Black Friday is just around the corner, and it's an incredible opportunity for online businesses to boost their sales. To help you make the most of this shopping period, we've compiled a list of essential tasks to ensure that your online store is fully prepared for Black Friday 2023.

Adopt Ahead-of-Time Builds

Fresh recently introduced an innovative feature called "ahead of time builds," designed to transform how you create and deliver your website. This approach not only stabilizes your store's JavaScript but also significantly improves server boot times. To fully understand this new approach, you can explore the structured documentation provided by Fresh here.

At Deco.cx, we strongly recommend adopting the ahead-of-time version because it provides scalability to your server, which is essential for handling the demands of events like Black Friday. To migrate to this new version, instruct your developer to perform the update using the following command:

deno run -Ar https://deco.cx/upgrade

After> completing the update, make sure that:

1. Your store is functioning correctly, including checking the home, product detail (PDP), and product listing (PLP) pages, as well as verifying the add-to-cart functionality and any other critical flows.
2. Administrative editing is working smoothly, allowing you to edit your store's sections and publish them.

If your store is already online, the Deco.cx team has already run this command for you. To verify, ask your developer to look for a Pull Request (PR) on GitHub with the title "Preparations for Black Friday." If you encounter any issues during this process, don't hesitate to contact us on Deco.cx Discord.

Support for Mobile Safari

A few months ago, we shared a blog post detailing the lessons we've learned from our stores in production. We strongly recommend implementing all the suggestions mentioned in the post before Black Friday. However, one of the most critical steps is to ensure that your store functions seamlessly on Safari versions 12, 13, and 14.

To achieve this, follow these steps:

1. Verify that your fresh.config.ts file includes the Safari12 build target.
2. Ensure that your website does not use the <dialog> tag.

Engage your developer to make the necessary adjustments to remove the <dialog> tag and set Safari12 as the build target. We recommend performing this step after migrating to ahead-of-time builds to ensure a smooth transition.

As we kick off the holiday shopping season, the Deco.cx team is dedicated to providing stability and reliability during this critical period. Starting this week, we will be actively working on stability improvements to enhance your experience on Black Friday. It's crucial to stay up-to-date with the latest Deco versions and keep an eye out for more informative posts on how to optimize your online store for success on Black Friday.