Black Friday Checklist 2026: 25 BFCM Prep Steps

Ecommerce store owners have a short window of time each year to capture peak holiday shopping demand. Shopify merchants generated $14.6 billion in sales over BFCM 2025, a 27% increase from 2024, according to Shopify research. That said, capitalizing on increased interest requires a sound strategy, timely marketing, and an intuitive shopping interface. This Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) checklist will help you make the most of this time of year, with tips for setting up your store, finessing your marketing, and running promotions, and even which fulfillment tasks you’ll need to complete before, during, and after the sale.

Early Black Friday preparation

Complete these tasks to prepare your store for BFCM in order to increase traffic and drive additional sales.

1. Plan for a longer sales period

Often thought of as the “kickoff” to seasonal shopping, BFCM is just one aspect of the holiday season you should be preparing for. Consumers spent more than $4 billion in a single day for 25 days during the 2025 holiday season, up from 18 days in 2024, according to Adobe Analytics data covering the period from November 1 through December 31, 2025. In addition, Black Friday online sales grew 9.1% year over year in 2025, outpacing Cyber Monday’s 7.1% growth, as Black Friday shoppers embraced earlier deals.

To make the most of the increased attention your store or brand may be getting, be sure to communicate any special BFCM offers before the weekend itself, and extend them into December if inventory and margins allow to incentivise shoppers to continue to spend throughout the season. Include these timelines in your Black Friday marketing calendar.

2. Use data to identify products for BFCM promotion

If you’re opting to run discounts on particular items versus store-wide, make sure to pick and order the products you want to promote for BFCM as early as possible, especially if you rely on suppliers to source or manufacture inventory.

There are multiple ways to forecast seasonal demand and identify what merchandise to re-up for BFCM, including:

• Shopify reports. Use the “total sales by product” report in Shopify admin. Filter by date range to compare product performance during last year’s BFCM period against the rest of the year.
• ABC analysis. ABC analysis groups products by revenue contribution to identify your best- and worst-performing items. As a general guideline, A-grade products drive the largest share of revenue, B-grade products contribute a moderate share, and C-grade products contribute the least, though the exact split will vary by store. Think of BFCM as an opportunity to promote A-grade products with modest discounts and clear out C-grade dead stock with deeper discounts.
• Inventory management systems. Inventory management software tracks stock levels and flags low inventory before you run out during high-demand periods. Shopify admin includes built-in inventory tracking, while ShipHero, available on the Shopify App Store, syncs inventory across multiple sales channels and warehouses.

3. Organize your upcoming sales

Prepping for seasonal sales and planning for BFCM promotions often involves several moving parts. Keep on top of your strategy and track details all in one place before the sale starts, with particular attention paid to the below aspects: 

• Planned sales map. Create a planned sales map in Google Sheets or Excel that outlines all your upcoming sales and promotions. Include the products planned for each holiday special, sale start and end dates, and prices, along with date ranges for other promotions, like discounted shipping. Schedule your rollout of promotional messaging for each offer.
• Discounts. Set up automatic Black Friday discounts or discount codes from Discounts in Shopify admin. Automatic discounts apply at checkout without a code, while discount codes require customers to enter a code. Both can be set as a percentage, a fixed amount, a buy X get Y offer, or free shipping.
• Sale collections. Create a smart collection under Products > Collections in Shopify admin, with a condition set to Compare-at price is not empty. This keeps your sale collection updated automatically as you add or remove discounted products.
• Gift cards. Add a gift card product from Products > Gift cards in Shopify admin. Set one or more denominations, then publish the product to your sales channels so customers can purchase it.
• Abandoned checkout recovery. Turn on automatic recovery emails at Apps > Messaging > Automations in Shopify admin, in the Abandoned checkout emails by Shopify automation. Each email includes a link for the customer to complete their checkout, which may prompt additional sales.

Technical and security preparation

Prepare your store’s technical setup and security settings before BFCM traffic increases to safeguard your site against interruptions or delays.

