The short answer
- Test the threshold in October, on normal traffic, and decide before 16 November whether to keep it for the sale.
- Work out break-even first. Free shipping from a minimum gives away shipping you used to charge on qualifying orders. It pays if enough baskets grow to reach the minimum, or enough extra shoppers buy. The Example below shows how much each case needs.
- Judge it on profit per visitor, with shipping costs counted. Orders and conversion rate can look good while profit falls.
- Decide how it fits with the sale offer. Shopify applies one shipping discount per order. If your BFCM offer includes free shipping, a threshold test is measuring something else.
- The progress bar has to match checkout, in every currency you sell in.
Who this is for: Shopify brands doing $1M to $10M a year that charge for shipping below some basket size, or are thinking about it, and want the threshold settled before the sale.
The 2026 timeline
| When | What to do |
|---|---|
| By Sun 18 Oct | Break-even with the free-shipping threshold calculator. Pick one threshold to test against your current setup. |
| Mon 19 Oct to Sun 25 Oct | Launch. A profit test at 60,000 visitors a week needs about three weeks to detect a 10% change (Example). |
| By Fri 13 Nov | Read the result. Decide the threshold for the sale, and how it combines with the sale offer. |
| Mon 16 Nov | Freeze. Shipping settings and shipping discounts stay as decided. |
| 26 Nov to 30 Nov | Watch shipping costs and average order value daily against your plan. |
Why sale-week baskets are a different question
A threshold works by asking shoppers below it to add something. During BFCM several things change at once: the sale discount lowers the price of what's already in the basket, gift buying can add items, and many shoppers arrive from email or ads with one product in mind. A threshold that suits October baskets can be too easy or too hard in sale week.
That is why the order matters:
- Test the threshold on October traffic. That answers "does this threshold earn more per visitor on a normal week?"
- Decide what to do in the sale with that answer and the margin maths. If your sale offer is 20% off, a $100 threshold now needs a $125 basket at full price, or a $100 basket before discounts, depending on how the threshold counts. Check which. If you move the winning threshold to a Shopify free-shipping discount for the sale, Shopify counts discounted prices: a $100 basket at 20% off counts as $80.
- Don't start a new threshold test after the freeze.
How the minimum counts matters more than usual during a sale. Benchmyrk's shipping tests compare the cart subtotal before discounts, without gift cards and subscriptions. A shopper with $100 of products at 20% off qualifies for a $100 minimum, even though they pay $80. If you want the threshold to count what the shopper pays, set the minimum with that in mind.
Step 1: Break-even
Free shipping from a minimum changes three things: the shipping you charge on qualifying orders goes to zero, some baskets grow to reach the minimum, and some shoppers who would have left buy. The first is a cost. The other two have to pay for it.
Illustrative inputs, not data from a real store. The break-even rows are plain arithmetic, using the same method as the free-shipping threshold guide.
Inputs: average order $78, gross margin 55%, $6.95 shipping charged on every order today, $9.20 average shipping cost, 2.5% conversion rate. Today each order contributes $40.65 (margin plus shipping charged, minus shipping cost), which is about $1.02 per visitor. The test version offers free shipping from $100.
| What happens to baskets | Average order | Orders at or over $100 | Contribution per order | Conversion needed to break even | Change in orders needed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baskets don't change | $78 | 25% | $38.91 | 2.61% | +4.5% |
| Some baskets grow to $100 | $82 | 38% | $40.21 | 2.53% | +1.1% |
| Many baskets grow to $100 | $86 | 50% | $41.58 | 2.44% | −2.2% |
Read it like this: if baskets don't change at all, the threshold needs 4.5% more orders to earn what you earn today. If enough baskets grow to the minimum, it can earn more even with slightly fewer orders. The test tells you which row you're in. The calculator does this for your own numbers.
Step 2: Plan the test
Primary goal: profit per visitor, with shipping revenue and shipping cost included. Revenue per visitor ignores what shipping costs you, so it flatters free shipping. See revenue per visitor vs conversion rate for why conversion rate alone misleads.
Diagnostics: average order value, share of orders at or above the minimum, add-to-cart rate. These explain the result. They don't decide it.
Guardrails: checkout completion, and page errors on pages showing the progress bar.
Same store. Computed with the same sample-size formula Benchmyrk uses to plan revenue and profit goals (95% confidence, 80% power, two versions, even split), with a $30 spread in contribution between orders.
At 60,000 visitors a week (about 8,571 a day), every visitor in the test:
| Smallest change in profit per visitor to detect | Visitors per version | Days |
|---|---|---|
| 20% | 23,856 | 6, but no verdict before 7 full days |
| 10% | 95,421 | 23 |
| 5% | 381,683 | 90 |
Three weeks can detect a 10% change. If the true effect is smaller than that, the likely outcome before the freeze is "inconclusive". Decide in advance what you'll do then: keep your current setup for the sale is the safe default.
Step 3: Build it so the bar matches checkout
- One shipping discount per order. Shopify applies at most one shipping discount to an order. If your store already has its own free-shipping discount, a shopper who qualifies for both gets the better one, and the test measures the difference only where your own offer doesn't apply.
- Progress bar wording. "Add $22.00 to unlock free shipping" has to count the cart the way checkout counts it. Gift cards and subscriptions don't count toward the minimum.
- Markets and currencies. Fixed amounts and minimums are set in your store currency and converted for shoppers paying in another currency, the way Shopify converts its own discounts. Check the bar in your top two or three markets.
- Subscription orders and gift cards don't get the shipping offer.
- Place a test order just below and just above the minimum in every version, on a phone. Test orders don't count in results unless "Include test orders" is turned on for a goal.
Step 4: Decide for the sale
When the test ends, you have three common outcomes:
- The threshold wins on profit per visitor. Keep it through the sale if the sale offer doesn't include free shipping. If it does, the threshold no longer applies on most orders, so the win doesn't carry over.
- Inconclusive. Keep what you had. A threshold that doesn't clearly pay in October is unlikely to be worth the risk in November.
- It loses. Keep what you had, and note the result in your learning library for next year.
Mistakes to avoid
- Judging on orders. Free shipping can lift orders and still lower profit. The question is whether it lifts profit per visitor.
- Using revenue per visitor without shipping costs. It treats shipping you no longer charge as free.
- Testing a threshold during the sale. Sale-week baskets describe sale-week shoppers.
- Two shipping offers at once. Your own free-shipping discount and a test threshold compete for the same single shipping discount per order.
- A bar that counts differently from checkout. A shopper who sees "you've unlocked free shipping" and then pays for it at checkout has been told something untrue.
Checklist
- Break-even from the calculator at your real shipping cost and margin.
- One threshold against your current setup.
- Profit per visitor as the primary goal, with product costs and shipping costs set up.
- A decision for "inconclusive" written down.
- Test orders below and above the minimum, in your main currencies.
- A note on how the threshold combines with the sale offer.
- End date before Friday 13 November.
Managing thresholds for several client stores? The agency track on the BFCM hub covers shipping-threshold tests across client stores. The full season plan is in What to test before Black Friday and Cyber Monday on Shopify.