Black Friday 2026: 5 Shopper Trends and What to Change in Your Cart
What this year's holiday data says about Black Friday and Cyber Monday shoppers, and the cart settings worth adjusting on a Shopify store before November 27.
This year's holiday data says two things at once. Online spending will set a new record, and the people doing the spending are more careful than last year: they start earlier, many plan to spend less, and most doubt the discounts they are shown. In the same surveys, free shipping ranks as high as the promotion itself. For a Shopify store, that makes a clear offer tied to a cart amount a better lever than a few extra points of discount. Here are the five trends behind that conclusion, each with its source, and what you can still adjust before Black Friday (November 27, 2026) and Cyber Monday (November 30).
The figures below come from the United States, because that is where the public data is. The behaviors travel well. The amounts do not, so read them as orders of magnitude if you sell elsewhere.
A record season with careful shoppers
Adobe forecasts $275.1 billion in US online spending between November 1 and December 31, up 6.7% on 2025. The five days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday should bring in $47.5 billion, with Black Friday at $12.9 billion (up 9.2%) and Cyber Monday at $15.1 billion (up 6.2%). On Shopify alone, merchants sold $14.6 billion over the 2025 Black Friday to Cyber Monday weekend, with an average cart of $114.70.
Demand will be there. The mood is another matter. In a Drive Research survey of 1,405 US adults run in October 2026, 44% of holiday shoppers expect to spend less than last year, against 33% in 2025. Orders will come in, from people who count and compare.
Trend 1: the season starts before Black Friday
In Attentive's survey of 600 US shoppers who plan to buy during the sales, 71% intend to start purchasing before Black Friday and 46% before November even begins. Retailers follow the same calendar: Adobe expects discounts of up to 14% in early November and up to 21% just before Thanksgiving, with a peak of up to 30% during Cyber Week.
What to change. Your offer should be live now, not on the morning of the 27th. That does not mean giving away your best discount two weeks early. A perk tied to a cart amount, such as free shipping from a threshold, gives early shoppers a reason to buy today and leaves your prices intact until the peak.
Trend 2: free shipping weighs as much as the discount
In the Drive Research survey, 73% of shoppers say free shipping matters when they choose where to shop during Cyber Week, just ahead of promotions and sales at 72%. Attentive asked what would make shoppers most likely to buy beyond a discount: free shipping came first (68%), followed by a gift with purchase (42%). In the same survey, four shoppers in five say a discount of 40% or less is enough to make them buy, and one in ten would buy with no discount at all.
Thresholds also change what goes into the cart. Among the shoppers who spent more than planned during the 2025 sales, 27% told Attentive they had added items to reach a free shipping threshold.
What to change. Before you deepen a store-wide discount, set a free shipping threshold a little above your average order value. Our free shipping threshold calculator uses a rule of thumb of 1.2 to 1.5 times the average order: with a $48 average order, that gives a threshold between $58 and $72. The right amount is the one a shopper reaches by adding one more product from your catalog.
A threshold only works if the shopper sees how close they are. That is the job of a cart progress bar such as Yaco Progress Bar: it shows the amount left before the reward, in the cart and in the cart drawer. Across the stores that use it, about three carts in ten that see a tier within reach go on to cross it. That number describes what carts do, not what the bar causes, and our method page gives the current figure with its window and its limits.
Trend 3: shoppers doubt the deals
In the Drive Research survey, 64% of holiday shoppers believe retailers raise prices before Black Friday so that the advertised discounts are not genuine, and 71% think the deals are not as good as they used to be.
What to change. Favor rewards whose value a shopper can check alone. Everyone knows what shipping costs, and a gift is a product with a price in your catalog. State the conditions where the decision is made: the amount, the countries, whether a discount code still applies. If shipping becomes free for everyone during the weekend, replace the free shipping tier with a free gift, otherwise the cart contradicts your own banner. Our article on progress bar setup mistakes covers the other cases where a tier fails to keep its promise.
Trend 4: more than half of the spending happens on a phone
Adobe expects mobile to account for 57.4% of online holiday spending this year, up from 56.4% in 2025. Drive Research finds that 52% of online Cyber Week shoppers prefer to buy on a smartphone, against 37% on a computer.
What to change. On a phone, many themes open a cart drawer when a product is added, and shoppers go to checkout from there without seeing the cart page. Your offer has to be readable in that drawer, in one line, without pushing the checkout button out of view. Test it on a real phone and not only in the browser's responsive preview. If you are unsure how your theme handles the drawer, the list of compatible Shopify themes explains it.
Trend 5: AI assistants send shoppers who have already compared
Adobe expects AI traffic to US retail sites to rise 130% year over year this season. In Shopify's 2026 Global Holiday Retail Report, 65% of shoppers say they will use AI for at least one shopping task, and only a third would trust an AI agent to buy on their behalf. The assistant helps them choose, and they still place the order on your store.
What to change. An assistant reads text, not banners. Write your offer in full sentences on the product page, in your shipping policy and in the cart: the threshold, the reward, the countries and the end date. A shopper who arrives from an assistant checks that what they were told is true. On stores that use Yaco, the bar also publishes a text summary of the live offers for screen readers and AI assistants, with the thresholds, the gifts and the end dates.
What to do in the two weeks left
| When | What to do |
|---|---|
| This week | Read your average order value over the last 30 days in Shopify analytics. Set the free shipping threshold, and choose a gift for a second tier if your margin allows it. |
| By November 20 | Put the offer live in the cart and the cart drawer, and check it on a phone. Place a real test order with your Black Friday discount codes, because in Shopify discounts do not combine automatically. |
| On November 26 | If shipping becomes free for everyone, switch the first tier to a gift. Check that the gift is in stock. |
| After December 1 | Compare your average order value and the share of orders above the threshold with last year's sales weekend, not with October. |
With Yaco Progress Bar, setting up a free shipping threshold takes a few minutes. The free plan gives you the whole bar with one active tier, which is enough for a free shipping threshold; the Premium plan at $8.90/month unlocks every tier, with a 14-day free trial. The demo shows the bar at work on a cart, and our Black Friday setup guide goes through the installation step by step.
What a progress bar will not do
A bar brings no visitors: it works on the carts you already have. It does not repair a threshold picked at random either. Set too low, the threshold gives shipping away on orders you would have had anyway. Set too high, shoppers ignore it. And it does not replace the offer: if the reward is not worth one more product, no display will make it so.
Sources
- Adobe, "U.S. Holiday Shopping Season to Hit Record $275.1 Billion Online", September 28, 2026. Forecast based on more than 1 trillion visits to US retail sites.
- Drive Research, "Holiday Shopping Statistics 2026", October 28, 2026. Survey of 1,405 US adults, run from October 6 to 9, 2026.
- Attentive, "The Attentive Consumer Pulse: Meet the 2026 BFCM Shopper". Survey of 600 US adults who plan to shop the sales and already receive emails or texts from brands, run on June 16 and 17, 2026.
- Shopify, "Welcome to the first holiday season of the agentic era", October 6, 2026, and the Black Friday Cyber Monday 2025 results published on December 2, 2025.