4. Assess your site for mobile-friendliness

Creating a site that shoppers can browse and purchase from on their phone is a must. In fact, smartphones drove 56.4% of online holiday shopping transactions in 2025, up from 54.5% in 2024, according to Adobe Analytics. Mobile share peaked at 66.5% on Christmas Day and 61.6% on Thanksgiving Day. Ahead of BFCM, you should review the following areas to assess how mobile-ready your site is:

• Your online store’s user experience on mobile
• How easy and intuitive it is to complete a purchase on your site
• Whether your site is mobile responsive

Shopify Themes are responsive and mobile-friendly by default. If you run on another platform, test how your site looks and performs on mobile before BFCM traffic increases.

5. Test and prepare your store for traffic surges

You’ll want to make sure your site is equipped to handle the additional traffic load that comes with increased holiday shopping and limited-time offers. Before BFCM starts, you should test the load speed, checkout functions, and security records on your site. It’s a good idea to complete the following checks:

• Test your site’s load speed with PageSpeed Insights or Pingdom, and address any pages that load slowly.
• Review the apps and scripts installed on your site and remove any that aren’t actively used to reduce page load time.
• Limit pop-ups that promote deals or offers so they don’t interrupt browsing or checkout.
• Include a clear call-to-action, product description, and payment options on every product page.
• Confirm your SSL certificate is active. Shopify issues a free SSL certificate automatically for every store and custom domain.
• Set up DMARC, SPF, and DKIM records to help protect your domain from email spoofing. These records allow mail providers to verify that emails sent from your domain are legitimate.
• Confirm DDoS protection is included in your CDN or hosting plan, and add mitigation if it isn’t. A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack can overwhelm your servers and take your store offline during a traffic surge.
• Test your discount codes and automatic discounts to confirm they are applied correctly during checkout.
• Send yourself a test abandoned checkout to confirm the recovery email triggers and displays correctly.
• Submit a test entry through your contact form to confirm it reaches the correct inbox.
• Place a test order to confirm that both your order confirmation and shipping notification emails are sent correctly.

6. Create contingency plans

Prepare a contingency plan for site outages, backup systems, and shipping delays before BFCM begins. To do so, you’ll want to confirm the following:

• Backup systems are in place in case your site crashes.
• You have a plan for shipping delays if a carrier experiences a supply chain disruption.

Preparing these plans in advance reduces the troubleshooting needed once BFCM starts.

Marketing strategies

To create a sound marketing plan ahead of the holiday season, prioritize four key actions ahead of BFCM: choose your offer, stage email and retargeting campaigns early, update on-site deal messaging, and coordinate messaging across sales channels. The following strategies cover each of these steps for your Black Friday Cyber Monday marketing campaigns in detail. 

7. Craft an irresistible BFCM offer

More than 94,900 Shopify store owners had their highest-selling day ever during BFCM 2025, with an average cart price of $114.70. A deep discount on a popular product is a great way to draw customers to your store, with the goal of them shopping for additional items before checking out.

Rani & Co. ran a 30% sale across multiple product lines during BFCM.

Several apps on the Shopify App Store can help increase order value and conversions, including apps that promote:

• Discounts, sales, and limited-time offers
• Product upsells and cross-sells
• Cart completion and reduced cart abandonment

A deeply discounted flagship product can also serve as a loss leader, drawing customers who then add higher-priced items to their cart. The goal is for the additional revenue to exceed the cost of the initial discount.

That said, a discount isn’t required to create a BFCM offer. Beauty subscription brand Tribe Beauty Box takes a different approach. “I think that Black Friday Cyber Monday for subscription boxes is a very unique opportunity,” says founder Bili Boboe-Balogun. “Rather than discounting the product, what we like to do is create mystery boxes, which we offer as a gift to customers when subscribing.”

8. Double down on your top sales channels

If you’re selling on multiple channels, identify which are the most lucrative for your business and prioritize those for BFCM. Shopify supports sales channels for social and marketplace selling, including direct integrations with Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Additional social and marketplace channels, such as Pinterest, Google, Amazon, and Walmart, are available through the Shopify App Store. Channel availability varies by platform and app integration.

