Black Friday 2026 for a small store: a 6-week plan

Black Friday 2026 falls on 27 November. There are a little over six weeks left until then, which is just enough for a small store to prepare calmly, without late-night fixes on the day of the sale. The problem is that most stores start by cutting prices instead of preparing the website, the product feed and the legal side.

In this guide you get a week-by-week plan and an explanation of how to work out the lowest 30-day price so that you don’t run into trouble. The plan is written for a store with a few hundred products, but it also works for a smaller catalog.

The lowest 30-day price: what the law says

Article 4 of the Polish Act on Informing About the Prices of Goods and Services (ustawa o informowaniu o cenach towarów i usług) says that when you announce a price reduction, you show next to the lower price the lowest price of that product in the 30 days before the reduction was introduced. This implements the EU Omnibus Directive. The aim is to stop anyone from raising a price just before a sale and then “cutting” it back to the level from before the increase.

In practice this means three things:

• the information must be visible next to the product, together with the sale price,
• what counts is the price that was actually in force in the store, not the “list” price,
• for products on sale for less than 30 days, you count the lowest price from the start of sales, and for fast-perishable goods you show the price from before the first reduction (Article 4, paragraphs 3 and 4).

UOKiK (Urząd Ochrony Konkurencji i Konsumentów, Poland’s competition and consumer protection authority) looks closely at sales and also runs proceedings against large retail chains. A small store is not out of reach, so it is best to keep a price history and documentation.

How to calculate it: an example and pitfalls

Take a product that has cost PLN 300 since September. On Black Friday, 27 November, you cut it to PLN 220. The lowest price from the 30 days before the reduction is PLN 300, and that is the one you show next to PLN 220.

Now the pitfall. If on 14 November you run a “discount weekend” and the price drops to PLN 249 for a few days, the lowest price from the 30 days before Black Friday may already be PLN 249, not PLN 300. The act does not provide separate rules for successive reductions (the exception is fast-perishable goods), so you calculate each reduction from the lowest price in the 30 days before it.

That is why, before November, it is worth doing the following:

1. Export your price history from the store admin panel and check whether the store records it.
2. Don’t change prices in October and November without a reason, because every change affects the calculation.
3. Decide which products go on sale and set out a calendar of reductions.
4. Don’t advertise “prices before the discount” that never existed in the store.

If you are not sure whether your store meets the requirements, I do a store compliance audit: Omnibus, product information and the right of withdrawal. I quote fixes separately.

The 6-week plan at a glance

Weeks 1–2: site and cart speed

On the day of the sale, traffic can be several times higher than usual. A slow store then loses customers who arrive from an ad and have no patience.

Start with the free test in the Check your website tool: in about 30 seconds it checks speed on a phone, SEO and security. Then go through an order as a customer, on a phone, from choosing a product to payment. Check:

• how long the product page and the cart take to load,
• whether BLIK (the Polish mobile payment system), card and bank transfer payments work,
• whether discount codes calculate correctly together with the sale price,
• whether the lowest 30-day price information is visible next to the sale price.

The most common causes of a slow site are images that are too large and too many plugins. If the store needs bigger changes, consider a new store or a rebuild, but don’t start that in November. It is too late for big changes, so it is better to make them after the season.

Weeks 2–3: product feed and Merchant Center

If you sell on Google Shopping, the product feed must have current prices, and sale prices have to be uploaded in advance. The “Promocje” (Promotions) program in Merchant Center doesn’t currently cover offers in Poland, so you show the reduction with a sale price in the feed.

In the feed, the sale price goes through the sale_price attribute and the period it applies through sale_price_effective_date. A simplified example:

<item>
  <g:id>SKU-1042</g:id>
  <g:price>300.00 PLN</g:price>
  <g:sale_price>220.00 PLN</g:sale_price>
  <g:sale_price_effective_date>2026-11-27T00:00+0100/2026-11-30T23:59+0100</g:sale_price_effective_date>
</item>

Before launch, check in Merchant Center whether there are any disapproved products. The price in the feed must match the price on the page and in the cart, because a mismatch is one of the more common reasons for disapprovals. I prepare feeds for Google Merchant, the Meta catalog and other channels as part of the Google Merchant and marketplaces service.

Weeks 3–5: campaigns and emails

Ad campaigns

Don’t launch campaigns only on 27 November. A campaign that starts in week 3 or 4 has time to collect conversion data and will run more steadily on the day of the sale. What to set up:

• campaigns for the products that will actually be on sale, not for the whole store,
• purchase tracking in GA4 and Google Ads, verified with a test order,
• budget limits for the day of the sale, with a margin for higher click prices,
• an exclusion list, so you don’t pay for searches such as “free” or “used”.

I describe how billing works and what eats up the budget in the guide to Google Ads for a small business. If you don’t have the time, I can set up and run the campaigns for you.

Emails to customers

The cheapest channel on Black Friday is your existing customers. Plan three messages:

1. Announcement (around 20 November): what will be on sale and how to sign up for early access.
2. Launch (27 November, morning): a list of products, prices and the end date of the sale.
3. Last hours (on Sunday or Monday): a reminder for those who haven’t bought.

Send only to people who have given their consent. Make sure your domain email is set up correctly: SPF, DKIM and DMARC, because otherwise the promotional email will land in spam. I set up a newsletter, abandoned cart reminders and domain configuration as part of the email marketing service.

Week 6: order handling

The biggest failure is selling more than you can ship. In the week of the sale:

• check your stock levels and switch off products you don’t have in sufficient quantities,
• set the shipping time and state it in the cart and in the confirmation email,
• prepare boxes, tape and labels with a margin for several times the usual traffic,
• arrange a courier for pickup on peak days,
• prepare ready-made answers to questions about delivery, returns and complaints.

A customer buying online has the right to withdraw from the contract within 14 days, so prepare a simple description of returns. On the day of the sale, check every hour that orders are arriving in the admin panel and that payments are being booked.

After the sale, export the data: sales, ad costs, number of orders and returns. Next year you will know where to start.

Summary

The small store that wins Black Friday is the one that checks its site and cart early, understands the lowest 30-day price and has the feed and emails ready. The price cuts themselves are the smallest part of the job. Start with the test in Check your website, then go through the plan week by week.

If you need help with the feed, campaigns or emails, write to me. I reply within 24 hours with a quote, and new clients get 20% off their first project.