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On Wednesday 9 September, we brought eCommerce teams together at the Kubix office in Birmingham for Preparing for Q4 and Beyond, the first session in our Customer Journey Series. The evening was delivered in partnership with Rebuy and focused on the decisions brands can still make before Black Friday, Christmas and the wider Q4 peak trading period.
We heard from Trailberg, Snüz, DJI Hasselblad, Rebuy and the Kubix team, with speakers sharing the things that tend to get missed when campaign calendars fill up and trading pressure rises. The conversation covered retention, conversion rate optimisation, search and AI discovery, brand, merchandising, operations and logistics.
Thank you to everyone who joined us, to the brands who contributed so openly, and to Rebuy for sponsoring the event. For anyone who could not make it, these were the ideas that kept coming back throughout the evening.
Black Friday should still feel like your brand
Peak can make brands behave differently. New promotions, louder creative and unfamiliar tactics often arrive all at once because the pressure to compete is high. Valeria Granda from Rebuy reminded us that the people most likely to buy already have a reason to trust the brand. A Black Friday campaign should make the offer clear without losing the product, tone and experience that earned that trust.
“I think just keeping the brand in it and the reason why people love the brand… Stick to what works and the reasons that people love it.” - Valeria Granda UK and EMEA Rebuy
That does not mean repeating last year’s campaign unchanged. It means giving new creative, personalisation and promotional mechanics a clear role while keeping the brand recognisable. Review every message from the customer’s point of view. If the discount disappeared, would the page, email or advert still feel like your brand?
Peak problems often start in business as usual
Most Q4 plans give plenty of attention to the campaign itself. Joseph Brown, Operations Director at Kubix, argued that the greater risk often sits underneath it: inventory movements, data synchronisation and the integrations that carry an order from checkout to fulfilment.
“The problem is this bit doesn’t get the TLC. So think of inventory movements, synchronisation of data, all the hygiene that surrounds that.” - Joseph Brown Operations Director, Kubix
A store can look ready while a quiet dependency remains untested. A new ERP connection, warehouse workflow, returns platform or data feed may now sit on the critical path between an order being placed and fulfilled. If it was not part of last year’s peak, it needs to be tested at the volume you expect this year, with clear ownership if something fails.
How to plan for Black Friday orders: What most businesses overlook
Marketing forecasts can dominate Black Friday planning, but a successful campaign creates an operational promise. Every conversion adds work for the warehouse, customer service team, carriers and suppliers. Tom Peet from DJI Hasselblad described logistics as the issue that can still catch teams by surprise when demand lands in a concentrated window.
“It’s normally logistics. We’re busy into peak and then Black Friday rolls around and suddenly there’s three times the amount of orders that have got to go out that day.” - Tom Peet Head of eCommerce and Shopify Specialist DJI Hasselblad
Dennis King-Lloyd from Snüz captured the familiar timing problem too: Black Friday happens every year, but the final rush still arrives. Zed Iqbal from Comodo Living added a manufacturer’s perspective, where demand is harder to judge because supply chains, customer behaviour and household budgets can all change the outcome.
“One thing that’s probably overlooked is the amount of orders coming in. It’s always difficult to judge.” - Zed Iqbal Comodo Living
The useful question is not simply how many orders the campaign could generate. It is how many the whole operation can accept, process, dispatch and support without breaking the delivery promise. Capacity planning should cover stock availability, picking and packing, carrier collections, customer service, returns and the fallback route when one part of the process slows down.
Discounts should not hide the rest of the range
Robin Taylor from Rosso & Azzurro, the Manchester brand house behind modern fashion and lifestyle brands including Trailberg, raised an important merchandising point whilst speaking on our panel. Planning often centres on off-price products, but customers do not stop wanting newness because a sale is live.
Full-price products, new colourways, new franchises and new categories still need visibility. For some audiences, sale fatigue can make those launches more interesting than another wall of reduced products. Build the promotional journey so customers can understand the deal and still discover the strongest parts of the current range.
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Fix conversion friction before paid traffic gets expensive
The Kubix team also looked at the relationship between paid media and conversion rate optimisation. Traffic usually becomes more expensive during peak, so sending more people into a journey with known friction compounds the problem. Review navigation, mobile product pages, search, collection merchandising, delivery information, payment options and checkout before budgets increase.
Use evidence from analytics, heatmaps, customer service conversations and real test orders. A broad redesign is rarely the best use of the remaining time. Prioritise issues that affect high-intent journeys, test the change and agree which metrics will show whether it worked. Our Shopify Store Audit Checklist provides a focused place to start.
Build retention before the first peak order arrives
Black Friday may bring a wave of first-time customers, but the value of that acquisition depends on what happens after checkout. Retention cannot begin in December. Welcome, post-purchase, replenishment and win-back journeys need to be live, tested and relevant before the increase in orders begins.
Segmentation matters here. A first-time promotional buyer does not always need the same message as a loyal customer or someone buying a gift. Use the data you collect during peak to make the next message more helpful, not simply more frequent. For a deeper look at the journey, read Customer Retention Strategies for your eCommerce Website.
Reuse the Black Friday pages that have already earned visibility for SEO
One practical SEO takeaway from the evening was to stop rebuilding the same Black Friday landing page every year. An established URL can retain links, search history and relevance between campaigns. Creating a fresh page each season means starting again and can leave several near-identical URLs competing for the same searches.
Keep the strongest page available, update its content and offer for the current campaign, and remove time-sensitive messaging when the promotion ends. The page can sit quietly between peaks without disappearing. This also gives paid media, email and organic search one consistent destination, making performance easier to compare from year to year.
What eCommerce teams should pressure test before Black Friday
- Brand and offer: Make sure the campaign still gives customers a clear reason to choose the brand beyond the discount.
- Critical systems: Test every integration that moves order, customer, stock and fulfilment data.
- Operational capacity: Model a realistic upside case and confirm where extra volume will be absorbed.
- Customer journey: Remove the clearest mobile, navigation, product and checkout barriers before increasing spend.
- Retention: Test the flows and segments that will welcome and bring back first-time peak customers.
- Search visibility: Refresh established seasonal URLs and keep deeper guidance on the pages already built to own those topics.
Keep the conversation going
Preparing for Q4 and Beyond worked because brands, partners and specialists shared what peak looks like from different sides of the business. Thank you again to Trailberg, Snüz, DJI Hasselblad, Rebuy, our speakers and everyone who joined us in Birmingham.
If you met someone at the event and did not get their details, speak to the Kubix team and we will be happy to make an introduction. We also have more events and webinars on the way, including Retail, Reimagined and our visit to the eCommerce Expo in London. Get in touch if you would like the links.
If your Q4 plan needs an independent pressure-test, our Shopify Platinum team can review the customer journey, technology and operations with you. Talk to Kubix.
