# Black Friday is coming. Here's the plan.

A countdown to the US Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which shoppers around the world now treat as the start of holiday shopping, and the checklist we run with the Shopify stores we look after. It opens on the part that matters this week.

## The dates

The day after the fourth Thursday of November, US Thanksgiving. We work it out every year, on your clock.

- 2026: Black Friday is Friday, November 27, 2026; Cyber Monday is Monday, November 30, 2026.
- 2027: Black Friday is Friday, November 26, 2027; Cyber Monday is Monday, November 29, 2027.

The page counts down on the visitor's own clock and opens the checklist on the phase they're in. After Cyber Monday, through January, it asks how the sale went and counts down to next year.

## Week by week, what to do now.

Six phases, from six weeks out to the week after. The one you're in is open. Tick things off as you go.

### 6+ weeks out (2026: Until Oct 29)

This is the last stretch where big changes are safe. Anything that touches the theme, the apps or how discounts work gets done now, or waits until January.

- [ ] **Put the code freeze on the calendar.** Pick the date, usually two weeks before Black Friday, after which no theme changes, new apps or app updates go live. Tell everyone who can touch the store, agencies and app vendors included.
- [ ] **Ship the big theme work now.** New templates, a redesigned product page, a new navigation: launch them now so they get a few weeks of real traffic and bug reports before the busiest days of the year.
- [ ] **Measure speed on real phones.** Look at Core Web Vitals field data in Search Console and PageSpeed Insights for the homepage, a collection and your best-selling product. LCP is usually the hero image or a slider; fix that first.
- [ ] **Audit every app.** List each installed app, what it does and what it costs. Uninstall what nobody uses, then check the theme for leftover snippets and scripts, because uninstalling an app doesn't always remove its code.
- [ ] **Decide how the sale will work.** Sitewide percentage, tiered spend, free gift or bundles? Decide whether the sale lives in compare-at prices or in discounts. Mixing both is how a code ends up stacking on an item that's already marked down.
- [ ] **Check what replaced Shopify Scripts.** If your discount or shipping logic ever ran on Shopify Scripts, confirm its replacement, a Shopify Function or an app, handles every case you rely on, including the edge cases from last year.
- [ ] **Forecast and order stock.** Use last year's BFCM sell-through and this year's growth to set buy quantities for the top 20 products. Supplier lead times in November are longer than you think.
- [ ] **Draft the email and SMS calendar.** Map every send from early access to the last Cyber Monday reminder. Start warming up your sending now: email engaged subscribers more often in the weeks before, so the volume spike doesn't land you in spam.
- [ ] **Turn on the payment methods shoppers expect.** Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal, plus local methods for the countries you sell to. Some take days to approve, so start now.

### 4 weeks out (2026: Oct 30 to Nov 12)

Build everything the sale needs, in draft, so the next two weeks are for testing, not building.

- [ ] **Build the discounts, scheduled and inactive.** Create every code and automatic discount with its start and end time. Shopify runs those times on the store's time zone, not yours, so check it in Settings first.
- [ ] **Know Shopify's discount limits.** A store can run up to 25 automatic discounts at once, and a shopper can enter up to five product or order codes plus one shipping code. Each discount only combines with the classes you tick under Combinations.
- [ ] **Set your out-of-stock rules.** Go through variants with 'Continue selling when out of stock' turned on. Keep it only where you can really fulfill later, and say so on the product page with a ship date. Everything else should stop at zero.
- [ ] **Hold a safety buffer on fast sellers.** If your inventory syncs from a warehouse or ERP every few minutes, keep a small buffer on the top sellers so a slow sync doesn't oversell a sold-out item.
- [ ] **Build the Klaviyo segments.** Engaged in the last 30, 60 and 90 days, VIPs, past BFCM buyers and recent browsers. Early access goes to the best customers first; the unengaged get fewer sends, not more.
- [ ] **Update the automated flows.** Abandoned checkout, browse abandonment and welcome flows should mention the sale and its end date, or pause any offer that clashes with it.
- [ ] **Tune site search and collections.** In Search & Discovery, add synonyms for how people really search, boost the sale heroes and check the filters on your big collections. Build the gift guides and gifts-by-price collections now.
- [ ] **Set shipping cutoffs.** Agree the last order dates for delivery before the holidays with your fulfillment team, for each shipping method and market, so support and the site say the same thing.

### 2 weeks out (2026: Nov 13 to Nov 19)

The code freeze starts. From here it's testing, scheduling and making sure people know what to do.

