In short
- Four weeks out you are deciding. One week out you are building. On the day you are watching.
- Do not let Black Friday be your first campaign. Run a small one now and check the prices come back.
- Every campaign needs both dates at the moment you create it, not later.
Black Friday 2026 is Friday 27 November. Cyber Monday is Monday 30 November.
The list below is grouped by when rather than by topic, because four weeks out and the morning of are different jobs. Doing a week-out task four weeks early does not help, and doing a four-weeks-out task in the final week is where most of the trouble comes from. Across Discounty stores last season, 66% of Black Friday campaigns were built on the same day they went live, with no quiet day to check them first.
Four weeks out, by 30 October
This is the deciding stage. Nothing here touches the app.
1. Decide what the sale is for. Clearing stock, hitting a revenue number, or holding ground against a competitor are three different goals, and they point at different discounts. A clearance can go deep because the alternative is paying to hold the stock. A weekend where you are competing for a shopper who is already buying does not need depth. It needs to be visible.
2. Check your plan against your catalogue. Count the variants you intend to discount, not the products. A shop with 40 products in three sizes and two colours is discounting 240 variants. This is the single most common surprise in the final week.
3. Pick the products now, while you can still think. If you expect to keep adding to the sale later, tag them instead of hand-picking, so you can extend the sale by tagging a product rather than by editing a live campaign.
4. Run one small campaign this week, on five products, and end it. Then check the prices came back. Do not let Black Friday be your first campaign. Everything you would rather discover in October, you will otherwise discover on the 27th.
One week out, by 20 November
This is the building stage.
5. Build the campaign and set both dates at the same time. A campaign with an end date closes itself while you are asleep, which is the entire point of scheduling it. A campaign without one is a task you have given yourself for Monday morning.
6. Decide what may combine with what. Before the week, not during it: may the site-wide percentage stack with a shipping threshold, or an email code? Carts taking more than you intended is the most common Black Friday accident, and it is a decision, not an accident, if you make it now.
7. Turn on the sale badges and timers you want, and look at them on a real product page. On a phone, in the theme you actually use, signed out. Not in the preview.
8. Check a variant, not just the parent product. Sizes and colours are where a price goes missing.
9. Warn your support inbox. Traffic goes up and so do questions, most of them about a price that looks wrong on one product.
10. Write the emails and the social posts now. You will not want to write them on the day, and what you write on the day is worse.
The day, Friday 27 November
11. Open one product page as a shopper, not as an admin. Check the price, the struck price, and the badge.
12. Check one variant. Then one more.
13. Leave it alone. Changing a discount mid-weekend teaches the people who already bought that they bought at the wrong time.
The Tuesday, 1 December
14. Decide now what happens when it ends. Prices return, or the sale becomes a December clearance, or it becomes a smaller standing offer. Any of the three is fine. The one that costs you is the sale that runs on because nobody closed it. It teaches people to wait, and it is the reason a January email does not work.
How to undo it
Every step here can be taken back until the sale opens. A campaign that is still Scheduled can be deleted in Discounty, and nothing on the store changes. Once a Bulk price editor campaign is Active, deactivating it puts the prices back to what they were; the campaign shows as Reverting while it does. If a price was edited by hand in Shopify instead, it has to be put back by hand too, which is why the checklist asks for campaigns rather than manual edits.
How we counted
The share built on the day is counted across every campaign Shopify stores started in Discounty between 1 November and 5 December 2025, read from our own records in September 2026. No single store can be identified from it.
Questions
When should I start preparing for Black Friday?
Four weeks out for the deciding, one week out for the building. The deciding is the part people leave too late, because it does not feel like work.
How long should a Black Friday sale run?
Give it a start and an end when you create it. Stores commonly open before the Friday and close on the Monday or the Tuesday. What matters more than the length is that the end is real.
Should my Black Friday sale start before Friday?
Many stores open earlier in the week. A shopper comparing on the Wednesday is a shopper you can reach; one arriving on Friday evening is choosing between offers already in front of them.
What is the most common Black Friday mistake?
Prices that do not come back afterwards, usually because the campaign never had an end date. It is covered in what goes wrong at Black Friday.
.png)
