Why Is Black Friday the Most Important Time to Have Upsells Running?
Black Friday and peak sales periods bring your highest purchase-intent traffic of the year. Customers are actively looking to buy — which means well-configured upsell rules can generate significantly more attributed revenue during these few days than they do across entire regular months.
How Far in Advance Should You Prepare Your Upsell Rules?
Prepare at least two weeks before your sale starts. This gives you time to create new rules, test them on your live store, review the initial performance data, and make adjustments before traffic spikes. Rules you activate on the day of the sale have no testing behind them — if the pairing is wrong or the widget position is off, you won't know until after the opportunity has passed.
What Should You Change About Your Rules for Black Friday?
Your existing rules can stay on — they'll keep running in the background. On top of those, add sale-specific rules for:
- Your discounted hero products — create product-specific rules that surface complementary items at full price or with a smaller discount alongside your deepest-discounted products
- Bundle opportunities — use tag-based rules to group discounted items with related accessories, increasing the perceived value of the deal
- Post-purchase offers — configure a post-purchase rule specifically for the sale period, offering a second item at an additional discount for orders placed during the event
Should You Change the Sort Order During Sales?
Consider switching your sort order from 'best selling' to 'price: low to high' for cart and checkout rules during sale periods. When customers are in a discount-seeking mindset, surfacing your lowest-priced add-ons first reduces the perceived cost of adding one more item to the cart.
How Do You Prioritise Rules When You Have Many Active at Once?
If you're running sale-specific rules alongside your standard rules, use priority settings to ensure the seasonal rules take precedence. Give your Black Friday rules a higher priority value so they display in front of your year-round rules at the same position. After the sale ends, disable or delete the temporary rules — or reduce their priority back to baseline.
What Should You Review After the Sale?
Once Black Friday has passed, check the revenue dashboard in SmartSellio to see which rules contributed the most during the event. This data is one of the most valuable inputs for planning the following year — you'll know exactly which product pairings resonate with high-intent sale shoppers and which didn't justify the rule.
Start Setting Up Before the Rush
The stores that do well during Black Friday didn't set things up on the day. Install SmartSellio and use your 14-day free trial to get your rules built, tested, and ready well before your next high-traffic sale.