70% of Black Friday purchases come from mobile devices - is your web shop ready?

In 2025, more than 70% of Black Friday traffic comes from mobile devices. This is a practical guide to optimizing speed, checkout, and user experience.

This year, more than 70% of all Black Friday purchases come from mobile devices, and every second of loading can decide who earns and who loses. It’s a huge opportunity, but also a serious risk if your online store - especially its mobile version - isn’t optimized for mobile networks, small screens, and impulse purchases. Below is a concrete step-by-step plan to get your store ready to withstand heavy traffic, lift conversion rates, and deliver a first-class mobile experience - without generic or surface-level advice.

Introduction - why mobile devices are taking over Black Friday

Mobile devices are the “first screen” for discovering deals, comparing prices, and impulse purchases. With fast mobile networks, digital wallets, and the habit of “scroll & buy,” mobile channels generate an ever larger share of traffic. According to Shopify, more than 70% of transactions on Black Friday 2024 were made via mobile devices.

What do you lose if you don’t optimize your store?

• slower loading = lower conversions and higher bounce rate - the number of shoppers who left without purchasing
• checkout without digital wallets = more abandoned carts - customers didn’t see their preferred payment method
• unclear design and tap misses = frustration and drop-off - customers couldn’t open a product or hit the Buy button
• no analytics = you don’t know where traffic “leaks” - Google Analytics and similar tools

What does 70% mobile traffic mean for your profit?

If most people come from mobile, revenue is governed most by the mobile experience:

• every extra second of waiting lowers sales
• above 3 seconds to the first “real” render, abandonment rises
• the fewer the steps to pay (guest checkout, Apple Pay, Google Pay), the higher the conversions

A quick example: small changes, big results:

• 10,000 mobile visits over the Black Friday weekend
• current conversion rate (percentage of visitors who purchase) 1.2% = 120 orders
• if optimizing speed and checkout raises conversion by 0.4% (to 1.6%) = 160 orders
• with an average order value of €60.00, that’s an extra €2,400.00 in revenue just from improving the mobile flow (40 orders * €60.00 = €2,400.00)

Once you see the potential in mobile users, the logical question is: how fast does your store actually respond?

Loading speed - a second = money

Quick test: open your store on a 4G network and count out loud. If your store still isn’t interactive by the time you count to three, you’re already losing customers.

The goal is a mobile page that becomes “clickable” within 3 seconds. Every second a visitor waits is potential revenue lost.

Ideal Core Web Vitals numbers (measuring speed and stability on mobile):

• LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) < 2.5s (main content appears quickly)
• INP (Interaction to Next Paint) < 200 ms (the page “listens” and reacts quickly to touch)
• CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) < 0.1 (nothing jumps around the screen)

What to do if your numbers are above the targets:

• images: convert to AVIF/WebP, downsize unnecessarily large images, enable lazy loading for everything that isn’t essential to the first render
• scripts and plugins: remove anything that doesn’t contribute to sales; load what must remain deferred
• caching: serve static files with caching (faster loading on subsequent visits)
• test the store on real mobile devices and a mobile network, not just on a desktop connected to fast internet

Popular tools for testing mobile store speed:

• Google PageSpeed Insights (Free)
• GTmetrix (Paid)

Black Friday purchasing: 6 common mistakes that kill sales

1. No Apple Pay or Google Pay

• a mobile shopper wants to pay in 2–3 taps; digital wallets like Apple Pay or Google Pay enable fast and secure checkout

2. No guest checkout

• forced registration = drop-off, especially on mobile where people want a quick purchase

3. Too many fields and unclear validations

• leave only the essential fields and validate immediately

4. Autofill of data

• enable auto-fill for addresses and personal details

5. Hidden shipping costs and delivery times

• show shipping costs and delivery time as early as possible - no surprises in the last step

6. No fallback payment method and safeguards

• always have a fallback method (e.g., cards + PayPal) with security checks (3D Secure)

Need help implementing the improvements above or enabling Apple Pay and Google Pay? Get in touch: We’ve been building online stores for many years

Navigation, UX, and design for small screens

• large, clear buttons and strong contrast - easy to “hit” with a thumb
• simple navigation (5–7 primary items) and a visible search field
• keep “Add to cart” and the cart visible at all times
• avoid pop-ups that cover content, especially on a user’s first visit
• readable text (not too small) and sufficient spacing between elements
• alt text for images and clear headings help both users and search engines

If the current design is overloaded and hard to fix, consider targeted reconstruction of critical pages or an iterative redesign of existing elements.

How to test smartly:

• go through the full purchase path: homepage/landing: category: product: cart: payment
• test on both an older and a newer mobile device, and on a slower network
• measure: time to first “visible” render and to a jitter-free tap
• intentionally mistype the card number and address - check message clarity and the experience for a customer who makes a mistake

The most common “pain points” in online stores

1. Increased traffic breaks the purchase experience

• reduce external scripts, enable caching, and prepare queueing for critical calls

2. Laggy stock/ERP sync

• introduce a short item reservation during checkout; communicate delivery time clearly

3. Too many scripts and marketing tags

• keep only what brings revenue, load the rest later

4. Uncompressed images

• use AVIF/WebP and lazy loading

5. Video content

• show poster images until playback starts

6. Unmonitored third-party payments

• set up alerts for payment processor errors and have a fallback payment route

7. PWA and mobile app

• a PWA helps the mobile experience; if you have many loyal buyers, consider a mobile app as an extension of the web shop: Mobile app development

A concrete work plan to optimize your store for Black Friday

1. Measure and “lighten up”

• run PageSpeed/GTmetrix and reduce the number of images and scripts

2. Fix the purchase experience

• enable guest checkout and Apple Pay/Google Pay
• remove unnecessary fields and leave only the essentials with instant validation

3. Small tweaks that matter

• bigger buttons
• always-visible “Add to cart” and cart
• clear copy and contrasts

4. Turn on monitoring

• integrate Google Analytics to monitor shopper behavior
• add alerts for payment processor errors and have a fallback route

5. Short load and failure tests

• test the store under load
• test what happens if one payment method fails - do you have a fallback?

6. Technical SEO review

• titles/descriptions, alt tags, basic Core Web Vitals numbers
• check clarity of messages and the experience for a customer who makes data entry mistakes

Conclusion

Mobile users are the majority on Black Friday. If the page opens quickly and paying is simple, order volume follows. A few focused days of work are enough - without “tearing down” the whole system.

Don’t wait for Black Friday to find out where you’re losing customers. With a few days of preparation you can gain hundreds of additional orders. If your mobile store takes longer than 3 seconds to load, and you don’t have the time or desire to optimize it yourself, send us the link and we’ll do a no-obligation technical analysis before Black Friday: SEO - search engine optimization

For more complex work (custom functionality, PWA, POS/ERP integrations), check our web store services: Web shop - online store development

For any other information or questions: Contact us

In the end, the most successful online stores aren’t the fastest or the prettiest, but the ones that understand their customers best and remove every obstacle along the path to payment.