Small Business Saturday 2026: A Three-Week Plan for Small Online Stores

Small Business Saturday 2026 is Saturday 28 November, the day after Black Friday and two days before Cyber Monday. American Express created it in 2010 to send holiday shoppers to independent businesses. It is now the one day of the year’s biggest shopping weekend when people go looking for small brands on purpose. Online-only stores can take part: American Express’s terms for its free Shop Small marketing materials ask for a US business location that is “physical (or online)”.

This guide is for a small online store, on Shopify or anything else, that wants to use the day without giving away its margin. The short version:

1. Decide your offer this week. Make it something a big retailer cannot copy, not a deeper discount.
2. Tell Google you are a small business. A free setting in Merchant Center or Business Profile can put a “small business” label on your listings in US Search and Maps.
3. Build and test everything by 22 November, then change nothing on the live store until December.
4. Sell the fact that you are small. On this one day, that is what the shopper came for.

When is Small Business Saturday 2026?

Small Business Saturday is always the Saturday after US Thanksgiving, so it falls between 24 and 30 November. In 2026 that is 28 November, in the middle of the long weekend most stores call Cyber Week:

Next year it falls on 27 November 2027. The UK runs its own Small Business Saturday on the first Saturday of December, which is 5 December 2026. It is a separate campaign, also supported by American Express.

What is Small Business Saturday, and how big is it?

American Express launched Small Business Saturday on 27 November 2010, with the National Trust for Historic Preservation and Boston’s Roslindale Village Main Street among its first partners. The name is a registered trademark of American Express, and the day is the centre of what the company calls its Shop Small movement. Wikipedia has the history.

Two numbers frame the day, and both need reading carefully.

• About $18 billion. American Express’s survey estimated that shoppers spent around $18 billion at US small businesses on Small Business Saturday 2025, down from around $22 billion in 2024. Forbes covered the drop and put it down to high prices and low consumer confidence. These are estimates of what people say they spent, not sales receipts.
• $14.6 billion. Shopify merchants sold $14.6 billion across the whole 2025 Black Friday to Cyber Monday weekend, up 27% on the year before, with 32% of orders placed through Shop Pay. Shopify published the figures on 2 December 2025.

Read together, they say Saturday is not a separate pot of money. It is a reason for a shopper to choose you inside a weekend that is already enormous, and growing online. The intent is real: American Express’s 2025 Shop Small Impact Study, a survey of 1,004 US adults and 500 small business owners, found that 86% of consumers intended to shop at local small businesses (MR Magazine’s summary). The question for a small store is how to be the small business they find.

Can an online-only business take part?

Yes. You do not have to register: Small Business Saturday is a shopping day, not a programme with a sign-up. Three steps make it work harder for an online store, and two of them are free settings most small stores have never switched on.

Get the free Shop Small marketing materials

American Express offers downloadable materials for the day, including sample social media posts, email templates, digital banners and signage. Its terms of use make online businesses eligible. You need at least one business location in the US or its territories, “physical (or online)”, no more than 25 locations, and you cannot be part of a large franchise brand. Businesses that accept American Express cards may qualify for more, such as a listing on its Shop Small map or online directory. Check its Shop Small page for this year’s details.

Switch on Google’s “small business” label

Google lets US merchants mark themselves as a small business. The label then appears on their listings in Search and on Maps. To qualify you must not be a franchise and must have annual revenue under $10 million, according to Google’s help page. You can set it in three places:

• Merchant Center: Settings, then Business info, then Details. Switch on the “small business” attribute.
• Business Profile: Edit profile, then More.
• Shopify: stores that use the Google & YouTube app can add it there too.

Google may already have opted you in, based on signals such as your prices and web traffic. It takes two minutes to check, and it is the one Small Business Saturday step that keeps working after the day ends.

Tell your own customers first

For an online store, the people most likely to buy on Saturday are the ones who already know you: your email list, your followers and your past customers. The offer below should reach them before it reaches anyone else.

If your business is outside the US but sells to US customers, the American Express materials and Google’s label are not open to you, because both need a US business. Your offer and your own channels still are.

What should a small store offer on Small Business Saturday?

Adobe expects discounts to deepen through the season, from about 14% off in early November to around 30% off once Cyber Week arrives, the deepest of the year (Adobe’s holiday forecast). A small store that answers with 30% off is competing with the biggest retailers on the one thing they are built to win. It does that on the one day shoppers came looking for something else.

Pick one of these instead. Each can be built with Shopify’s standard discount settings.

