A Black Friday checklist for bots and fake orders on Shopify

Black Friday is November 27. Ad clicks usually cost more in November because everyone is bidding for the same shoppers. You’ll also have more orders to pack, so a bad one is easier to miss.

This checklist covers what to do each week until then.

This week: check your traffic

Open your Shopify reports and look for:

• Lots of visits from countries you don’t ship to
• Hundreds of visits a day with no orders from them
• Visits that last a second or two
• Abandoned carts from far-away countries

Any of these can mean bots, but your reports can’t confirm it. Add Skyfense to your store to see which visits were real. It’s free. New stores start in Watch only, which records bots and blocks no one, so your shoppers won’t notice it.

By November 15: block countries and clean up

Block the countries you don’t sell to. You can do this on the free plan, and it works right away, even in Watch only. It blocks real people there too, so leave open anywhere you ship.

Remove apps you no longer use. October’s fake checkout attacks ran through apps that stores already had installed.

Test your checkout. In a private window, place a test order from a product page and another from the cart. On the payment step, the address bar should show your store or Shopify.

If you get card testing, this is the time to move to Pro. Card testing is when thieves run stolen cards through your checkout to see which ones work, and you pay the fees. On Pro, Skyfense emails you when attempts jump. The alert compares today with the last seven days, so get it running at least a week before Black Friday.

By November 22: check your ads and turn on blocking

Check your ad visitors before you raise your budget. Enter what you usually pay per click, and Skyfense shows how many ad visitors from the last seven days were real and roughly what the fake ones cost. This is on the free plan. If most were real and still didn’t buy, look at your ad and your audience instead.

Then go through what Skyfense flagged. If it looks right, turn on blocking. Essential blocks only clear bots. Balanced also checks risky visits. You can undo a change in one click.

Do this a few days before Black Friday so you can check that real shoppers are getting through.

Black Friday week: agree who checks orders

Decide who checks orders before they ship, and when. If you ship a fake order, you can lose the product and the money. Look closer at:

• Lots of small orders, one after another
• Many failed payments with different cards
• Orders you have a bad feeling about

Shopify marks some orders as high risk but leaves the decision to you. On the Business plan, Skyfense also shows whether each order came from a real shopper or a suspicious visit.

Straight talk

Skyfense won’t catch every bot. It can’t stop someone at the payment step, and it can’t see card testers who go straight to Shopify’s checkout without visiting your store pages. Fake-click costs are estimates, and the ad networks decide on any refund. Skyfense shows you which orders look risky, and you decide what to do with them.

Add Skyfense to Shopify and leave it in Watch only while you work through this list.