Shopify Black Friday 2026: Plan it, price it, run it.

Pick the goal and the offer, and price it at your margin.

• Pick one goal for the sale (must do). More orders, bigger baskets or clearing stock. Each one points to a different campaign type; the offer builder above picks it.
• Price the discount at your margin (must do). The break-even calculator shows how many extra orders the discount has to bring.
• Decide which products stay out. Bestsellers that sell at full price anyway can stay out. Leaving products out is on Lite and up.
• Check your plan covers the products. Plans count live variants: Starter 10, Lite 150, Essential 1,000, Discounty 10,000. Count the variants in the sale before you build it.
• Write down last year’s numbers. Orders, order value and margin for Black Friday week, so you know what better looks like.

Build every campaign in Discounty, scheduled, with its widgets.

• Build every campaign now, with an end date (must do). Scheduled in Discounty, each campaign starts and ends on its own, and prices change back on the end date.
• Turn on the app embed (must do). The countdown, the quantity table and the savings in the cart only show once the Discounty app embed is on in your theme.
• Put the offer next to the price. A countdown on the product page, the steps in a table, the savings in the cart.
• Decide what stacks. Quantity discount and Cart goal do not combine with each other. Check the combinations setting on every campaign.
• Count your active automatic discounts. Shopify allows up to 25 active automatic discounts per store, and campaigns left live from an earlier sale count too.
• Selling into the EU? Check the 30-day price. A price reduction shown to EU shoppers has to refer to your lowest price in the 30 days before it.
• Make an early-access code for your list. An Advanced discount code that ends the minute the public sale starts.
• Set the free-shipping threshold from your numbers. Your order value, shipping cost and margin decide it. The step calculator checks it.

Place a real order on a phone, then change nothing.

• Place a real test order on a phone (must do). With every campaign live, from product page to thank-you page. A preview is not a test.
• Open a few products in the sale (must do). Check the sale price, the old price and the badge your theme adds.
• Freeze the theme and the apps (must do). No theme edits and no new apps in the last week before the sale.
• Stop overselling on sale items. Untick “Continue selling when out of stock” on products you cannot ship later.
• Publish shipping cutoffs and the returns window. One line in the announcement bar, one in your policies.
• Write the answers support will need. Where is my order, why did my code not work, can I return a gift.

Watch the first orders and give Cyber Monday its own offer. The run-sheet below has every hour.

• Check what shoppers see at 00:00 on Thursday (must do). The sale price, the countdown and the cart savings, on a phone.
• Watch the first orders (must do). Discount applied, right price, nothing out of stock.
• Get Cyber Monday ready on Sunday. Monday is the last chance at Friday’s price, never a deeper one.

End cleanly, check prices, and bring buyers back in January.

• End every campaign and check prices went back (must do). Open a few products after the end date.
• Free shipping until the last shipping day. Then switch the message to gift cards.
• Give new buyers a reason for a second order. A private code for January, one use each.
• Write a one-page recap. What you ran, what it cost, what sold out, what you would change.

• Discounts stack further than you meant. Put a sale item and your own code in one cart, and read the total. Product, order and shipping discounts combine when each one allows it.
• A new automatic discount never starts. Shopify allows up to 25 active automatic discounts. In Shopify admin, list the active ones and end the old ones.
• A product stays at full price. A product already in another active campaign stays out of a new one. Open “Products already discounted” in Discounty to see which campaign holds it.
• “Buy 4” ignores mixed colours. With “Same variant”, two blue and two red do not make four. Choose “Same product, any variant” or “Mix of products”.
• The sale starts at the right hour. Discounty reads start and end times in the time zone of the device you save the campaign from, not your store’s. Save every campaign from a device set to your store’s time zone, or convert the times first.
• The percentage looks right in every currency. Shopify Markets rounds converted prices. In Markets, choose “Do not round prices” for each currency.
• The countdown, table and cart savings show. They live in your theme. Theme editor, App embeds, switch Discounty on.
• Prices come back after the sale. Campaigns end on their own. To remove the app, use Safe uninstall in Discounty: it turns campaigns off so prices return first.
• Products you add during the sale join it. A campaign picks its products when it starts. If it filters by collection or product type, turn on Auto-update (Discounty plan) and new matches join within about two hours. Without it, deactivate and reactivate the campaign. Products also need to be Active and published to the Online Store.
• Your welcome code on top of the sale price. A Bulk price editor sale changes the price itself, so a 10% code still takes 10% off the sale price. To keep a code off sale items, limit it in Shopify to products or collections that leave them out.