Connecting a sales channel in Shopify syncs your product catalog and inventory across each channel, and centralizes order management in your Shopify admin.

9. Retarget past visitors and customers

Set up Meta Pixel to retarget previous site visitors and existing customers. Meta Pixel allows you to remarket to previous customers and track specific actions, such as which product page they viewed. 

The tool also tracks:

• Page views
• Purchases
• Cart additions
• Checkout initiation

Meta Pixel re-engages people already familiar with your brand who may have forgotten about your store or missed previous advertisements about your sale.

10. Plan and launch your email marketing campaigns early

Start planning and scheduling emails well ahead of your BFCM promotions. Here are some tips for fine-tuning your email marketing strategy:

• Optimize your site for email capture. Make it easy for visitors to stay informed about your upcoming sales—even if they’re not ready to buy right away—by placing email collection fields and sign-up pop-ups on various pages of your store. Consider offering early access to encourage sign-ups, and make sure any email addresses you collect are high-quality and that you have consent to send promotional emails.
• Personalize your email campaigns. Use Shopify Messaging to customize your subject line, preview text, or body text with the customer’s first name, and include offers and product recommendations based on their purchase history.
• Send “warm-up” emails with hints and teasers. Whether your BFCM offer is a discount, an exclusive product, free shipping, charity donations, or a unique-to-you promotion, start teasing it early so subscribers are on the lookout when it drops. Consider tailoring exclusive offers to various customer segments, like your VIPs.
• Thank your customers when your sale ends. Send a follow-up email after BFCM wraps. Be careful not to over-communicate, since purchasers are likely getting order-related emails in the days following BFCM. Schedule your thank you emails five to seven days post-event.
• Create abandoned cart emails. The average online shopping cart abandonment rate is 70.22%, according to Baymard Institute, which means you could be leaving a lot of money on the table. An automatically triggered abandoned cart email can recover some of these lost sales.

Meat and seafood subscription service ButcherBox starts its Black Friday promotions early with a giveaway. “One of the most successful campaigns that we do, which actually starts before Black Friday Cyber Monday, is [a promotion to] start a subscription and get a free turkey,” says Founder and CEO Mike Salguero.

11. Update your homepage with seasonal creative

Your homepage is an ideal place to feature seasonal offers, especially around the holidays, when you may be introducing specialty scents, colorways, or patterns that fit the season. Incorporate seasonal motifs into your hero image, and extend that imagery across your other sales channels for a consistent look. If you lack design expertise, consider using a tool like Canva or hiring a Shopify expert. 

Shopify’s theme editor also lets you update your homepage without writing code. Confirm the following homepage elements before your sale goes live:

• Hero banner reflects the current offer
• Sale collection is linked from the homepage
• Countdown timer or end date is included, if confirmed
• Discount terms are stated clearly
• Shipping threshold is displayed, if applicable
• Return policy is linked
• Product badges are applied to eligible sale items

12. Go international

Cross-border orders represented 16% of all global orders during BFCM 2025. Top-selling countries on Shopify included the US, the UK, Australia, Germany, and Canada.

An online store already lets you sell beyond your primary market. Shopify Markets includes tools to manage different currencies, languages, domains, and payment methods for each market you target. Localized domains and languages also generate hreflang tags automatically, which helps search engines match international customers to the correct version of your store.

Conversion optimization

To guarantee you stand the best chance at converting sales during BFCM, there are several things you’ll want to do ahead of time, including benchmarking your conversion rate, offering buy now, pay later options, using chatbots to support shoppers, and assessing your checkout experience. The following sections cover each of these tactics in detail.

13. Benchmark and grow your conversion rate

Getting customers to your site is only one part of BFCM success. You also have to convert those visitors into paying customers. Because revenue scales directly with conversion rate, raising it even slightly can increase sales without additional traffic. To determine your benchmark, research the standard ecommerce conversion rate for a business in your category. 

