normal weeks. Baymard puts the average cart abandonment at 70.22 percent, so about three in ten carts end as an order.
How many steps may a checkout have?
There is no fixed number of steps. What counts is how much you ask. Baymard finds that a good checkout has 12 to 14 form elements, and that a required account causes 18 percent of the abandonments. Offer a guest checkout and keep each step short.
Want to know how your shop does before November? Request a free webshop scan and we will tell you what to fix first. Or get in touch if you would rather talk it through.
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