Black Friday falls on November 27 this year, and Cyber Monday on November 30. For most Shopify stores the hard part isn't picking the discount. It's the mechanics: making sale prices show up correctly, keeping them legal if you sell into the EU, and getting every price back to normal when the weekend ends. This guide walks through a practical plan, from choosing how the sale works to the cleanup on Tuesday morning.
Step 1: Decide how the sale will work
Shopify gives you two fundamentally different ways to run a sale, and mixing them up causes most Black Friday headaches.
Method | What changes | Strikethrough on product pages | Needs reverting |
|---|---|---|---|
Automatic discount with dates | Nothing in your catalog; the discount applies in cart and checkout | Depends on theme or app | No, it ends on its own |
Sale price + compare-at price | Price and Compare-at price on each variant | Yes, in most themes | Yes, every variant |
Discount code | Nothing in your catalog | No | No, but codes leak to coupon sites |
Automatic discounts are the safest choice if you only need "20% off at checkout". But shoppers browsing collection pages won't see a crossed-out price, and on Black Friday that visible saving is what drives clicks. If you want the strikethrough, you need real sale prices: the original price goes into Compare-at price and the lower price goes into Price.
Step 2: Build the sale price list before November
Don't start changing prices on Thursday night. Build the list first:
- Pick the products by collection, tag, vendor or product type, and exclude anything already discounted, new arrivals and low-margin items.
- Decide the rule per group, for example 20% off apparel, 15% off accessories, a fixed amount off bundles.
- Decide rounding (.99, .95 or whole numbers) so you don't end up with prices like $37.13.
- Check margins against your cost per item, especially for stacked offers and free-shipping thresholds.
- Export a backup of your current prices and compare-at prices (Products > Export as CSV). This is your safety net.
Shopify's bulk editor and CSV import can apply the change, but neither can schedule it or undo it. Whatever you change, you'll have to change back by hand later, variant by variant.
Step 3: If you sell to the EU, check the 30-day lowest price rule
Under the EU Omnibus Directive (Article 6a of the Price Indication Directive), when you announce a price reduction you must show the lowest price you charged in the 30 days before the reduction as the reference price. In practice this means:
- Your compare-at price for EU shoppers should be the lowest price of the last 30 days, not a list price you rarely charged.
- Raising prices in early November and then "discounting" them on Black Friday is exactly what the rule targets.
- If you ran an earlier promotion in the last 30 days, that lower price becomes your reference price.
Some member states have stricter rules or exceptions, so check with local guidance if the EU is a big market for you. The simple habit that keeps you safe: keep a record of each variant's price history, and base the compare-at price on that record rather than on memory.
Step 4: Schedule the start and the end
The classic Black Friday mistake isn't launching late. It's forgetting to end. Sale prices that stay live into December quietly cost you margin on every order, and a "Black Friday" strikethrough in mid-December looks careless.
Write down three times in your store's time zone:
- Start, for example Friday, November 27, 00:00.
- Any change in tier, for example a deeper Cyber Monday discount on Monday, November 30, 00:00.
- End, for example Tuesday, December 1, 00:00.
With an automatic discount you set these as active dates. With sale prices, Shopify has no built-in scheduler, so either someone is awake at midnight or you use an app. Lilya: Bulk Price & Revert, for example, lets you preview the variant-level changes, schedule a start and end time, and revert to the original prices automatically when the campaign ends.
Step 5: Revert safely when the sale ends
Reverting sounds trivial: put the old prices back. In practice, three things go wrong:
- Prices that changed during the sale. If you raised a supplier-driven price on Saturday, a blind revert from your backup CSV overwrites it with the old one.
- New variants added during the sale have no "original" price in your backup.
- Compare-at prices are left behind, so products keep showing a fake discount after the sale.
A safe revert restores only what the campaign changed, leaves later manual edits alone, and clears or restores the compare-at price as well. If you revert by CSV, compare your backup against a fresh export first and only re-import the rows that the sale touched.
Step 6: Put your sale terms where customers agree to them
Black Friday brings more first-time buyers, and more disputes: "I didn't know sale items were final sale," "I expected free returns." If your sale has special terms, such as final sale items, shorter return windows or no price adjustments, say so on the product page and in your refund policy, and ask customers to accept your terms before they pay. A required "I agree to the terms and conditions" checkbox, like the one in Lilya: Terms & Conditions, gives you a record that the customer saw those terms, which helps when a chargeback arrives in January.
Black Friday sale checklist for Shopify
- Sale method chosen: automatic discount, sale prices, or both.
- Product list and discount rules finalized, with rounding and margins checked.
- Backup export of current prices and compare-at prices saved.
- EU reference prices based on the lowest price of the last 30 days.
- Start, tier change and end times written down in your store's time zone.
- Revert plan that preserves manual edits and clears compare-at prices.
- Sale terms in your refund policy and accepted at checkout.
- One test order placed after the sale goes live, and one after it ends.
FAQ
Can I schedule Black Friday prices in advance on Shopify?
You can schedule automatic discounts with start and end dates. Shopify can't schedule changes to product prices or compare-at prices on its own, so for strikethrough sale prices you need to make the change manually at the start time or use a scheduling app.
Should I use compare-at prices or an automatic discount?
Use an automatic discount if you only need the saving at checkout and want zero cleanup. Use compare-at prices if you want the crossed-out price on product and collection pages, and plan how you'll revert them.
How do I undo a bulk price change on Shopify?
Shopify has no undo for bulk edits. Re-import a backup CSV you exported before the change, or use an app that records the original prices and can revert them. See our guide on how to bulk change prices on Shopify and revert them after a sale.