Factors to consider include geographic location, gross merchandise value (GMV), and industry vertical, such as apparel and accessories, home and garden, or health and beauty.

Use the ecommerce conversion rate calculator to:

• See how you compare to other brands of the same size and industry
• Get actionable tips on how to improve your conversion rate
• Identify gaps in your current strategy and opportunities for improvement

14. Increase conversion with buy now, pay later

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) is a payment method that allows customers to split a purchase into installments, making shopping more accessible for some. Shop Pay Installments is the native BNPL solution on Shopify; it gives customers several installment payment options, some of which are interest-free, and can decrease cart abandonment by as much as 28% and increase average order value by up to 50%. 

A premium package is also available to select merchants, offering interest-free payments for up to 12 months and installments with interest for up to 24 months on orders between $50 and $17,500. More than a quarter of US consumers have used BNPL services, according to a Morgan Stanley AlphaWise survey. Other BNPL providers include Afterpay, Affirm, and Klarna.

15. Use chatbots to drive conversion

Traffic spikes during BFCM can outpace your team’s ability to respond to every message in real time. By deploying a Chatbot, you can answer product, shipping, return, and order-status questions on your website, social channels, and within mobile apps, even outside business hours.

Shopify Inbox is Shopify’s native chat tool, which shows what a customer has added to or removed from their cart, and lets you set up instant answers for common questions, such as shipping and return policies. Shopify Inbox also includes a built-in “Track my order” instant answer that gives customers their order status automatically.

16. Assess your checkout experience

It’s important to examine your checkout process ahead of BFCM, especially on mobile. Unexpected extra costs are the leading cause of cart abandonment, according to 39% of shoppers who abandoned an order in the past, according to Baymard Institute.

Analyze your checkout page to confirm the following best practices are in order:

• Shipping costs, taxes, and fees are shown before the final step
• Guest checkout is available and clearly presented as an option
• The number of required form fields is minimized
• Security badges or trust indicators are visible near payment fields
• Return policy is linked during checkout
• Multiple payment methods are available

Services like Shop Pay, Apple Pay, and Google Pay speed up checkout by autofilling saved information and reducing the number of clicks required to complete a purchase.

Shop Pay lifts conversion by up to 50% relative to guest checkout and completes checkout up to four times faster, according to a study Shopify commissioned with a global management consulting firm. Results will vary by store and industry.

Logistics and fulfillment

To ensure things run smoothly after your customers make a purchase, you’ll want to audit your logistics and fulfillment processes. Confirm your shipping promises are achievable, maintain visibility into inventory, group orders efficiently, prepare staff handoffs, and set up in-person selling before your sale starts. The following sections cover each of these steps in detail.

17. Set your holiday shipping strategy

Revisit your shipping strategy each year before BFCM, and consider offers that could help increase sales, like unlocking free shipping at certain purchase tiers.

For example, you can offer reduced shipping on orders of more than $50, and free shipping on orders over $75. Local customers may also benefit from additional fulfillment perks, like buying online and picking up in-store.

Keep in mind, accuracy outranks cost as the most important factor shoppers use when choosing a delivery option at checkout, and 55% say on-time delivery makes them more likely to buy from a retailer again, according to Narvar’s 2025 State of Post-Purchase Report. During BFCM, expedited shipping can help close a sale, though the added cost means it’s worth weighing against projected order volume. Shipping software can help forecast and manage these costs.

If you don’t already, be sure to share your shipping policy on your FAQ page, in email campaigns, and across other marketing channels. Communicate shipping transit times at checkout so customers know when to expect their delivery before completing a purchase. Be transparent about potential delays, whether from carriers or other fulfillment issues.

If you state a shipping time in your marketing, you’re required to have a reasonable basis for meeting it. Without a stated time, the FTC’s Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule requires shipment within 30 days of a properly completed order, unless you notify the customer of a delay and get their consent.

