Black Friday on Shopify: the checklist before your sale

For many online stores, Black Friday is the most important week of the year. Campaigns rarely fail because of the offer. They fail on small things: a discount code that doesn’t work at checkout, a sold-out product sold twice, or a customer who can’t tell whether the parcel will arrive before Christmas.

Here is what to check in your Shopify store before the sale. This year Black Friday is on Friday 27 November and Cyber Monday on Monday 30 November. Go through the list by Friday 20 November at the latest, so you have time to fix what you find.

1. Set up discounts in advance and schedule them

Create your campaign discounts in the Shopify admin under Discounts ahead of time. Every discount has Active dates with a start and end time, so the sale starts and ends on time without anyone staying up at night.

Decide whether each one is an automatic discount or a discount code. An automatic discount appears in the cart without a code and suits a store-wide sale. A code suits newsletter subscribers or social media followers.

Check which discounts may combine

On Shopify, discounts don’t combine by default. Each discount has a Combinations section where you choose which kinds of discounts it may share an order with:

Discount class	What it applies to
Product discount	Specific products or collections
Order discount	The whole cart subtotal
Shipping discount	Shipping costs, such as free shipping

If a store-wide 20% off and free shipping may combine, the customer gets both. If they may not, the customer gets one, which tends to bring questions to customer service. A customer can use up to five product or order discount codes and one shipping discount code on the same order, and a store can have up to 25 active automatic discounts at a time.

Try every discount yourself at checkout before the sale: add products to the cart, enter the code and check that the total is right.

2. Show the 30-day lowest price (EU)

This one is easy to miss. If you sell to consumers in the EU, any announcement of a price reduction must also show the lowest price the product had in the 30 days before the reduction. It applies whether the discount is shown as a percentage, an amount or words like “sale”, and national authorities enforce it actively.

The details vary a little by country. In Finland, for example, the consumer ombudsman’s guidance says:

• the discount is calculated from that lowest price, not from the latest price
• the lowest price is shown in the announcement itself, where the customer notices it easily, not behind a link
• a new product sold for less than 30 days can’t be announced as discounted.

Shopify’s compare-at price shows only the struck-through price you enter yourself. It is not automatically the 30-day lowest price. If you raised a price during the last month, the struck-through price and the discount percentage may be misleading.

For your developer: store each discounted product’s 30-day lowest price in a metafield and show it next to the sale price on the product page and on the product card in collections, for example “Lowest price in the last 30 days: €49.90”.

3. Stop selling what you don’t have

At Black Friday volumes, your best seller can sell out in an hour. Make sure selling when out of stock is switched off, unless you mean to take pre-orders.

1. Go to Products > Inventory.
2. Select the products and choose Bulk edit.
3. Add the column Continue selling when out of stock.
4. Untick it for the products you don’t want to sell without stock, and save.

The setting only works on products whose inventory is tracked. If you have several locations, check the stock at each location that fulfils online orders.

4. State delivery times and the last order day for Christmas

Many Black Friday purchases are Christmas presents. Say clearly how long delivery takes and the last day to order for delivery before Christmas. Good places are the announcement bar, the product page and your shipping policy.

At the same time, check under Settings > Shipping and delivery that your shipping methods and rates are right, and that any free shipping works during the sale as promised.

5. Test the checkout with a real order

A few days before the sale, place a real order with your own card or your customers’ most popular payment method, then cancel it. You see the whole path as your customer does: the discount, the shipping choice, the payment and the order confirmation.

Check especially:

• that every payment method your customers use works
• that the discount shows correctly at checkout and in the order confirmation
• that the order confirmation arrives and looks good on a phone.

6. Make theme changes in a copy, in good time

Build campaign banners, home page features and sale collections in a copy of your theme, not in the live theme. The standard Shopify plans can’t schedule a theme, so you publish the finished copy yourself when the sale starts. If you only change a banner or some text, you can do that in the live theme with the theme editor.

We wrote about this safe way of working in Stop editing your live Shopify theme.

Check your store’s speed while you’re at it. Shopify handles the servers and the checkout, but your theme, images and apps decide how fast your store opens. Remove apps you no longer use. The steps are in Why is your Shopify store slow?

7. Turn on abandoned checkout reminders

During a sale, many shoppers add products to the cart and leave before paying. With Shopify’s automation, they get a reminder by email. Under Marketing > Automations, check that the abandoned checkout reminder is on and that its text suits the campaign.

8. Follow the sale and write down what you learn

Follow sales and orders in Shopify’s analytics during the campaign. Afterwards, write down what worked and what didn’t: which products sold out, what customers asked and where the checkout caused trouble. Next year, your list is ready.

The short checklist

• Discounts created and scheduled, combinations checked
• Every discount tried at checkout
• 30-day lowest price shown with every discounted product (EU)
• Selling when out of stock switched off
• Delivery times and the last order day for Christmas visible
• Checkout tested with a real order
• Campaign theme ready in a copy, speed checked
• Abandoned checkout reminder on

Sources: Shopify Help Center on combining discounts, selling when out of stock and managing increased sales, and the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority’s guidance on discount claims in marketing (in Finnish).

Want us to go through your store before Black Friday? Ask Virta below.