BFCM pricing that protects your margin

Black Friday is 27 November 2026. The question that decides whether it is a good week or an expensive one is not how much do I discount — it is who gets the discount, and what do they have to do to get it.

Why sitewide percentage off is the expensive default

It is the default because it takes ten seconds to decide, and it is expensive for one reason: it gives exactly the same discount to the customer who was already checking out as to the one who needed persuading. On Black Friday, when your traffic is at its most intentional all year, a meaningful share of the discount is spent on orders you had already won.

That does not make it wrong. It makes it the option you should have to justify, rather than the one you fall into.

The arithmetic, once

An item costs you £20 and sells for £50. Gross margin £30, or 60%.

At 20% off, it sells for £40 and your margin is £20 — you lost a third of the margin to shave a fifth off the price. To make the same total margin you now need 1.5× the orders.

At 40% off, it sells for £30 and your margin is £10. You need three times the orders to stand still, before payment fees and any shipping you are absorbing.

This is the whole game. Discount depth eats margin far faster than it eats price, because it comes out of the margin rather than the price. Run this for your real costs on your real bestseller before you pick a number, and you will pick a smaller one.

Structures that ask for something in return

Every alternative below shares one property: the shopper does something to earn the discount, so you are not funding the orders you already had.

Spend thresholds

“Free shipping over £50” or “£10 off over £75”. Simple, and it raises basket size directly. Set the threshold just above your current average order value — far enough to require an extra item, close enough to be reachable. A threshold below your average is a discount on everything with extra steps.

Quantity breaks

A lower per-unit price at higher quantities: 1 at £50, 3 at £45 each, 6 at £40 each. The discount only applies when the shopper buys more, so it is self-funding in a way a sitewide percentage never is — and it works on the part of your catalogue people restock.

It fits consumables, refills, multipacks and anything with a repeat cycle. It does nothing for one-per-household purchases, where nobody wants a second one at any price. If that is your catalogue, skip it.

Several apps do this, ours included — TierUp is free up to 10 rules — and there are routes that need no app at all. Whichever you use, set it up in October and test it; a pricing mechanism first run during the sale is a pricing mechanism first debugged during the sale.

Bundles

Discount the set, not the item. Margin on the bundle can be managed by what you put in it — pairing a high-margin accessory with a thin-margin hero product protects the blended number. Better for cross-sell than quantity breaks; more work to decide.

Gift with purchase

Often the cheapest structure available, because the cost is your cost of the gift, not its retail value. A £6 item perceived as worth £20 buys more goodwill than £20 off, and it clears slow stock.

Protect the things a sale quietly damages

Stacking

Your sale price, a welcome code, a loyalty discount and free shipping are four decisions each made alone. Together they can put a line below cost. Decide explicitly what may combine with what, configure it that way, then push a worst-case basket through checkout and look at the total.

Note that on Shopify plans other than Plus, only one product discount applies per line item — a platform rule, not an app one. Useful: it caps part of the damage automatically. Also worth knowing before you build a plan that assumes two product discounts will both land.

The customers you train

A deep sale every November teaches your best customers to buy only in November. The cost does not appear in the Black Friday report; it appears in a quiet October, next year and the year after. Structures that reward buying more rather than buying cheaper do less of this.

Shipping

Free shipping absorbed on a discounted order is a second discount nobody counted. Include it in the margin arithmetic above, not as a marketing line.

A defensible plan

Pick a small number of hero products for a genuinely attention-worthy discount — enough to be a reason to visit. Do not discount the whole catalogue at that depth.

Put a structure on the rest: a spend threshold, quantity breaks on consumables, or a gift over a certain value. Everything asks for something.

Set the depth from the arithmetic, not the competition. Their costs are not yours and their sale might be a mistake.

Test the whole thing in October, including a real checkout with the discount applied, and check accelerated checkout and analytics still work on a discounted order.

Measure margin after discounts and shipping, plus how many November buyers return in February. Revenue always looks good on Black Friday; those two numbers tell you whether it was worth it.