How do I get my Shopify store ready for Black Friday?

When are Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Boxing Day in 2026?

Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving in the US, which is Thursday 26 November in 2026 (OPM’s list of federal holidays). So Black Friday is Friday 27 November, and Cyber Monday is Monday 30 November. Boxing Day, 26 December, falls on a Saturday this year, so the UK bank holiday is Monday 28 December (GOV.UK).

Holidays matter for when you’re paid as well as when parcels move: Shopify Payments doesn’t count weekends or holidays when it works out when to pay you (see the checkout section below).

How do I set up Black Friday discounts on Shopify?

Shopify gives you two ways to take money off at checkout, and a third way to show a sale price:

• Automatic discounts apply in the cart and at checkout by themselves when an order qualifies. Shopify suggests them for site-wide sales and collection promotions. A store can have up to 25 active at once, including discounts made by apps (Shopify).
• Discount codes are typed in at checkout. Shopify suggests them for targeted campaigns, such as an email to existing customers, and warns that a forgotten code can lead to an abandoned checkout (Shopify).
• Sale prices: set a product’s Compare-at price to its original price and its Price to the sale price, and your theme can show both on product and collection pages. Only the sale price shows at checkout (Shopify).

Before you put offers together, know how Shopify adds them up (combining discounts):

• Discounts combine only where each discount’s own settings allow it. A customer can then use up to 5 product or order discount codes and 1 shipping discount code on one order.
• Product discounts apply first, then order discounts to what’s left, then shipping discounts.
• Two percentage-off order discounts are both worked out on the original subtotal. Shopify’s example: 10% off and 20% off a US$100 order comes to US$70, 30% off in all.
• Where two discounts can’t be combined, Shopify applies whichever is better for the customer.

Give every sale discount an end date. Shopify ends it at the end time you set, in the time zone shown in your Shopify admin, so check that time zone if your customers are in another one. You can also cap how many times a code can be used in all, or limit it to one use per customer (discount FAQ).

Shopify’s discounts don’t show a crossed-out price on product or collection pages without an app or custom work; at checkout, the saving always shows crossed out. For crossed-out prices on the product pages, use compare-at prices. Shopify’s own Black Friday checklist suggests a sale collection that keeps itself up to date, with the condition Compare-at price is not empty.

One more from Shopify’s discount FAQ: a code is held against its usage limit from the moment an order is submitted until the payment completes or fails. So a one-use code can show as already used when a checkout never finished; Shopify suggests sending that customer a new code.

What are the rules on “was” prices and countdown offers?

In all three countries, a saving that isn’t real is treated as misleading. These are the regulators’ own words, read on 28 October 2026. We set up your prices and sale labels with you, but this isn’t legal advice: if you’re unsure about a claim, ask a lawyer.

• The UK. The CMA’s advice to online businesses says the higher price in a price reduction claim “must be a genuine and realistic selling price”, and that a business should be able to show it (CMA). The current guidance we read sets no fixed number of days: the CMA withdrew its “was/now” guidance for online mattress sellers on 30 July 2026 while it considers a High Court judgment (CMA), and the Chartered Trading Standards Institute’s pricing guide (April 2026) asks how long the product sold at the higher price compared with how long you compare it for (CTSI).
• UK countdown offers must be real. On 14 October 2026 the CMA fined Wayfair £4.8 million for time-limited offers when many products stayed at the same price or lower after the deadline, and said it can fine a business up to 10% of its global turnover, or £300,000 where that’s higher (CMA). Its price guidance also says mandatory delivery charges must be in the price you show, and in the total where you can work them out; sale discounts and discount codes are still allowed (CMA209).
• The US. The FTC’s Guides Against Deceptive Pricing say a former price is a fair basis for a comparison if it’s “the actual, bona fide price at which the article was offered to the public on a regular basis for a reasonably substantial period of time”. They also warn against implying that a former price was a selling price, rather than an asking price, unless substantial sales were made at it (16 CFR 233.1).
• Canada. Under the Competition Act, a regular price has to pass one of two tests: a substantial volume sold at that price or higher within a reasonable period, or offered in good faith at that price or higher for a substantial period (s. 74.01). The Competition Bureau reads the volume test as more than 50% of sales, and says both periods are usually within a year (Competition Bureau); its 2009 guidelines look at the 12 months before or after the claim for the volume test, and the 6 months for the time test, where the product must be offered at that price for more than half the time (guidelines).
• The Bureau also warns that fake urgency, such as a countdown timer that runs out or resets while the offer stays, is used “in full force” during Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Boxing Day (Competition Bureau). And an advertised price that can’t be paid because of fixed, compulsory fees is misleading, unless the fee is one a government imposes, such as sales tax (s. 74.01(1.1)).

