Black Friday and Cyber Monday checklist for Shopify stores

BFCM weekend is when a year of small problems shows up at once: a theme that is slow on mobile, a discount that stacks with another, a shipping deadline nobody wrote on the site. The fix is boring: do the preparation in the four weeks before, in this order.

Four weeks out

• Confirm stock and supplier lead times for the products you will promote. Promote what you can ship.
• Decide the offer: a store-wide percentage is easy to understand; tiered or bundle discounts raise order value. Write the rules down, including what cannot be combined.
• Check your shipping cut-off dates with the carrier and put them on the product page, cart and FAQ.

Three weeks out

• Run your home page and a product page through PageSpeed Insights on mobile. Remove apps you no longer use: each one adds scripts.
• Compress hero images and use WebP. Most slow Shopify themes are slow because of a 3 MB banner.
• Create the discounts now as scheduled automatic discounts, so nothing has to be typed at midnight.

Two weeks out

• Send a "something is coming" e-mail and collect sign-ups for early access. The list you build now is the cheapest traffic you will get in November.
• Prepare support replies for the five questions you will get: where is my order, can I change the address, do you ship to X, is the discount applied, can I return it.
• Test checkout end to end with a real card and refund it, on a phone, with each payment method.

The night before

• Place one test order with the discount active and check the order total, the shipping rate and the confirmation e-mail.
• Check that the discount does not stack with your welcome code unless you want it to.
• Pin the shipping deadline banner and turn on the Shopify Inbox or your chat.

After the weekend

Keep the discount running on Monday and Tuesday for the people who were waiting for the dust to settle. Then export the orders and look at one number: average order value with the offer compared to without. That tells you whether next year's offer should be a percentage or a bundle.