Black Friday 2026 is on Friday 27 November, and Cyber Monday is on 30 November. If you run a WooCommerce shop, four weeks is enough time to get your prices, stock, offers and checkout ready without rushing, as long as you start now.

This checklist splits the work into one week at a time, with the most important jobs first. Everything here uses features WooCommerce already has, so you don’t need extra plugins.

⚡ Black Friday WooCommerce checklist: the short answer

• Week 1, by 2 November: decide your offer, check your “was” prices are genuine, and turn on stock management.
• Week 2, by 9 November: set up scheduled sale prices and coupons in WooCommerce, and test them.
• Week 3, by 16 November: back up, update everything, then hold back changes that can wait. Security fixes never wait. Check your caching and your host.
• Week 4, by 23 November: test your order emails, tag your campaign links, and get your returns and delivery information right.
• Sale week: place a test order, watch stock and orders, and change as little as possible.

📅 Week 1: plan the offer, prices and stock

Decide what’s on offer. A smaller sale on your best sellers is easier to manage than everything at 20% off. Look at last November’s orders in WooCommerce Analytics to see what sold, and check you can get more stock in time.

Make sure your “was” prices are real. UK consumer law expects a reference price, such as “was £60, now £45”, to be a price you genuinely charged, for a reasonable time, recently. Raising prices in October so the November discount looks bigger is the kind of practice regulators have acted against. Since 6 April 2025, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) can fine businesses directly under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024.

Show the full price, including delivery. The CMA’s price transparency guidance says the price shown must include mandatory charges, and delivery counts as one when customers can’t collect. If you offer free delivery over a set amount, the full delivery charge still has to show until the basket reaches that amount (CMA209, sections 4.4 and 5.14).

Turn on stock management. In WooCommerce, go to WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Inventory:

• tick Manage stock, so stock counts go down as orders come in
• set Notifications for low stock and out of stock, and a Low stock threshold
• check Hold stock (minutes), which holds stock for unpaid orders and cancels them when the time runs out

Then check each sale product has a stock quantity set, and decide whether you’ll allow backorders.

🏷️ Week 2: set up sale prices and coupons

WooCommerce can start and end a sale on its own, so you don’t have to be at your desk at midnight.

Scheduled sale prices. On each product’s edit screen, enter a Sale price and click Schedule. Two date boxes appear under “Sale price dates”: set the first day and the last day of the sale. The sale price shows from the start date and the normal price comes back after the end date. For variable products, each variation has its own sale price and schedule.

Coupons. Under Marketing → Coupons, WooCommerce lets you set:

• the discount type: a percentage, a fixed amount off the basket, or a fixed amount off each product
• an expiry date
• usage limits, in total and per customer
• a minimum or maximum spend
• Individual use only, so it can’t be combined with other coupons
• Exclude sale items, so a coupon doesn’t stack on top of an already reduced price
• which products or categories it applies to

A coupon has no separate start date. To make one go live at a set time, set the date and time beside Publish and click Schedule, as you would for a post (WooCommerce coupon documentation).

Test both. Set a test sale on one product to start tomorrow and check it switches on. Add a coupon to a basket and check the total is what you expect, including delivery.

Be careful with countdown timers. A timer that resets, or a “sale ends tonight” that doesn’t end, is a false urgency claim. The CMA treats misleading countdown timers as unlawful, and it has already taken action against them. If you use a timer, it must match your real end date.

🛠️ Week 3: speed, updates and your host

Back up, then update everything. Update WordPress, WooCommerce, your theme and your plugins this week, after taking a backup, and check the shop afterwards. After that, hold back updates that only add features until the sale is over, because an update that goes wrong on Black Friday could break the checkout on your busiest day.

Security fixes are the exception. Holding back updates for the sale doesn’t mean ignoring security. Patchstack counted 11,334 new vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins and themes in 2025, 42% more than in 2024, and 91% of them were in plugins (Patchstack). On 21 October 2026, PHP, the language WordPress runs on, released emergency updates for two critical flaws that could let attackers run their own code on a web server. PHP’s advice was that “updating is the only safe choice” (PHP security advisory).

• When a plugin you use releases a security fix, apply it straight away, even in sale week. Take a backup first, then check the basket and checkout afterwards.
• Check your PHP version. In WordPress, go to Tools → Site Health → Info → Server. The October fixes are in PHP 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36 and 8.2.35, or later. On most hosting, the host updates PHP, not you, so ask them if your version is older.
• Delete plugins you no longer use, rather than just deactivating them. Fewer plugins means fewer things that can have a flaw.

Check your caching. WooCommerce tells caching plugins not to store the cart, checkout and account pages, because those change for each customer. Some caching set-ups, particularly “cache everything” rules on a CDN, can override that. Add something to your basket in a private browser window and check the basket and checkout update properly.

Talk to your host. Ask whether your hosting plan has limits on traffic or processing that a busy day could hit, and what happens if it does. Shared hosting that’s fine on a normal day can slow down or stop under heavy load.

Test on a phone. Many shoppers buy on their phones. Go through the whole route, from product page to order confirmation, on a mobile.

📧 Week 4: emails, tracking and customer service

Test your order emails. Place a test order and check the confirmation email arrives, from your shop’s address, and doesn’t land in spam. WordPress sends email through the web server by default, and many email providers distrust it. Sending through a proper email account, using SMTP, fixes most of this. I’ll cover it step by step in a post on 30 October.

Tag your campaign links. If you’re sending a sale email or running adverts, add UTM tags to each link, so you can see later which one brought the sales. A post coming on 17 November explains how. If you use GreenOrb Statistics, its campaign report shows visits for each tagged link.

Get your customer information right. Check your delivery times, your Christmas delivery cut-off dates and your returns policy are up to date and easy to find.

🛒 Sale week: test, watch and leave it alone

• Place a real test order a day or two before the sale, ideally a cheap item, then refund it. If your payment provider has a test mode, use it for a full run first.
• Check the scheduled prices switched on at the start of the sale, on a few products.
• Watch stock and orders through the day, and respond to customer emails quickly.
• Change as little as possible. If something needs fixing, fix only that. Security fixes are the exception: apply them, after a backup.
• Check the sale ended on time. Make sure sale prices and coupons stopped when they should.

❓ Frequently asked questions

When is Black Friday 2026?
Friday 27 November 2026. Cyber Monday is Monday 30 November.

Can I schedule a sale in WooCommerce?
Yes. Enter a sale price on the product, click Schedule, and set the start and end dates. WooCommerce switches the price on and off for you.

Can I schedule a WooCommerce coupon?
A coupon has an expiry date, but no separate start date. Set the date and time beside Publish and click Schedule to make it go live later.

Does a “was” price have to be real?
Yes. A reference price should be one you genuinely charged, for a reasonable period, recently. This post explains the general rules; it isn’t legal advice, so check the CMA’s guidance if you’re unsure.

Should I update my plugins before Black Friday?
Yes. Do your routine updates a week or two before, after a backup, and check the shop works. Then hold back updates that can wait until the sale is over. Security fixes are different: apply them as soon as they’re released, even in sale week, after a backup and a quick check of the checkout.

Sources

• WooCommerce, Coupon management: coupon types, limits and scheduling.
• WooCommerce 11.1.2 product and inventory settings, checked in the plugin on 24 October 2026.
• Patchstack, State of WordPress Security in 2026: vulnerability figures for 2025.
• PHP, security advisory and releases of 21 October 2026: PHP 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36 and 8.2.35.
• Competition and Markets Authority, Unfair commercial practices: price transparency (CMA209), 18 November 2025.