Welcome to the second edition of our annual Black Friday Cyber Monday Trend Report. Like last year, we conducted a comprehensive survey in July 2025 to understand strategies, challenges and expectations for the upcoming peak season across businessmen and agencies.
These findings explore how businesses plan to capitalize in the season and what new strategies they intend to implement. This post is a review of our report findings and you can check out our upcoming strategy guide to prepare for your best BFCM.
In 2025, focus on website performance and optimization doubleindicating focus on customer experience and reduce friction to increase the bottom line. In 2024, only 13% of respondents chose website optimization as their top priority, a number jumping to 33.4% this year.
Merchants’ promotional strategies are also changing. In 2024, new products, special discounts and target marketing strategies ranked first. But in 2025, the focus is on subscriptions and product bundles, with many stores offering layered discounts (buy more, save more) and new subscription models for more convenient gifts.
This year, 42% of businessmen are dispersing their approach to BFCM. They think outside the box and plan:
- Introduce or update the subscription service (30%): Some merchants have pointed out new subscription plans, new memberships and update options for their existing subscribers.
- Try new promotional strategies (25%): This year our businessmen will have a number of new promotional strategies, including new and sales-specific product packages, earlier sales, strategic email list building, with a larger social profile and brand partnership.
- Update its infrastructure (12%): Others pointed out that an updated website was launched before the busy period, a large project that could bring dividends. Host upgrade It is another popular choice.
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These strategies show a broader effort to improve customer experience, as well as the quotes that come with it. To make these decisions, businesses are obtaining historical sales data (29.8%), their marketing budgets (22.4%) and industry trends (19.4%).
Larger businesses start planning ahead
Of the businessmen who experienced seasonal improvements during the holidays, 36.4% planned one to four weeks ahead of schedule, while 30.9% planned one to three months ahead of schedule. The remaining stores were completely unprepared (20.6%) and prepared for more than three months (12.1%).
As businesses grow bigger numbers, these numbers change: stores that earn more than one million in annual revenue, start holiday planning one to three months ahead of schedule, while another 25% start planning for more than three months.
Businesses with annual revenues below one million usually need less time. Among these stores, 22.2% prepare for one to three months, while only 7.9% prepare for more than three months before BFCM.
As I saw from my own holiday receipts, Black Friday Cyber Monday is a huge revenue driver for e-commerce businesses. Black Friday 2024 Generated $10.8B of revenueup to $9.8B from 2023. Cyber Monday’s growth also increased as consumers spent $13.3B on $12.4B in 24 years.
Overall, the holidays (from November 1 to December 31) generated $241.4B in 2024, nearly $20B higher than in 2023.
The peak season may be a time of destruction, but this is shifting for many businessmen. Last year, 66% of store sales surged from October to December, nine points higher than this year’s 57%. This may indicate that companies are stepping up promotions throughout the year to reduce their reliance on BFCM.
That being said, the holidays still represent a significant bump in the income schedule of many businessmen, with 73% of whom reported that this period accounted for more than 20% of their annual income. This is consistent with 72% of businessmen Reported the same in 2024.
In this group, 28% reported BFCM and holidays accounted for 30 to 50% of annual income, while 8% of businessmen accounted for attributes More than 50% of revenue Up to peak season.
In 2025, 33.4% of businessmen said website performance optimization is the best preparation strategy for their peak holiday season. Another 7.5% will Upgrade hostingwhich will also improve site performance.
After performance optimization, increasing inventory is the second-largest pandemic priority, with 32.6% of businessmen ranking it as No. 1.
The business also aims to check out via express delivery and Buy now, pay later (BNPL) option. Nearly half (49.8%) of comprehensive respondents quoted Express CheckoutHowever, businesses with annual revenues of more than $1 million are likely to offer BNPL under one million.
Marketing and Sales Strategy: What is this move?
Like last year, this year’s survey found Email Marketing (23%) and Organic Society (21.1%) is the most effective marketing channel during the holidays.
Promotional strategies vary, but quotes for product bundles and purchase reserves are the most popular options:
| Main promotional strategies | Percentage of respondents |
| Quotes for product bundles or purchase reserves | 27.4% |
| Tiered Discounts (for example, spend $100 and get a 10% discount) | 18.2% |
| Dynamic discount (based on cart, time or behavior) | 16.1% |
| Free gifts or attachments | 14.7% |
| None of the above | 13.9% |
| Special checkout/payment options (e.g., early access, BNPL) | 6.3% |
| other | 3.4% |
As we prepare for the busiest shopping season of the year, the information we surveyed is clear: WooCommerce merchants are ready to rock BFCM by refining their strategies, investing in inventory and website performance, and leveraging key marketing channels.
And don’t forget to treat yourself as well this holiday. What are you going to buy this BFCM? I bought new hockey sticks and skates on the market (I know my Canadians) and I am very good at making sauna recommendations if you need it.
*Report information is based on 249 survey responses obtained by WooCommerce Email Outreach completed in July 2025.
Tamara Niesen is Woo’s chief marketing officer. With over 20 years of experience in high-growth B2B SaaS, Equipment and Platforms companies, Tamara leads a team focused on branding, go-to-market, demand generation, product marketing, partner marketing, integrated lifecycle marketing and performance marketing. She previously led global demand generation and listing at Shopify, driving revenue growth and market expansion for Shopify Plus. She has also held marketing leadership positions at Housecall Pro, D2L and BlackBerry. Tamara lives in Waterloo, Ontario.