18. Prepare order and fulfillment workflows

A high volume of sales within a short period of time can make it more difficult to fulfill and get orders to customers quickly. Here are some ways to optimize your fulfillment workflows and get your back office ready for BFCM:

• Organize your fulfillment area. Whether you use a warehouse or a spare room to fulfill orders, stock adequate supplies and keep your most popular products easily accessible for quicker packing.
• Get helping hands. BFCM typically brings a surge in order volume. If you’re a small business, recruit friends or hire additional staff to help fulfill and ship orders.
• Over-communicate. Communicate clearly and regularly with your fulfillment and local delivery staff. Use the order timeline in Shopify admin to share instructions internally with staff about orders, customers, and fulfillment.
• Group orders. Plan how to prioritize orders, then group them by commonality for quicker processing. Common ways to organize and group orders include:
• Customer priority. Organize orders by customer priority, and fulfill orders for repeat customers first. You can add tags directly to orders in Shopify admin to identify priority customers.
• Shipping requirements. Organize orders by shipping priority, so customers who pay for expedited shipping get their orders first. You can also organize by delivery method, so products fulfilled by local delivery or a specific shipping provider are processed together.
• Product type. Group orders by product type to reduce pick-and-pack time. Define product weight and dimensions in Shopify admin so you can select the most appropriate packaging and shipping options at fulfillment.

Additional ways to process orders efficiently during BFCM include:

• Managing your store from the Shopify mobile app when you’re away from a desktop.
• Hiding out-of-stock products so customers don’t order items you can’t fulfill.
• Using bulk actions to fulfill multiple orders at once instead of processing them individually.
• Using Shopify Flow, Shopify’s ecommerce automation tool, to build custom workflows across your store and apps.

19. Serve shoppers in person with Shopify POS

Ecommerce is projected to represent 21.1% of total global retail sales in 2026, according to eMarketer. That still leaves a large share of sales attributed to brick-and-mortar stores and other in-person shopping experiences, which may be something you want to consider to drum up additional BFCM sales. Consider holding a pop-up shop at a local market or by partnering with another retailer to reach your target audience in person. You can use Shopify POS to make in-person sales.

Customer experience and retention

Make sure Black Friday and Cyber Monday are an enjoyable shopping experience for your customers by rewarding their loyalty, preparing your customer support team for higher volume, clarifying your returns policy before promotions launch, and turning seasonal shoppers into year-round customers. The following sections cover each of these tactics in detail.

20. Reward loyal customers

Reward loyal customers with your best deals, such as tiered-spending rewards, extra discounts and coupons, early access to Black Friday sales, perks for friends and family referrals, or bonus points through a customer loyalty program.

Discounts (49%), free shipping and returns (41%), and loyalty programs (29%) are among the top factors shoppers cite for staying loyal to a brand after a holiday purchase, according to Shopify and Sapio Research. The Shopify App Store has multiple loyalty apps that can help implement these tactics.

One year, Loop Earplugs offered an even bigger discount than their usual 20% to 30% off for returning customers. “Last year, we gave early access to our community and a higher discount that nobody else could get,” says Co-founder Dimitri O. “And it was so successful that we’re going to do that this year again, the 48 hours before Black Friday.”

21. Prepare customer support for BFCM volume

Black Friday can be a hectic time for customer support, which may fatigue buyers or turn them off from making a purchase. Quick response times, along with courteous and respectful communication, are part of providing good customer service, so make sure your customer service training includes best practices for communication, conflict resolution, and problem-solving. 

For example, it’s a good idea to have a few standard phrases and replies prepared to help your team deliver more consistent, helpful service when responding to customer issues, including:

• A lost or delayed order
• Dissatisfaction with a purchase
• Delivery of damaged products

Train your team to listen closely and communicate with empathy when engaging with customers. To prepare your support channels ahead of BFCM, make sure to:

• Update your FAQ page with current shipping windows, return policies, and sale terms.
• Test your contact form to confirm submissions reach the right inbox.
• Set your chat availability hours in Shopify Inbox, and turn on automatic replies for messages sent outside those hours.
• Turn on the “Track my order” instant answer in Shopify Inbox so customers can check their order status without waiting for a reply.

