We are one step away from Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and one question dominates every conversation: what happens when it all takes place in the middle of Covid-19? The big day falls on November 27, but many stores start one or two weeks earlier. This year, sales will not be decided by discounts alone. They will be decided by whether your e-shop, campaigns and customer service can handle demand that is moving online almost overnight.
E-commerce takes center stage
With social distancing still a reality, shoppers are asking a simple question: “how will we shop on Black Friday this year?”. The answer, familiar to all of us by now, is e-commerce.
The first lockdown (March to May) was a real-world stress test. The pandemic sped up changes that would otherwise have taken years: almost every e-shop, Greek and international, saw a sharp rise in sales as Covid pushed people to buy online. Businesses that had already invested in digital transformation (UX, performance marketing, analytics, logistics) turned that rise into revenue more cleanly. For today, see also our Black Friday preparation checklist.
What the data says about Black Friday 2020
Two research pieces frame the year's expectations:
- Adobe Analytics forecasts a +20% lift in Black Friday sales versus 2019.
- Wells Fargo reports that 70% of consumers worldwide do not intend to rely on physical stores this year and plan to buy online — which is projected to drive a 20–25% increase in e-shop traffic.
Taken together, the two numbers tell a clear story: this Black Friday is different. Not only is more demand moving online, but that demand is concentrated on businesses that can actually handle it — technically, operationally, and in how clearly they communicate with first-time online shoppers who used to walk into a store.
What this means for Greek e-shops
The Greek e-commerce market is especially exposed to the Covid-driven shift for three reasons:
- Lower historical online penetration: Many customers this year will be buying online for the first time during Black Friday — which means the site, checkout, and customer support need to survive an audience that is less forgiving of friction than a returning online shopper.
- Supply chain and logistics pressure: Local courier capacity is strained. E-shops that plan delivery windows and communicate them clearly will win on trust; those that over-promise and under-deliver will burn through goodwill they cannot rebuild fast enough for Christmas.
- Ad auction pressure: With more advertisers shifting budget online in the same two-week window, CPCs on Google and Meta will spike. E-shops that went into Black Friday without a tuned account structure and a clear bid strategy will pay for every click at an inflated rate.
Practical priorities for the next two weeks
If there is time for one thing before the peak, make it each of these — in order:
- Audit the checkout flow on mobile first. First-time online shoppers will disproportionately drop on unclear shipping cost, unexpected fees, or a confusing address form.
- Tighten the product feed: Missing
availability,shipping, ordiscountattributes translate directly into weak Shopping ads and manual back-and-forth with customer service. - Pre-stage ad creatives and audiences, so the Black Friday push is ready to deploy rather than built under time pressure.
- Instrument revenue tracking independently of the platforms: Ad platform dashboards lag; a first-party revenue log gives you real-time visibility to react before the peak ends.
The businesses that treat Black Friday 2020 as a systems problem — not a promo problem — will come out with more than revenue. They will come out with a durable online customer base.