Hi team,
If you’ve worked a Black Friday before, you know the vibe. Record traffic, massive orders, everyone high-fiving in Slack. And then something breaks, and no one notices until someone tweets at you.
I’ve watched enough BFCM campaigns implode to know that most of the damage happens in real time while everyone’s too busy refreshing dashboards to catch it.
So here are 10 things that will go wrong BFCM weekend, and what you can actually do about them before they cost you a few hundred grand.
Let’s get into it.
This week brought to you by Checkout Pulse.
Shopify Plus brands use it to monitor checkout health in real time and catch problems before they snowball. Broken discounts, rising abandonment, and missing shipping rates. All the stuff that quietly kills conversion while you’re celebrating your traffic spike.
👉 Download it today and use code eli-X3-1YK to get it free for 3 months.
1. Your discount codes will break and you won’t know until someone tweets at you
What happens:
Codes stop working, expired promos slip through. Your “20OFF” offer never applies. High-intent shoppers hit checkout, get confused, and bail.
Fix it:
Check your failed discount table daily with Checkout Pulse. Run test orders with every active code before Thursday. If codes break, patch them immediately and message affected customers with a make-good offer before they write you off.
2. Abandonment will spike and you’ll have no idea why
What happens:
Traffic doubles, but conversion rate mysteriously drops from 2.8% to 2.1%. Most teams won’t spot it until the campaign’s over.
Fix it:
Set up Slack alerts for sudden abandonment increases so you can react in minutes, not hours. Check form errors, shipping load times, and express checkout performance right after each alert.
3. A checkout extension will fail silently
What happens:
One third-party app in checkout errors out, but Shopify doesn’t show it. Every broken add-on can silently kill conversions for hours.
Fix it:
Use event-level monitoring to detect extension errors and alert your devs instantly. Disable anything non-essential before Friday. Have a rollback plan ready.
4. Your forms will fight people
What happens:
Shoppers rage-quit when your phone or ZIP code field rejects valid inputs. Input fatigue equals lost carts.
Fix it:
Simplify or auto-fill high-friction fields and track where drop-offs happen. Test your checkout on mobile with edge cases like international phone formats and military addresses.
5. Shipping rates will vanish for random zip codes
What happens:
Some addresses mysteriously return “no rates available.” That’s revenue trapped in checkout limbo.
Fix it:
Flag and adjust rules for failed address lookups before the weekend. Spot-check international regions where errors spike. Set up fallback flat-rate options for problem zones.
6. Express checkout won’t be as fast as you think
What happens:
Apple Pay or Shop Pay flow errors start climbing quietly. Your “fast lane” will not be nearly as fast as anyone expected…
Fix it:
Benchmark express versus standard checkout completion rates in real time. If one tanks, remove or reorder buttons immediately.
7. Expensive shipping options will scare people off
What happens:
That $19.99 overnight method is likely killing conversion. I find this as one of my personal biggest pet peeves. If I see super high shipping cost, I disappear. High-abandonment methods drag down total conversion.
Fix it:
Reorder or hide underperforming options. You’re not required to show every carrier rate just because it exists.
8. Everything will work fine in the US and break everywhere else
What happens:
Canada’s checkout blows up. UK customers can’t get past payment. Australia gets stuck on shipping.
Fix it:
Segment abandonment data by region. Then tailor fixes to the top offending countries: shipping rules, payment methods, or taxes. What works in New York doesn’t work in Toronto.
9. Promo stacking will quietly destroy your margins
What happens:
Everyone’s using codes. AOV looks great. Then you realize half your orders are stacking discounts you didn’t account for, and your best weekend just became your least profitable.
Fix it:
Track discount usage cohorts to identify where promo volume costs more than it earns. Turn off combinations you don’t want. Set maximum discount caps per order.
10. You won’t know what broke until it’s too late
What happens:
Everyone’s busy firefighting, and post-mortems come too late. You can’t fix what you didn’t see in time.
Fix it:
Run real-time checkout monitoring through a tool like Checkout Pulse. Get Slack alerts when conversion, abandonment, or extensions misbehave, and stay ahead of issues during the weekend’s chaos.
👉 Use code eli-X3-1YK to get it free for 3 months.
Stay sharp out there.
And may all your discount codes work on the first try.
Eli