Whatever the country, keep a record of each product’s prices and the dates before the sale. The Competition Bureau recommends keeping detailed records of promotions, including dates, discounts and regular prices, and the CMA expects a business to be able to show its higher price was genuine.

How should I handle stock and sold-out products?

Turn on inventory tracking for everything you stock, and count it before the sale. With tracking on, a product is out of stock at zero or below, and by default customers can’t buy it until you add more (Shopify).

• To keep taking orders at zero, for pre-orders or stock on its way, select Continue selling when out of stock on the product or variant. It only works with tracking on, and it doesn’t apply to Shopify POS, where staff can sell at zero after a warning.
• With more than one location, an item shows as out of stock online when the location that fulfils online orders has none, even if another location has plenty.
• To hide sold-out products, add the condition Inventory stock is greater than 0 to each automated collection, and select Match all conditions; Shopify says it won’t work with “any condition”. Your store’s default page of all products needs a collection of its own to override it. Shopify Flow also has a template that unpublishes products by stock level (Shopify).

If you can only pack so many orders a day, Shopify suggests setting each product’s stock every morning to what you can send that day, with Continue selling when out of stock turned off. It also warns that if you hide out-of-stock products and set every product to zero, customers can’t see any products at all (managing increased sales).

How do I check checkout and payments before the sale?

• Place a test order. Shopify says a test order checks your checkout and your settings for order processing, inventory, shipping, email notifications and taxes, and suggests one whenever you change your payment settings. Use Shopify’s test payment gateway, or Shopify Payments’ test mode: you aren’t charged, and test orders don’t show in your payouts or reports (Shopify).
• Turn test mode off again afterwards. Shopify warns that customers can’t place live orders while your payment providers are in test mode.
• To test your real payment provider, you can place a real order and cancel and refund it straight away, though the provider may charge its fees.
• Check the discount code box shows at checkout. Shopify lists why it might not: no active discount codes, a checkout from a draft order, a Shop Pay customer who hasn’t logged in, or an app that changes prices or checkout (discount FAQ).
• Turn on abandoned checkout emails, under Apps > Messaging > Automations, as Shopify’s Black Friday checklist suggests.

For a large flash sale, Shopify suggests that stores not on Shopify Payments ask their payment provider whether it can handle the volume, and set up a second provider in case the first can’t keep up. It also warns that external payment options, including paying later, can lead to overselling because of the time the payment takes to come back (flash sales).

Review high-risk orders before you send them. Shopify’s fraud analysis flags orders that may be fraudulent; it says fulfilling high-risk orders can lead to more chargebacks, and that the decision to reverse a payment for a stolen card is the card issuer’s, not Shopify’s (fraud analysis).

Plan for when the money arrives. Shopify Payments pays out after a minimum of 3 business days in the US, the UK and Canada, with a minimum payout of £1 in the UK. Weekends and holidays don’t count, and payments captured on Friday, Saturday and Sunday are paid out together. Counted the way Shopify’s own example counts, Black Friday weekend’s payments are paid out no earlier than Wednesday 2 December, and Shopify says a payout can take another 1–3 days to show in your bank (payout timing).

What are the last shipping dates for Christmas 2026?

Orders from Black Friday onwards are often gifts, so customers will want to know the last day to order for Christmas. Each carrier publishes its own last dates. Put them on your site with your own packing time added, and check the carrier’s page again before you change anything: carriers can move them.

Shopify can show delivery dates at checkout. Its manual delivery dates add your fulfilment time to the carrier’s transit time, counting business days as Monday to Friday with a cut-off of 12 pm where the order ships from; holidays don’t count as fulfilment time. They don’t work with rates from third-party apps or with negotiated FedEx rates (Shopify). Shopify also suggests telling customers when to expect their orders, in a banner, a page or your shipping policy, which can cut the questions you get (managing increased sales).

Know the rules on late orders. In the US, the FTC’s Mail Order Rule says you must have a reasonable basis to expect to ship within the time you state, or within 30 days if you state none; if you can’t, you must offer the buyer the choice of agreeing to the delay or cancelling for a prompt refund (16 CFR 435.2). In the UK, GOV.UK says to deliver within 30 days unless you’ve agreed otherwise with the customer (GOV.UK).

Will my Shopify store cope with Black Friday traffic?

Shopify hosts every store on its own servers, doesn’t limit bandwidth, and serves stores through a content delivery network run by Cloudflare (Shopify). Its flash-sale guidance says special preparation is usually needed only when tens of thousands of customers are expected to start a checkout within a few minutes. In its example, a store that usually gets 10,000 visitors and 100 orders a day, and expects 50,000 visitors and 1,000 orders over 24 hours, needs no special preparation (flash sales).

