Flash sales

Flash sales can drive a high volume of sales in a short period of time, but they can require preparation when you're expecting a large increase in checkouts. In most cases, special preparations are recommended only when you're running a flash sale and you expect tens of thousands of customers to start a checkout within a few minutes.

For example, Shadi usually gets 10,000 visitors and 100 orders per day. They're running a flash sale and expect 50,000 visitors and 1000 orders over a period of 24 hours. This sale doesn't require any special preparation. Later, Shadi's business is featured on a major network, and they set up a flash sale to take advantage of the feature. They expect a significant increase in demand, with tens of thousands of customers competing for inventory, with stock selling out in minutes each time it's restocked. That's a substantial increase, and requires some preparation to make sure the flash sale goes smoothly.

Plan in advance

If you determine that your flash sale will generate enough orders that you need to prepare in advance, then start planning as soon as possible. When appropriate, start your preparations weeks in advance to make sure you have time.

Prepare preview products

If you want to provide a preview of the products you're offering during your flash sale, then create unique preview products separate from the ones that you'll actually be offering for sale when the event begins. When you publish products to your online store with inventory available, customers are able to complete a checkout with those products. While some theme modifications can hide Add to cart actions, these shouldn't be relied on to stop customers from purchasing.

Review product information for international sales

If you sell internationally and collect duty and import taxes, then consider deactivating the collection of duty and import taxes until your sale is complete. If you decide to collect duty and import taxes during your sale, then review your sale products to verify that they have the following information:

Ensuring that you have these fields filled out on your sale products helps to estimate duties and import tax costs. If your product doesn't have an HS code or a product type, then duties and import tax aren't calculated for that product.

Create a branded password page

If a technical issue impacts your ability to serve customers during your flash sale, then you can temporarily lock your online store with a password page. This prevents new visitors from creating a new checkout in your store, and customers already in the process of checking out can complete their purchase.

Create a theme with event-specific collections and product pages

Create a collection specifically for your sale items and, if possible, a theme that highlights and simplifies your product pages. Showing streamlined collections and product pages during the sale provides an easier, faster checkout experience for your customers. In particular, consider deactivating the following settings:

Collection filtering menus
Recommended products
Social network feeds
Slideshow or carousel views
Popups or upsell functions

Deactivate fulfillment locations

If you have more than 1 fulfillment location active, then deactivate all locations, except for the one that inventory is assigned to for the sale. When you have more than one active inventory location during a flash sale, it can cause your online store to respond slowly, or create errors that prevent your customers from completing checkout.

Capture payments manually

If you capture payments automatically, then consider changing your settings to capture payments manually for the duration of your flash sale. Capturing payments manually avoids potentially high credit card fees in the event of overselling or canceled orders, and allows you to review and verify that orders are legitimate before the payment is completed and the fulfillment process starts.

Review third-party functions

For large flash sales, make sure that your third-party integrations can handle the increase in traffic to your store.

Apps

If you include third-party apps in your checkout process, then contact the developers with an estimate of the volume of orders you expect and the duration of your sale. They can provide information on what their app can handle. If they're not confident that the app can support the amount of checkouts that you expect, then consider deactivating the app for the duration of your sale.

Shipping apps

Shipping apps typically perform poorly during extremely high volume events. Because a checkout can't be completed if shipping rates aren't provided, consider deactivating shipping apps and carrier-calculated rates for the duration of your sale. Instead, set up custom flat rates directly in your Shopify admin. For example, if you have a shipping app installed in your Shopify admin that provides calculated shipping rates to your customers, then consider deactivating the app and using custom flat rates instead. Using custom flat rates lets your customers complete the checkout without waiting for shipping rates to be calculated.

Custom apps

If you have custom apps installed on your store, then you should review them to make sure that they're as efficient as possible and that the API call rate is sufficient. If you aren't sure that an app can handle the volume you're expecting, then consider deactivating it for the duration of your event.

Payment providers

If you don't use Shopify Payments, then contact your payment provider to ensure they can support the volume of sales you expect. Consider setting up a second payment provider in case your primary provider isn't able to keep pace with your orders. Make sure to test your providers beforehand to ensure there aren't any problems for your customers at checkout.

External payment providers

An external payment provider is a service that directs customers to complete their payment outside of Shopify, and includes payment options that allow paying later or partial payments. These payment options can result in overselling of merchandise, because of the time needed to transmit the checkout to a third-party service and back again with completed payment information. If you offer an external payment option, then consider deactivating it for the duration of your sale.