A Shopify Black Friday checklist comes down to seven jobs: back up your live theme and make every change on an unpublished copy, cut apps and scripts you no longer need, schedule your discounts in advance, clean your product and inventory data, run real test orders, check the speed of your heaviest theme sections, and tidy up once the sale ends. Black Friday 2026 falls on Friday 27 November and Cyber Monday on 30 November, so there is roughly a month to work through the list below.
1. Back up the live theme and work on a copy
A common BFCM mistake is editing the published theme in the final week and breaking a page at peak traffic. Keep the live theme untouched and do all sale work on a duplicate.
- In Online Store > Themes, open the menu on your current theme and choose Duplicate. Rename the copy with a date, for example “Live backup 26 Oct”.
- Duplicate the live theme a second time and name it “BFCM 2026”. This is your working copy.
- Make banners, countdown sections, announcement bar changes and new collection templates on the BFCM copy only.
- Test the unpublished theme’s preview link on a real phone and share it with whoever signs off the design.
- Publish the BFCM theme at a quiet hour before the sale starts, and keep the dated backup so you can switch back in one click.
2. Audit apps and the script weight they add
Every app that adds a widget, popup or tracking pixel usually loads its own JavaScript and CSS on the storefront.
What to check
- Installed apps: list them and mark each one as needed for the sale, needed later, or unused. Uninstall the unused ones now, not on 26 November.
- App embeds: in the theme editor, open App embeds and switch off any embed you do not use. This stops its script loading on every page.
- Leftover code: older apps sometimes inserted snippets straight into theme files. Search your theme code for the app’s name and remove orphaned snippets after you have confirmed the app is gone.
To see what each script costs, open Chrome DevTools on a product page, go to the Network tab, filter by JS and sort by size. Measure again after each removal so you know which change actually helped.
3. Discounts and automatic discounts
Shopify lets you set a start and end date and time on both discount codes and automatic discounts, so there is no reason to switch offers on manually at midnight.
- Create every BFCM discount now, with start and end times set in your store’s time zone. If you sell into several countries, decide which time zone the sale follows and state it on the site.
- Check how your discounts combine. Shopify has combination settings for product, order and shipping discounts; read them carefully on each discount so a percentage product offer does not stack with a free-shipping code you did not intend to stack.
- If you run more than one automatic discount, test which one wins at checkout with a real basket. Check your plan and the current Shopify help docs for how many automatic discounts can be active at once.
- Compare-at prices are separate from discounts. If you change them in bulk, export a CSV of the original prices first so you can restore them.
4. Inventory and product data
Wrong stock counts mean overselling, and missing variants mean lost orders.
- Run a product export and look for blank SKUs, zero-weight products (these break shipping rates), missing images and duplicate titles.
- Check which products are set to continue selling when out of stock. That setting is useful for preorders and dangerous for limited stock.
- If you use more than one location, confirm stock is assigned to the right location and that fulfilment priority is what you expect.
- Fix collection rules so sale collections fill automatically, for example by a “bfcm” tag, rather than adding products by hand.
5. Checkout and payment tests
Do not assume checkout works because it worked in October. Place real test orders after every change to discounts, shipping or apps.
- Use Shopify Payments test mode, or the Bogus Gateway for testing, to place orders without real charges. Switch test mode off afterwards.
- Test at least: a single item, a multi-item basket, a discount code, an automatic discount, a free-shipping threshold, and an international address if you ship abroad.
- Test every payment method you show: cards, wallets, and any buy-now-pay-later option.
- Confirm order confirmation and shipping emails arrive, look right on mobile, and contain the correct discount.
- Place one small real order with a real card and refund it, to confirm the full flow end to end.
Check the shipping cut-off dates your carriers publish for Christmas delivery and show them on the site in your own words. Do not guess these dates.
6. Page speed of theme sections
Sale pages tend to collect heavy sections: autoplay video banners, sliders, countdown timers and large product grids. Each one adds weight to the page your ads point to.
- Run PageSpeed Insights on your home page, a collection page and your best-selling product page. Look at the field data for LCP, INP and CLS. Google’s “good” thresholds are LCP up to 2.5 s, INP up to 200 ms and CLS up to 0.1, measured at the 75th percentile.
- Make sure the hero image is not lazy-loaded and is sized for mobile. A huge desktop image served to phones is a common LCP problem.
- Give banners and countdown timers a fixed height so they do not push content down when they load (a CLS problem).
Timeline for Black Friday 2026
This week (from 26 October)
- Duplicate the live theme twice (backup and BFCM copy).
- Audit apps and switch off unused app embeds.
- Export products and fix data issues.
Two to three weeks before (9 to 20 November)
- Build sale sections on the BFCM theme and test the preview on mobile.
- Create and schedule all discounts.
- Run PageSpeed checks and fix the slowest sections.
The week of Thanksgiving (23 to 26 November)
- Freeze app installs and theme code changes.
- Run the full set of test orders.
- Publish the BFCM theme at a quiet hour and recheck checkout.
27 to 30 November
- Watch orders, stock levels and payment errors. Keep the backup theme ready.
7. Post-sale cleanup
- Confirm every scheduled discount has ended, and disable any you want to stop early.
- Restore compare-at prices from your CSV export where needed.
- Remove countdown timers and sale banners, or switch back to your normal theme and keep the BFCM copy for next year.
- Uninstall any app you added only for the sale, and check for leftover code again.
If you would rather hand the technical part of this list to someone else, I offer Shopify development and store preparation work. Recent Shopify work includes a large-scale Shopify jewellery store and a fresh dog food Shopify D2C store.
Frequently asked questions
When should I start preparing my Shopify store for Black Friday?
Start at least four weeks before. For 2026, that means late October. Leave the final week before 27 November for testing only, not new features.
Can I schedule a Shopify theme to publish automatically?
Scheduled theme publishing is not available on every plan, so check your plan; some apps also offer it. Otherwise, publish the prepared theme manually at a quiet time before the sale and test checkout straight away.
Do uninstalled apps still slow down my store?
They can. If an app added code directly to your theme files, that code may stay after you uninstall it. Search the theme for the app’s name and remove what is left, after taking a backup.
How do I test checkout without charging real cards?
Use Shopify Payments test mode or the Bogus Gateway, place test orders, then turn test mode off. Finish with one small real order and refund it.
If you want a second pair of eyes on your Shopify store before 27 November, send me the URL and what worries you.