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Black Friday keeps growing. Adobe Analytics measured $10.8 billion in US online spending on Black Friday 2024 and $41.1 billion across Cyber Week. Shopify merchants sold $11.5 billion over the 2024 BFCM weekend, up 24% year over year. The National Retail Federation counted a record 197 million US shoppers across the five days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday.
More shoppers in the market does not mean more revenue for your store. What you offer when they arrive does. We analyzed every bundle sold through MBC Bundles over BFCM 2025 and compared the stores that grew with the stores that didn't. This guide covers what we found and how to use it before this year's Black Friday.
Key takeaways
- Bundle sales hit $1.3M on Black Friday 2025, about 9x a normal November day.
- Demand starts rising two weeks before Black Friday and is still above 3x normal the week after Cyber Monday.
- Stores that tripled their bundle sales were far more likely to build new bundles in the six weeks before.
- The typical store with 4 to 9 bundles selling earned 18x more from bundles than a store with one.
1. Black Friday is when shoppers are most open to bundles
On a normal November day, MBC Bundles stores sold about $150K in bundles. On Black Friday 2025 they sold $1.3M.
The shift goes beyond volume. Over BFCM weekend, 22% of orders contained a bundle, compared with 14% in a normal week, and the average bundle order rose from $116 to $140.
Two things drive this. Holiday shoppers buy for several people at once, and they arrive looking for a deal. A bundle answers both in a single decision: it groups products that belong together and shows the saving up front. The shopper who came for one item leaves with a set.
2. The season starts two weeks before Black Friday
Most merchants plan for a four-day event. The data shows a five-week one.
In 2025, bundle sales started rising around November 12, 16 days before Black Friday. The week before Black Friday was already at 2.2x normal, Black Friday week peaked at 4.8x, and the week after Cyber Monday still ran at 3.4x.
This creates two gaps. An offer launched on Black Friday morning misses the early buyers. An offer that ends on Cyber Monday night misses the gift buyers who follow. Merchants also start late: the busiest weeks for creating new bundles in our data were November 17 and 24, when demand was already climbing.
For 2026, Black Friday falls on November 27. Be live by November 11 and keep your offers running until at least December 7.
3. Preparation separates the winners
Black Friday did not lift every store. We compared each store's bundle revenue over BFCM weekend with a normal week in early November. 36% of stores tripled it. 35% sold less than in a normal week.
The difference was preparation. Two in three of the stores that tripled built new bundles before Black Friday, and they built nearly twice as many as the stores that dropped. A bundle set up at install is designed for an average week. Black Friday brings a different shopper: gift buyers, deal seekers and first-time customers with different baskets. Seasonal bundles match what they came to buy.
4. More bundles, more revenue
We grouped stores by how many of their bundles had sales over BFCM weekend and looked at the typical (median) store in each group.
Each bundle is a separate entry point to a sale: a different product page, collection or shopper intent. A store with one bundle only reaches shoppers who land on that one product. A third of stores went into Black Friday weekend with just one bundle selling. If you have one bundle, build a second for a different product line. If you have several, build Black Friday versions of your best sellers.
5. Build three offers, each with one job
The strongest Black Friday setups don't rely on a single offer. They run three offers that answer three different shopper questions.
The best-seller set raises order value. Over BFCM 2025, standard bundles with a percentage discount had the highest value per order of any bundle type, at $173. Feature it on your homepage and in your Black Friday emails.
The gift box sells more units by letting the shopper choose. Mix & Match bundles generated more revenue over BFCM weekend than any other bundle type. Set the minimum at three items and allow an optional fourth.
The free gift creates urgency without a deeper discount, and moves stock you would otherwise mark down in January. Point the free item at slow-moving products. One rule keeps them from competing: never point two bundles at the same product with the same discount type.
6. Keep the discount at 20 to 25%
Deep Black Friday discounts erode margin and train customers to wait for the next sale. Bundles give you another lever: the value comes from the set, not just the percentage. In our 2025 data, percentage bundles at 20 to 24% off earned more per bundle than deeper discounts. If you are unsure where to land, A/B test 20% against 25% in October, while traffic is normal, and go into Black Friday with the winner.
7 . Add urgency and remove friction
Traffic is expensive in November and most of it doesn't convert. Baymard Institute puts the average documented online cart abandonment rate at about 70%. Two settings address this directly, and most stores leave both off.
A countdown timer gives the shopper a reason to decide now. Tie it to the bundle's end date so it counts down automatically.
Scheduling lets you build in October and have the bundle go live and end on its own. It also removes the riskiest task of the season: editing live offers on Black Friday morning. For free-gift offers, turn on auto-add so the gift lands in the cart without an extra click. Every step you remove is one less reason to abandon.
8. Your six-week Black Friday plan
- By October 12: choose three offers, one per goal: order value, units and urgency.
- October 13 to 25: build them and run an A/B test on discount depth.
- October 26 to November 6: set start and end dates, add countdown timers and show bundles on product pages, not only on a bundle page.
- November 11: go live with early-access or "Black Friday week" offers.
- November 26 to 30: don't edit live bundles. Watch the share of orders with a bundle and your average bundle order value.
- December 1 to 7: keep offers running, then compare views, add-to-cart and revenue for each one. Keep the winners for Christmas.
Methodology and sources
MBC Bundles data: bundle-attributed orders across all MBC Bundles stores, converted to USD at the time of order. BFCM weekend = November 28 to December 1, 2025. Store-level comparisons use stores with steady bundle sales in early November 2025. Feature usage measured across stores with live bundles in September 2026. Results vary by catalogue, traffic and offer.
External sources: Adobe Analytics, 2024 holiday season and Cyber Week online spending reports (adobe.com). Shopify, BFCM 2024 merchant results (shopify.com/news). National Retail Federation, Thanksgiving weekend 2024 shopping survey (nrf.com). Baymard Institute, cart abandonment rate statistics (baymard.com/lists/cart-abandonment-rate).
