I've watched stores do $400K in a single Black Friday weekend. I've also watched stores run out of their bestseller at 2pm on that same day and spend the next six weeks apologising to customers. The difference wasn't luck. It was what happened in September.
Q4 typically accounts for somewhere between 30% and 50% of annual revenue depending on your category. Gifts and decorations skew higher. Commodities less so. But for almost everyone, it's the quarter that determines whether you're celebrating in January or scrambling to make payroll.
What follows is essentially the conversation we have with clients every August. It's not particularly exciting. There's no growth hack here. But this is the stuff that actually matters.
Inventory: Where Most Q4s Go Wrong
Here's a pattern I see constantly: founder gets excited about three new products launching in October, orders aggressively on those, and under-orders on the boring SKUs that actually pay the bills. Come Black Friday, the new products are sitting there while the proven sellers are showing 'out of stock.'
Pull last year's Q4 sales by SKU. Actually look at it. Which products sold out too early? Which ones are you still sitting on? That data is more valuable than any forecast model.
For your top sellers (and you probably know what these are), work backwards from demand. If a product sold 500 units last November and you're up 25% year-to-date, assume you'll need at least 625. Then add a buffer. I usually suggest 15-20% for anything in your top ten. The cost of holding extra stock on a proven seller is almost always less than the cost of a stockout.
New products are different. Order conservatively, enough for two or three weeks, and have a reorder plan ready. You can always air-freight more if something takes off. You can't un-order a thousand units that aren't moving.
And place your orders earlier than feels necessary. Suppliers get hammered in Q4 too. A three-week lead time in August becomes five or six weeks by October. I've seen it stretch to eight. If you're waiting until November to reorder, you're already in trouble.
Your Site Needs to Actually Work
Every year, some store has their best traffic day ever and their site falls over. It's predictable and it's preventable.
Dig into last year's analytics. Find your peak traffic hour from Black Friday or Cyber Monday. Now assume 30% more than that, because you're probably running more ads and your email list is bigger. Can your setup handle it?
If you're on Shopify, the infrastructure is handled. But your theme and apps can still kill you. I've seen stores with 40+ apps installed, each one loading JavaScript on every page. The site technically works, but it takes four seconds to become interactive on mobile. That's death for conversion rates.
Run PageSpeed Insights. If you're below 50 on mobile, you've got a problem worth fixing. The usual culprits: images that aren't compressed, sliders that look pretty but tank performance, review widgets loading 500 reviews on initial page load when showing 3 would suffice.
For anyone on custom platforms: have an actual conversation with your hosting provider. Not an email. A call. Get them to tell you specifically what happens if your traffic doubles. Get it documented. If they can't answer confidently, that's a red flag.
And test your checkout. On your phone. With your thumbs. Time how long it takes to go from product page to order confirmation. If it's over a minute, every extra second is costing you money.
Marketing: The Maths Changes in Q4
CPMs on Meta and Google can double in November. Sometimes triple. I've seen Black Friday CPMs hit $25 on audiences that cost $8 in September. If you're planning your Q4 budgets based on Q3 performance, you're going to have a bad time.
The stores that do well are the ones that planned their calendar in September. They know exactly what they're promoting and when. They've got creative ready. They're not scrambling to decide on a Black Friday offer the week before.
Email becomes disproportionately valuable in Q4 precisely because the costs don't spike. Every subscriber you add in September and October is worth significantly more than subscribers added in January. We typically see email driving 30-35% of Q4 revenue for stores with mature programmes, and that's revenue without the inflated acquisition costs.
So build your list aggressively before November. Run competitions. Use pop-ups. Promote lead magnets on social. Whatever it takes.
For paid ads: set budgets higher than you think you need. The platforms won't always spend your full budget, but if you cap too low, you'll miss opportunities you can't get back. I'd rather have a client scale back on November 27th than hit their ceiling at 2pm on Black Friday and watch their competitors hoover up the traffic.
Operations: The Unsexy Stuff That Matters
If you're shipping orders yourself, Q4 will find every weakness in your process.
Order more packing supplies than feels reasonable. Boxes, tape, mailers, tissue paper, whatever you use. Running out of mailers on December 5th is a special kind of stress that I don't recommend. 30-40% more than your forecast usually covers it.
If you've got warehouse staff, book the extra hours now. If it's just you in a spare room, be honest about your capacity. I've seen founders work themselves into the ground trying to keep up with orders when the sensible move would have been to pause ads for 48 hours. There's no prize for burnout.
Know your courier cutoffs for Christmas delivery and publish them clearly. Put them in your header. Put them on product pages. Put them in checkout. Nothing creates more support tickets than 'I ordered on the 20th, why didn't it arrive for Christmas?' when the cutoff was the 18th.
Set expectations for customer service response times too. If you normally reply in four hours, you might be at 24 during peak. That's fine. Just tell people. An auto-response that says 'we're experiencing high volume and will reply within 24 hours' prevents a lot of frustration.
A Rough Timeline
September is for decisions. Audit last year's Q4 properly. Place inventory orders for anything with long lead times. Start building your email list harder than usual. Fix any site speed issues you've been ignoring.
October is for preparation. Lock in your promotional offers. Create all your email content, not just the first email but the whole sequence. Order packing supplies. Brief anyone who's helping with fulfilment. Set up whatever analytics you need to monitor Q4 performance.
Early November is for warming up. Early access offers to your email list. VIP previews. Get people primed so Black Friday isn't cold traffic hitting your site for the first time.
Black Friday week itself is for execution. All hands on deck. Monitor everything: traffic, conversion rate, inventory levels, site speed, ad spend. React quickly to whatever happens.
December shifts from discounts to deadlines. 'Order by X date for Christmas delivery' becomes your primary message. Gift cards take over once shipping cutoffs pass. And start thinking about January: how do you convert all these Q4 buyers into repeat customers?
The Mistakes I Keep Seeing
Waiting too long is the big one. By November, your options are limited. Inventory orders won't arrive. Good developers are booked through Christmas. Agencies are at capacity. The time to prepare for Q4 is Q3.
Spreading too thin is the second. You don't need to run promotions for Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Green Monday, and whatever new shopping day someone invented this year. Pick your moments. Do fewer things properly rather than everything half-heartedly.
Ignoring margins is the third. Q4 revenue is exciting, but 30% off plus 50% higher ad costs plus premium shipping rates can turn a profitable product into a loss leader surprisingly fast. Run the numbers before you commit to offers. Some promotions look great for top-line revenue and terrible for cash flow.
Q4 is a sprint, but you don't win sprints by showing up at the starting line and hoping for the best. The stores that enjoy Q4 (and they do exist) are the ones that did the boring preparation work in September and October.
That's where the real competitive advantage sits. Not in some clever marketing tactic, but in actually being ready.
Have questions about this topic? Get in touch—we're happy to discuss your specific situation.