5 Common Ecommerce Mistakes From Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) are the biggest stress tests of the year for ecommerce. While merchants prepare campaigns, offers and fulfilment strategies months in advance, one part of the experience is often overlooked — payments.

With research showing that 59% of customers abandon a purchase if their preferred payment method isn’t available, a seamless checkout experience is as important as any marketing tactic. Here are five common BFCM mistakes payment and ecommerce teams can avoid.

1. Skipping the post-mortem from last year

It’s tempting to move straight into planning next year’s activity, but valuable lessons are often hidden in last year’s data. Reviewing payment performance can reveal where revenue was lost and where small fixes can make a big impact.

Consider:

• Where did payment drop-offs occur?
• Did expired card details or failed authorisations play a role?
• Which payment methods delivered the highest conversion rates?
• How did downtime or fraud affect revenue?

These insights help teams prioritise improvements — from optimising payment forms to improving uptime or reconciliation. Cross-functional planning ensures everyone knows what to monitor and how to react when volumes surge.

2. Not stress-testing your checkout

High traffic volume is both a blessing and a risk. Without testing at scale, even strong payment systems can slow or fail under load.

Consider:

• Simulating high transaction volumes across devices and regions
• Testing capacity for five times normal traffic
• Collaborating with providers to verify system resilience

For Pay by Bank or other real-time methods, testing should also validate user journeys, compliance and compatibility across banks and devices. Running these checks in sandbox environments helps teams identify vulnerabilities early — long before customers do. 

3. Treating personalisation as optional

In a season defined by competition, relevance matters. Using first-party data and automation to personalise checkout experiences — from product recommendations to message timing — can improve both conversion and customer satisfaction.

AI-driven tools can surface smarter content and recommendations, but success still depends on the fundamentals: understanding customer behaviour and removing friction at the point of payment.

Consider:

• Including product recommendations on the checkout based on their on-site behaviour
• Dynamic web or in-app content for a modern brand experience to encourage trust from potential customers
• Send-time optimisation for the best times to hit your users with discounts and messages, based on their own individual data.
• Customer data is your treasure trove for this BFCM; don’t forget to use it.

4. Missing the mark with your incentives strategy

Discounts are expected during BFCM, but not all incentives deliver sustainable results. The most effective promotions are built around customer insights.

• Segment audiences — treat loyal, high-value and dormant customers differently.
• Define clear goals — whether that’s new customer acquisition, retention or reactivation.
• Place offers where they have the most influence — often at the point of checkout.

As TrueLayer’s Julia Martinez, Head of Product Marketing, puts it:

“Black Friday and Cyber Monday success isn’t just about bigger discounts—it’s about smarter ones. Know your customers and be ready to entice them with a reward at checkout, where it will drive the most impact. The right offer turns browsers into buyers, laying the groundwork to bring customers back again and again, while boosting your business’ bottom line.”

5. Treating BFCM as a one-off event

BFCM is a valuable opportunity to build lasting loyalty. Research shows that after a positive experience, 74% of shoppers are likely to refer a friend, and six in ten would leave a review or join a loyalty programme.

Smooth, reliable payments play a central role here. As Eamon Lindsell, Senior Product Manager at Papa Johns, explained:

“By integrating TrueLayer’s Pay by Bank solution, we’re improving our customers’ digital experience and increasing customer retention, all while reducing fraud, eliminating chargebacks and lowering our cost of payments by more than 40%.”

Loyalty starts with trust — and a friction-free checkout is one of the fastest ways to build it.

Bonus: Keep your reporting live

Visibility is essential during peak trading. Real-time dashboards help teams:

• Spot payment issues immediately
• Track conversion by method and channel
• Identify unusual patterns or fraud signals early

Monitoring performance in real time turns data into a decision-making advantage during the busiest hours of the year.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday bring huge opportunity — and equally high risk — for merchants. The teams that succeed are those that treat payments as a core part of customer experience, not just a back-end function.

By learning from previous campaigns, testing resilience, and focusing on the customer journey from end to end, merchants can turn the year’s busiest weekend into a model for better payment performance all year round.

About TrueLayer

TrueLayer is Europe’s leading Pay by Bank provider. We power smarter, safer and faster online payments by combining real-time bank payments with financial and identity data. Businesses big and small use our products to onboard new users, accept money and make payouts in seconds, and at scale. We’re live across 22 countries and more than 15 million users trust us to process their transactions. Though we’re not stopping here. We’re on a mission to change the way the world pays. And we won’t stop until we’ve unlocked the full potential of payments. Visit truelayer.com