Times are your store’s.

Thu 26, Thanksgiving

• 00:00: The public sale goes live
• 09:00: Check the first orders

Fri 27, Black Friday

• 08:00: Check your top sellers on a phone
• 11:00: Watch stock on the products that sell
• 12:00: Review high-risk orders before you ship them
• 15:00: Put a person on chat for the busy hours
• 20:00: Review the day

Sat 28, Saturday

• 10:00: Check the gift and the cart steps
• 14:00: Check the sale against your break-even

Sun 29, Sunday

• 18:00: Get Cyber Monday ready

Mon 30, Cyber Monday

• 00:00: Cyber Monday: the last day
• 18:00: Last call
• 23:59: The sale ends

Tue 1, The day after

• 09:00: Check prices went back
• 11:00: Thank your buyers

Numbers to read each evening

• Conversion, channel by channel. A deal site or a broad ad brings browsers and pulls the average down; your usual channels tell you whether the offer works.
• Average order against a normal week. If it falls under a store-wide markdown, a step or free shipping above your average order brings the extra item back.
• Orders that cleared your first step. With Cart goal or Quantity discount: few means the step is too far, almost all means it is too close.
• Profit, not only sales. Orders times the profit each one makes at the sale price. The break-even calculator above shows how many orders you need.

• Friday was weaker than you hoped. Check first: Whether people saw the offer: the sale price on product pages, the countdown, the announcement bar. Then traffic against last November, before conversion. Then: Fix what hides the offer, and give Saturday to Monday a new reason that keeps the price: free shipping above your average order, or a gift over a threshold. Do not: Go deeper on Saturday. Friday’s buyers would have paid more for being early, and they remember it next November.
• Traffic is up and conversion is down. Check first: Where the new traffic comes from. A deal site, a broad ad or a viral post brings browsers, and their low conversion pulls the average down. Then: Judge conversion channel by channel. If your usual channels convert as they normally do, the offer is working. Do not: Cut the price for the whole store to win a crowd that came to look.
• Some orders came through without the discount. Check first: The order’s products. A product already in another active campaign stays out of a new one; “Products already discounted” shows which campaign holds it. Then the variant. Then: Move the product into the right campaign, or end the old one, then place a test order. Do not: Build a second campaign on top to cover it. Two that combine can stack further than you meant.
• “My code did not work”. Check first: Whether the code may combine with the running sale. When two discounts cannot combine, Shopify applies the one that gives the better price, so the code looks broken. Then: Tell support what to say: the sale price is already the better of the two. Change the combinations setting only if you meant them to stack. Do not: Switch combinations on in a hurry. Check what the two together come to first.
• A bestseller is about to sell out. Check first: Stock against the hours left, and which ads and emails still point at it. Then: Take it off the homepage and out of the ads, and point shoppers to the closest product in stock. Do not: Raise its price or pull it from the sale mid-weekend. A sale price that moves reads as a trick.
• The basket is shrinking. Check first: Whether one-item orders are rising under a store-wide markdown. That is what a markdown does: it pays out on the single item too. Then: Add free shipping above your average order for the rest of the weekend. It asks for one more item without cutting the price. Do not: Change your discount steps mid-sale. People who already bought, or have a cart open, see the rules move.
• Shoppers ask when the sale really ends. Check first: The countdown and the banner. The countdown shows the right time left everywhere, but your end hour lands at a different clock time in every time zone. Then: Write the end with its time zone: “Ends Monday 23:59 ET”. Do not: Extend at the last minute. A deadline that moves teaches people to wait for the next one.