“We try to manage expectations as well as we can with our customers by announcing some potential delay[s] in shipment dates,” Dimitri says. “The one thing that we really do scale is our customer support team. Internally, we are there as well to answer any questions, any tickets that we can.”

22. Clarify returns before promotions launch

Returns are part of the customer experience during BFCM. 41% of UK consumers say a lack of free return postage has stopped them from buying online from a company, according to a 2025 KPMG UK survey.

To help avoid issues, make sure you have a return policy that is clear, fair, and well-communicated on your store’s website, and consider extending your returns and exchanges policy during the holiday season.You should also display your return policy in the following places:

• Shipping and returns policy page
• FAQ page
• Products page
• Order notification emails

Choose a returns management system that integrates with your operations and ecommerce store. 

23. Turn seasonal shoppers into year-round customers

BFCM doesn’t end when the sale wraps. New customers now have the potential to become repeat buyers, so take steps to maintain and nurture those relationships.

Word of mouth was the most common Year 1 growth strategy, cited by 53% of store owners, according to the Shopify Survey of Store Owners, Q4 2025.* Keep your customers engaged year-round by staying active on social media and sending post-purchase emails. If seasonal shoppers didn’t sign up for your email list or follow your social media accounts, retargeting might be your next best option for bringing them back.

Analytics and post-BFCM

To gauge store performance related to BFCM, you should monitor your analytics for actionable insights and reflect on what worked and what didn’t. Here’s how:

24. Monitor analytics for actionable insights

Track how your Black Friday Cyber Monday marketing efforts translated into visits and sales using Shopify’s analytics tools. The overview dashboard in Shopify admin shows key sales, orders, and online store visitor data, and you can dive deeper into specific reports for additional detail.

During and after BFCM, review the following in Shopify analytics:

• Discount code usage
• Abandoned checkouts
• Checkout errors
• Refund and return reasons
• Chargeback or fraud signals
• Inventory sell-through
• Top-performing sales channels
• First-time buyer count
• Post-purchase email performance

If you want even more data, apps like Lucky Orange add heat maps, session recordings, and checkout event tracking to show customer behavior, including how they move through product pages and where they drop off before completing a purchase.

25. Review what worked and what didn’t

BFCM and the holiday season are an opportunity to learn from both your wins and your missteps. Track your results and reflect on what worked and what didn’t. As you implement new strategies and tactics, take notes and capture screenshots to document your decisions and outcomes. These records provide a benchmark for next year’s holiday season, but keep in mind that some outcomes, like repeat purchases from new customers, might not be visible right away.

After BFCM, monitor the following to assess performance:

• Repeat purchase rate among new BFCM customers
• Customer feedback and support tickets related to the sale
• Email and SMS engagement from post-purchase campaigns
• Return and refund volume compared to sales volume
• Inventory left over from the sale

Document lessons learned for next year’s planning, including:

• Which offers, channels, and campaigns performed best
• Where customers experienced friction or delays
• Adjustments to make to inventory, staffing, or shipping timelines

Use this Black Friday checklist to get ready for BFCM

This checklist is organized in three phases: preparation, execution, and follow-up.

Start with the preparation sections weeks or months before BFCM, which includes inventory planning, site and checkout testing, shipping strategy, and marketing setup. These take the most lead time and are hardest to fix once the sale is live.

During BFCM, use the customer support, fulfillment, and in-person selling sections to keep operations running smoothly as order volume increases.

After the sale ends, move to the analytics and reflection sections. Review what worked, document the results, and use them as a benchmark when planning next year’s BFCM.

Revisit sections as needed rather than treating this as a one-time read-through. Bookmark it and return to relevant checklist items as each phase of BFCM approaches.

*Disclaimer: Based on a 2025 survey of 500 Shopify merchants conducted in English across Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United States. Respondents were established merchants with two or more years on the platform. Results reflect the experiences of this specific sample and may not be representative of all merchants.