Black Friday checklist for Shopify stores

Six to four weeks out Oct 16 – Oct 30

• Pick one headline offer. One clear deal (a percentage off, a free gift, free shipping) carries further than five small ones. Decide the supporting offers after it.
• Choose codes or automatic discounts. In Shopify admin, Discounts lets you create either, with a start and end date. Codes are easy to share in emails and posts; automatic discounts apply without one.
• Check stock on your top sellers. Reorder now for anything that sold out last year, and decide what to do when a deal item runs out.
• Set your shipping promise. Settle your free shipping threshold and your holiday shipping cutoff dates, so every banner and email says the same thing.
• Clear out apps you don’t use. Every storefront app adds code to the page. Remove the ones you’ve stopped using before traffic peaks.

Three to two weeks out Nov 2 – Nov 13

• Create your discounts in Shopify with their dates set, so they switch on and off by themselves.
• Decide where shoppers will see the offers. Every offer needs a place on the storefront that doesn’t block the products shoppers came for.

  With PromoDrawer: put the sale, the code and a countdown in one drawer that opens when a shopper taps its button. A discount code card can apply the code to the cart in one tap (Basic and Pro).

• Schedule it, don’t switch it on by hand. Set the promotion to start and stop with the sale in your store’s time zone.

  With PromoDrawer: give the drawer a start and end date, and a countdown card counts down to the end of that schedule (Basic and Pro). Targeting and scheduling

• Collect emails for early access. A list built in November is the cheapest audience you’ll have on Black Friday morning.

  With PromoDrawer: an Email signup card adds subscribers to your Shopify customers, and can show a code on its thank-you message (Pro).

• Show the free shipping goal. Shoppers who can see how close they are to free shipping know what to add.

  With PromoDrawer: a Free shipping card shows the shopper’s progress toward the goal, updated as they add to the cart (Basic and Pro).

The week before Nov 16 – Nov 25

• Place a test order with every code. Shopify’s test mode lets you run an order through checkout without a real charge. Check the discount, shipping and the confirmation email.
• Shop your store on a phone. Most holiday shoppers will. Open every promotion, read every banner, and finish a checkout on a small screen.
• Match the offer to the page. A product page, a collection and the cart may each need a different message.

  With PromoDrawer: target drawers to page types, URLs or devices. Only one shows per page, the highest in your list that fits (Basic and Pro).

• Schedule your emails and posts for Thursday night, Friday morning, Sunday and Cyber Monday, with the same offer wording everywhere.
• Prepare support replies for the questions you’ll get: shipping cutoffs, returns, and “my code didn’t work”.

Black Friday to Cyber Monday Nov 27 – Nov 30

• Check every promotion went live. Open the store in a private window first thing on Friday and use each code once.
• Watch stock on deal items and pull a sold-out product from your promotions before shoppers find it.
• Have a Cyber Monday change ready. A new headline or a final-hours countdown gives returning shoppers a reason to look again.

  With PromoDrawer: build the Cyber Monday drawer ahead of time, schedule it for November 30 and put it above the Black Friday one in your list (Basic and Pro).

After the weekend Dec 1 – Dec 7

• Make sure every discount ended when it should have, and nothing still promises a deal that’s gone.
• Write down what worked while you remember: which offer, which code, which day.

  With PromoDrawer: analytics show views, opens, clicks and orders after a click for each drawer and card. Analytics

• Switch to the holiday season. Shipping cutoffs and gift offers carry you to the end of December.