What does slow a store down is what’s been added to it. Shopify names the theme, the apps and any third-party code added by hand, such as a tag manager and its tags, as the biggest factors. Before the sale:

• Measure your home page, a collection and a product page, with Shopify’s web performance reports or Google’s PageSpeed Insights.
• Remove apps and tags you don’t use. Shopify’s checklist also suggests limiting pop-ups, so they don’t get in the way of browsing or checkout.
• For a very large sale, Shopify suggests a sale collection, a simpler theme without filters, recommendations, carousels or pop-ups, and flat shipping rates instead of shipping apps, which it says typically perform poorly at extremely high volume.
• If something looks wrong on the day, Shopify Status shows whether the problem is on Shopify’s side.

How is tax worked out on a discounted price?

On Shopify, a discount is applied to the order subtotal before tax, and any tax that applies is added afterwards (Shopify). That matches what HMRC, the CRA and the US states’ Streamlined Sales Tax agreement say about a discount you give yourself. Where someone else pays you towards it, such as a manufacturer’s coupon, the rules differ:

• The UK. Where a discount is given and nothing is received from anyone else, HMRC says VAT is only due on the discounted amount (VAT Notice 700/7, sections 14.4 and 14.6). If a manufacturer reimburses a money-off coupon, VAT is due on what the customer pays plus the manufacturer’s payment (section 7.3). A “buy one get one free” offer is normally one supply for the total price, split between VAT rates if the items have different ones (section 6.1) (HMRC).
• Canada. For your own coupons, if you don’t include the GST/HST in their value, the CRA says to take the coupon off the selling price before working out the tax; percentage-off and two-for-one coupons also reduce the price before the tax is added. For a manufacturer’s coupon that’s reimbursed, you charge the GST/HST on the full price and then deduct the coupon (CRA). A discount at the time of sale is taxed on the net amount, the sale price less the discount (CRA, RC4022).
• The US. Each state sets its own rules. The Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement, which its member states follow, leaves out of the taxable “sales price” discounts a seller allows that aren’t reimbursed by a third party, and counts those that are (SSUTA, Appendix C). Check with the tax agency of each state you collect for.

We set up Shopify’s tax settings with you to match what you’ve confirmed, but we don’t give tax advice.

What are the rules on returns over the holidays?

• The UK. For goods sold online, customers can cancel up to 14 days after delivery without giving a reason. If you don’t tell them about that right, they can cancel at any time in the next 12 months (GOV.UK). Once they’ve told you, they have another 14 days to send the item back, and you must refund them within 14 days of getting it back, including standard delivery. Customers have the same rights on sale items as at full price (GOV.UK).
• Canada. Ontario’s own page says many retailers have a return policy, but the law doesn’t require one, and its Consumer Protection Act gives no general right to return or exchange goods; customers can ask for a refund if a business misrepresents a product (Ontario). In other provinces, check your province’s consumer protection office.
• The US. Check the consumer protection office in your state.

Whatever you offer, including a longer return window for Christmas gifts, put it in your refund policy before the sale. Adding or updating your store’s policies is on Shopify’s own list for preparing for seasonal sales (Shopify).

What should I check in the week before Black Friday?

1. 01Place a test order with each way of paying, then check that test mode is off.
2. 02Test every discount at checkout: the amount, which products it covers, how it combines with the others, and its start and end times in your admin’s time zone.
3. 03Check your compare-at prices against your country’s rules on “was” prices (above), and that your sale collection shows the right products.
4. 04Count stock for the sale products, and decide for each one whether it stops selling, keeps selling or hides at zero.
5. 05Put the carriers’ last dates, with your own packing time added, on your site and in your shipping policy.
6. 06Duplicate your live theme, so you have a copy to go back to. Shopify allows 20 themes in a store, so delete an old one first if you’re at the limit; deleting is permanent, but you can download a theme first (Shopify).
7. 07Measure your speed again on the same pages, and remove apps and tags you don’t use.
8. 08Update your refund and shipping policies with your holiday dates.
9. 09Decide who reviews high-risk orders before they’re sent, and keep Shopify Status to hand.

Make big changes, such as a new theme or a new app at checkout, before this week rather than during it, so there’s time to test them.

Can you check my Shopify store before Black Friday?

Yes. Our Shopify speed fix is US$950, fixed, in US dollars, for one store, up to 300 products. Typically 5–10 working days. We measure five pages before you pay anything, fix what’s slowing the store down, and measure the same five pages again. See what the speed fix includes and what it doesn’t.

Starting from scratch? A new Shopify store with us is US$1,250, fixed: up to 50 products, live in 2 weeks, with payments, shipping and tax set up with you (Shopify store setup). We don’t promise sales or rankings, and we don’t give legal or tax advice.

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