Black Friday might be the headline act, but peak season starts long before the big day. Our data shows order volumes surged around 15 days before Black Friday, Cyber Monday last year, as retailers sought to capitalise on shoppers eager for a bargain.
From Amazon to David Jones, Myer and Target, many brands have already kicked off their peak campaigns this year too. Nearly 60% of Australians delay purchases until sales events, meaning peak has become a referendum on not only your products and prices, but your customer experience too.
Too many retailers still reach for the same lever – deeper discounts – hoping a margin hit will translate to loyalty. But Black Friday, and peak at large, should be about value-adding, not price-cutting. Discounts don’t build trust; they teach customers to wait and erode margins while diminishing brand perception.
The retailers who will win this year are those that convert and retain through delivery. That means offering fast, specific delivery dates – like “Arrives by Monday, December 22” not “in 5–7 business days” – that turns confidence into conversions at checkout. And it means reliably hitting the dates you’ve promised, every time. The smartest are already using data and AI to power both, long before the first parcel leaves the building.
The biggest disadvantage in retail is a lack of visibility. According to our State of Shipping Report 2025, two-thirds of retailers rarely or never use delivery data to optimise operations. When volume and expectations surge, many are still flying blind, planning manually and making vague checkout promises. That visibility gap is expensive.
With nine in ten Australians abandoning carts before checkout, delivery uncertainty is often the silent deal-breaker. Accurate delivery date estimates create urgency and confidence, helping retailers close that gap. When trained on billions of data points, AI empowers retailers to make promises that convert, provide experiences that retain and reduce “Where is my order?” (WISMO) tickets.
Two in three retailers say AI will be the biggest trend in the next 12 months, but only 16% are prioritising AI and automation investment – and another 16% are focusing on real-time data analysis. The rest are effectively saying “we’ll get to it later”.
Peak won’t wait. With most of the industry still underutilising delivery data, there’s a window for the less data-fluent retailers to leapfrog their competitors. The goal isn’t to bolt on a chatbot or sprinkle AI on top of broken processes, it’s to train it on real data to make smart decisions that boost acquisition and retention. For example:
Plan with foresight
Stop guessing. Model “what if?” scenarios for volume, lanes and carriers before peak. Retailers using AI-powered carrier simulations have identified lanes likely to crack under pressure and flexed their carrier mix early, avoiding surcharges and redelivery costs.
Promise with precision
Replace vague windows with data-backed ETAs. We’ve seen that a nine percent lift in conversion can lead to a revenue boost of almost 30%. Retailers using SKU-level, AI-precise EDDs are proving that transparency outperforms guesswork, turning delivery from a post-purchase risk into a pre-purchase advantage. Freedom Furniture, for example, improved online conversion through reliable, SKU-aware dates, proof that transparency outperforms guesswork.
Orchestrate with efficiency
Peak is organised chaos. Drivers call in sick, storms hit, priorities flip. Sleeping Giant and Mitre 10 use real-time, AI-powered routing to optimise runs on the fly, improving fleet utilisation by 15%, without adding headcount.
When customers don’t have to ask, confidence soars
Agentic AI that’s connected to live delivery data can resolve WISMOs instantly, before sentiment sours. Retailers using real-time delivery visibility are flipping that script by automatically surfacing live tracking data and sending timely updates.
Promotions will always have a role. But when discounting becomes your default differentiator, you’re running a race to the bottom. Value-adding delivery is the opposite strategy. It compounds. Every precise ETA, on-time handover and proactive update teaches customers to trust your brand. The next conversion comes easier, the next ticket never arrives, and the margin stays intact.
What separated Amazon wasn’t just its infrastructure but its intelligence; simulation before commitment, promises grounded in performance data, adaptive orchestration and proactive resolution fuelled by a feedback loop across billions of parcels. That playbook is no longer out of reach. Platforms such as Shippit Intelligence, trained on a decade of delivery data and hundreds of performance metrics, now democratise those same capabilities for local retailers.
AI has the power to turn a good peak into a great peak. The winners won’t be those who ship fastest at any cost, but those who deploy speed, cost and reliability exactly where they convert loyalty. Do that, and Black Friday becomes more than just a short-term sales spike, but a launchpad for a stronger peak and a smarter, more profitable year ahead.
This article was written by Rob Hango-Zada, Co-CEO and Co-Founder at Shippit.