- [ ] **Start the code freeze.** Duplicate the live theme as a backup, then no more theme publishes or app installs. Fixes for real bugs still ship, one at a time, with someone watching.
- [ ] **Test every discount combination.** In a preview theme or a test order, try each code alone, with the automatic discounts, on sale items, with a gift card and with free shipping. Write down what should happen first, then check it does.
- [ ] **Place test orders with every payment method.** Real orders, then refund them: card, Shop Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal, a gift card and any buy now, pay later option. Check the confirmation email, the tax and the shipping rate on each.
- [ ] **Re-test speed with the sale assets.** Sale banners, countdown timers and pop-ups add weight. Run PageSpeed again with them in place and compress or cut anything that slows the first screen.
- [ ] **Set up status monitoring.** An uptime check on the homepage, a product page and the cart, alerts to a channel someone actually watches, and bookmarks for the Shopify status page and your key apps' status pages.
- [ ] **Write the customer service macros.** Ready answers for: my code won't work, where's my order, can I change my address, when does the sale end, is this back in stock, and the holiday returns window.
- [ ] **Check SMS consent and quiet hours.** Make sure every text goes only to subscribers who opted in, inside quiet hours, under the rules for each country you text.

### The final week (2026: Nov 20 to Nov 26)

Nothing new now. Check that what you built is switched on, scheduled and staffed.

- [ ] **Check the schedule, minute by minute.** Discounts, banners, theme changes and every email and text: write the exact start time of each in one list, in the store's time zone, and check them against each other.
- [ ] **Confirm inventory counts.** Do a final count on the top sellers and make sure Shopify matches the warehouse. Oversold orders on Black Friday turn into refunds and angry reviews on Monday.
- [ ] **Merchandise the homepage and collections.** Put the deals people came for in the first screen, sort sale collections by best sellers and hide anything you can't ship in time.
- [ ] **Staff the weekend.** Who watches the store each shift, who answers support, who can approve a pricing fix and who to call if checkout breaks. Put phone numbers in one shared doc.
- [ ] **Know your apps' support hours.** For the apps that touch checkout, discounts and email, find out how to reach support over the holiday weekend before you need it.
- [ ] **Do a dry run of the launch.** Walk through the first hour of the sale with the team: what flips on when, what each person checks, and what you'd do if a discount fails to apply.

### BFCM weekend (2026: Nov 27 to Nov 30)

Watch, answer and fix small things. Don't redesign anything until Tuesday.

- [ ] **Check the sale went live.** In the first ten minutes, open the site on a phone, add a sale item to the cart and run a checkout to the payment step. Confirm the discount shows.
- [ ] **Keep Live View and the status pages open.** Watch orders, sessions and conversion in Shopify's Live View. A sudden drop in conversion with steady traffic usually means something broke.
- [ ] **Swap out what sells out.** When a hero product sells out, take it out of the banners and the email that's about to send. Point shoppers to the next best thing.
- [ ] **Answer support fast.** Use the macros, log every new kind of question and add the answer to the FAQ or product page if it comes up more than a few times.
- [ ] **Watch for failed payments and fraud.** Check failed payment rates and Shopify's fraud analysis on high-value orders. Hold a suspicious order before it ships, not after.
- [ ] **No deploys.** Only fix what's broken, one change at a time, with someone watching the result. Everything else goes on the list for next week.

### After the sale (2026: From Dec 1)

Wind the sale down cleanly, look after the new customers and write down what you learned while it's fresh.

- [ ] **Switch the sale off everywhere.** End the discounts, restore compare-at prices, take down banners and countdowns, and check that the email flows no longer mention the sale.
- [ ] **Lift the code freeze.** Merge the fixes and ideas you parked, one at a time, and clean out the apps you added for the sale.
- [ ] **Follow up with every buyer.** A thank-you and shipping update first, then review requests timed to arrive after delivery, not after purchase.
- [ ] **Plan the win-back for first-time buyers.** Most BFCM shoppers buy once. A short series with care tips, related products and no discount for the first message turns more of them into regulars.
- [ ] **Compare the numbers with last year.** Revenue per visitor, conversion, average order value, new versus returning customers and email and SMS revenue, by day. Look at the margin after discounts, not just sales.
- [ ] **Write next year's notes.** What broke, what sold out, what support heard most and what you'd start earlier. Put it where you'll find it next September.

## So, how did it go?

Before the numbers fade into January, write down what happened. These are the questions we ask with every store we run through the season.

- Compare revenue per visitor and conversion rate with last year, day by day, not just the weekend total.
- Which emails and texts made money, and which ones just raised unsubscribes?
- Did anything break? Note the time, the cause and how long it took to spot.
- Which products sold out first, and when? That's next year's inventory plan.
- What did customers ask support most? Each answer belongs on the site before next year.
- How many shoppers were new? They're your best win-back list for the new year.

## Want a second pair of hands this season?

We run Shopify stores through the holidays every year: speed, discounts, Klaviyo, the code freeze and the weekend watch. Tell us where you are on the list and we'll tell you what we'd do first. [Talk to us](https://nr10.com/contact/)

Human version: https://nr10.com/labs/black-friday/