When to stop changing your store before Black Friday

• Set up your sale by Sunday 15 November and stop changing the store on Monday 16 November, ten days before Thanksgiving.
• Create your sale discounts early, with start and end dates, so they switch on and off without you.
• Duplicate your live theme before you add sale banners, and keep the copy until January.
• No new apps after the freeze. If an app isn't installed and checked by 15 November, it waits until December.
• Give your one test a planned end date before the freeze, and decide now what you'll do with an inconclusive result.

The 16 November freeze is our suggestion, not a Shopify rule. It matches the calendar in our general Black Friday testing guide. If you ship changes slowly, or rely on a freelancer, move it earlier.

Big teams freeze their stores to stop dozens of people changing things at once. A one-person store has a different problem: you're also running ads, writing emails, packing orders and answering messages. A late change gets less checking than it needs, and if it breaks something on Friday, you're the one who has to find it while orders come in.

A freeze isn't a rule against fixing things. If checkout breaks on Black Friday, you fix it. It's a rule against improving things: no new layout, no new app, no clever discount on Saturday morning.

Duplicate your live theme in the Shopify admin (Online Store, Themes, the theme's actions menu, Duplicate) before you add any sale content. Name the copy with the date. Shopify's help center notes you can keep up to 20 themes, and that a theme download doesn't include products, collections, pages or files, so the duplicate is for the theme only.

If a sale banner or a late edit breaks a page, you can publish the backup and lose only the sale content, not your whole store.

Shopify discounts have active dates: a start date and, optionally, an end date. Automatic discounts also let you set a start time. Without an end date, a discount doesn't expire. The time a discount starts and ends follows the time zone in your Shopify admin, so check it before you rely on a midnight start.

1. 1.Create every sale discount by 8 November, with a start date of Thanksgiving or Black Friday and an end date after Cyber Monday.
2. 2.Check how they combine. Shopify discounts only combine when you set them to, by class (product, order, shipping). Decide whether your sale offer should combine with free shipping or an email welcome code.
3. 3.Place a test order with each combination you allow, and one with a combination you don't, to see that it's refused.

• Write banner and email copy once, from one source, so the banner, the product page and checkout all promise the same offer.
• Put banners in place before the freeze, either hidden or in a scheduled section if your theme supports it. Switching a banner on is fine during the freeze; redesigning it isn't.
• Check every page with a banner on a phone. Banners on small screens often push Add to cart below the fold.

Every app you install adds code to your store. Some change how pages load, add popups or change checkout behavior. Install and check any sale-specific app (a countdown timer, a gift-with-purchase app, a popup) by 15 November. Anything later waits.

A test that keeps running past its planned end drifts into the sale and mixes sale-week shoppers into a result about normal shoppers. Decide the end date when you launch.

Each week of delay makes the test blunter. And whatever the start date, decide in advance what you'll do if it ends inconclusive. "Keep the original" or "keep the new version because it's clearer" are both fine answers, as long as you choose before you look.

• "Just one more tweak" on Wednesday 25 November. The night before Thanksgiving is when changes go unchecked.
• Leaving discounts without end dates. A forgotten 30% off code in January costs more than it earned.
• Publishing a new theme for the sale week. It's the biggest change you can make, at the worst time.
• Extending a test into the sale because it's "nearly significant". Sale shoppers aren't the shoppers the test started with. End it as planned.
• Not telling anyone else who helps. If a freelancer or family member edits the store, give them the freeze date in writing.

• [ ] Freeze date (Mon 16 November) in your calendar, and shared with anyone who edits the store
• [ ] Live theme duplicated and named with the date
• [ ] Sale discounts created with start and end dates by 8 November
• [ ] Discount combinations checked with test orders
• [ ] Banners in place and checked on a phone by 15 November
• [ ] Any sale apps installed and checked by 15 November
• [ ] Your one test ended, and the version you're keeping published, by 15 November
• [ ] A reminder for 1 December to check every sale discount has ended

Agreeing a freeze with clients instead? See agreeing a BFCM code freeze with clients. For a brand with a team, see BFCM code freeze: dates, rules and what is still allowed.