Before the session, I wrote that many ecommerce sites stop changing a few weeks before Black Friday, while the orders keep coming. On 5 November, my colleague Sophie Jonsson and I followed one Black Friday order through Weather Warriors, our demo store, and I changed three settings behind it live: a delivery option at checkout, a missed-scan alert in tracking and the return window for holiday orders. None of them needed a developer or a release.
Watch Solved Episode 6 on demand
One Black Friday order, from checkout to return, with every change made live in nShift. Watch the full session.
Key takeaways in one glance
- Peak on the nShift platform lasted five weeks in 2025, and the busiest day of the season was Cyber Monday.
- I removed next-day delivery in nShift Checkout, and the next shopper no longer saw it.
- nShift Track alerts the shopper and customer service when a parcel stalls at a hub, counting only the days your carriers deliver.
- A rule in the nShift Returns Rule engine gave orders placed between 16 November and 31 December a 60-day return window on one market.
- When two rules match the same order, the one higher in the list wins.
What peak looked like on the platform
Sophie opened with last year's peak on the nShift platform, measured against an ordinary week in early November. Black Week shipped 1.74 times as much as that week: a retailer that normally sends 1,000 parcels a week sent 1,740, with the same warehouse, team and carriers. The week before was already 25% up, and volume stayed above normal until 21 December. Peak lasted five weeks.
Shipments each week on the nShift platform in 2025, against an average early-November week.
Black Week Saturday shipped four times an ordinary Saturday, Sunday 2.8 times an ordinary Sunday, and Cyber Monday 8% more than Black Friday. Many carriers don't scan at weekends, so a parcel can be moving and still look stuck, which is why the tracking alert I set up later skips weekends.
The margin on each of those orders starts shrinking on order day, when the discount lands. Dispatch, where-is-my-order questions, returns and refunds, and the carrier invoice follow, most of them after the Black Friday sales are reported.
Where a Black Friday order loses margin, from order day to the carrier invoice.
On returns, 85.6% of the 1,000 UK shoppers IMRG surveyed for nShift said the returns policy matters when they decide to buy online. 47.6% think a return charge is fair for customers who return often, and only 14.8% on sale or discounted items, which is most of a Black Friday basket.
Sam's order, from checkout to return
Sophie's customer for the session was Sam. On Black Friday he buys a raincoat at 30% off with free delivery. One carrier is running late that week, but Sam never sees it at checkout. He checks the tracking page all weekend, the raincoat arrives too small, he sends it back for free, and in December he orders the right size.
"So keep one question in mind as we go. After all of that, how much margin is left on Sam's raincoat?"
Weather Warriors, the nShift demo store we used for the session.
I placed Sam's order. The product page shows delivery estimates and costs before the raincoat goes in the cart. At checkout, Sam can choose standard, express or next-day home delivery, or collect in a Weather Warriors store or at a UPS or Evri parcel shop. The demo store also shows the rules behind the checkout: free shipping over €90 was active, member-only prices weren't, and parcel shops drop off the list when a cart weighs more than 15 kg. Every one of those rules is a setting your team owns. Sam chose next-day delivery.
The order went to the Weather Warriors warehouse system, which got a shipping label back from nShift Delivery. Once the carrier collected the parcel, Sam had a tracking page in the Weather Warriors brand and an email at each status change.
For the return, Sam picked his order on the returns page, chose bad fit as the reason and noted the condition, so the warehouse knew what was coming back. The return options, a store or a UPS or Evri parcel shop, follow rules on parcel size and address, and his refund went back to his original payment method.
The Weather Warriors returns flow: reason and condition, then the return method. Demo data.
The three settings behind Sam's order
1. Remove a delivery option when a carrier can't keep up
When the carrier behind next-day delivery is overloaded, take its option out of the checkout. In nShift Checkout, I removed next-day delivery from the configuration and saved, and when I refreshed the checkout, the next shopper saw standard and express only. Fewer shoppers pick a promise the carrier can't keep, and fewer late-parcel questions reach customer service. Adding the option back works the same way.
The checkout after next-day delivery was removed. Demo data.
2. Alert the right people when a parcel stalls
In nShift Track, I set up an advanced notification for one situation: a parcel arrives at a terminal or hub and isn't out for delivery within two days. Track then emails Sam that the delay is being chased, and emails the customer service help desk so a ticket opens. Saturday and Sunday are switched off as active days, so a parcel that reaches the hub on a Friday triggers the alert on Wednesday.
Sam hears from you before he thinks to call, your team chases the carrier with the ticket already open, and the weekend gap doesn't trigger false alarms. Sophie closed on exactly that:
"Over the weekend, his parcel didn't get scanned on the Sunday. That happens all the time, so no one panicked. No alert went out, and nobody had to chase it."
The missed-scan trigger, counted on weekdays only. Demo data.
3. Give holiday orders a longer return window
A gift bought on Black Friday may not be unwrapped until Christmas Day, so a 14-day return window can close before it's opened. In the nShift Returns Rule engine, I created a rule called Gift for one market and the returns flow: orders created between 16 November and 31 December get a 60-day return period. Every other order keeps the standard 14 days.
The Gift rule in the Returns Rule engine. Demo data.
Two more peak settings, a Black Week delivery offer that ends on its own and free returns above an order value, are covered in my pre-session post.
Your questions, answered
How do you make sure customers enter an accurate address at checkout?
Weather Warriors uses address capture and verification from Loqate, an nShift partner. Shoppers pick their address from type-ahead suggestions, and the address is checked before the order goes through.
How is the AI-predicted delivery time at checkout calculated, and won't it mislead shoppers during peak?
nShift ETA, the AI prediction you saw in the Weather Warriors checkout, is in late-stage testing. It predicts a delivery window from nShift's own delivery history, billions of past shipments across more than 1,000 carriers, so a peak-week estimate draws on how earlier peak seasons actually went. It fills the gap where the carrier doesn't provide an estimate, and the checkout labels it as a predicted delivery time.
Can a rule apply to one market only?
Yes. Each Rule engine rule applies to the markets you select, from one to all of them.
What happens if two rules match the same order?
Rules are checked from the top of the list down. If two matching rules set the same field, the rule at the top wins.
Does any of this need a developer or a change to our site?
No. Everything in the session was a setting in nShift, so you can make these changes during a code freeze.
Can we use our own customer groups in a rule?
Yes. Customer groups sent with your orders can be added to your account as rule conditions, for example to give a VIP group 30 days to return instead of 14.
If you only do one thing from this session
List the delivery and returns changes you expect to need between now and January, and next to each one, who can make it today. Anything that needs a release can't change during your freeze, so start with those.
For the peak data week by week and market by market, see our Black Friday 2026 hub.
Watch the full session on demand: Solved Episode 6: Peak with no code. The Weather Warriors store is open at demo.nshift.com for your own Black Friday order.