If you do run a percentage discount, set it up once and check its combination settings. Shopify lets each discount stack, or not, with other product, order and shipping discounts. A code that stacks with an automatic discount by accident can turn a 15% offer into a 35% one on your best-selling product.

A three-week plan, from now to Cyber Monday

This week, to 15 November: decide

• Choose one offer from the table, and work out your margin after the offer, payment fees and shipping. If the number is thin, pick a different offer, not a smaller one.
• Check stock on the products you will feature, and how long a reorder would take.
• Switch on the small business label in Merchant Center or Business Profile.
• Download the Shop Small materials and choose the two or three you will actually use.
• Publish your holiday shipping cut-off dates, meaning the last day to order for delivery before 25 December, taken from your carriers’ own deadlines.

Next week, 16 to 22 November: build and test

• Build the discount in Shopify with an end date, and test how it combines with any others.
• Make a Small Business Saturday collection: a gift edit of the products you are featuring, with a short paragraph about who you are. Publish it now rather than on the day, so search engines have time to find it. Keep the year out of the URL so the same page can come back in 2027.
• Write the emails: early access on Thursday, Small Business Saturday on Saturday morning, a last call on Sunday evening, and Cyber Monday if you run one.
• Place a real test order on a phone, with the discount applied, once through Shop Pay and once with another payment method. Then refund both.
• Check your mobile speed on the home page and your three best-selling product pages, and remove any app you no longer use. Our Core Web Vitals audit guide shows how.

Final week, 23 to 27 November: freeze and warm up

• Freeze the live store. No theme changes, no new apps, and no app updates you can postpone. A change that breaks checkout on the Wednesday before costs you the whole weekend.
• Send early access to your list on Thursday or Friday.
• Prepare replies for the questions you will get: delivery dates, returns, gift receipts and gift wrapping.

The weekend, 28 to 30 November: sell

• Saturday: send the email in the morning in your customers’ time zone, post your story using the Shop Small materials, and watch stock on the featured products.
• Sunday: send the last call you planned, or extend the offer into Cyber Monday. Decide which before the weekend, not during it.
• Monday: Cyber Monday. If you are running one offer all weekend, say so plainly rather than inventing a new one.

Make “small” the offer, including for AI search

People shop on Small Business Saturday for the business, not the price. So the change that matters most is often a matter of words, not code.

• Say who you are on the page. Your About page and footer should say, in plain sentences, where you are, who makes the products and how many people run the business. “A two-person studio in Austin that pours every candle by hand” does more on this day than any banner.
• Put specifics on product pages: materials, where it is made, sizes and care. Specifics answer the questions shoppers ask, and they are what search engines and AI assistants can quote.
• Give the day its own page. That is the collection from week two. A page whose title and first paragraph say “Small Business Saturday gifts from” your brand matches what people search for that week.

AI assistants matter more each holiday season. Adobe forecasts that traffic to US retail sites from AI services will rise 130% this holiday season. When someone asks ChatGPT or Google’s AI Mode for “small business gift ideas”, the assistant can only recommend stores it can read and understand. Our piece on agentic commerce covers the product-data side of that.

What to check on the store before the weekend

A busy weekend is the wrong time to find a broken store. These are the four things we check first on any store before a sale:

• Mobile speed, especially pages slowed by apps that are installed but no longer used.
• Discounts that stack in ways nobody intended.
• Stock, including variants that show as available when they are not.
• Tracking pixels that have stopped firing, which leaves the weekend’s ad spend unmeasured.

Our Shopify Black Friday checklist goes through each of these, with where to find the setting in Shopify.

If you would rather someone else checked, a $299 focused audit covers one area (speed, technical SEO or conversion) and ends with a written fix list. Audits take about five business days, so start this week if you want the fixes in before the 22 November freeze. Or book a free 30-minute call and we will tell you which of these is worth doing in the time left. Sometimes the answer is that you are already ready.

FAQs

When is Small Business Saturday 2026?

Small Business Saturday 2026 is on Saturday 28 November. It always falls on the Saturday after US Thanksgiving, between Black Friday (27 November 2026) and Cyber Monday (30 November 2026). In 2027 it is on 27 November.

Can online-only businesses take part in Small Business Saturday?

Yes. American Express’s terms for its Shop Small marketing materials accept a US business location that is “physical (or online)”. An online store can use the free materials, promote the day to its own customers and run a Small Business Saturday offer. There is no registration to take part.

Do I need to accept American Express cards to take part?

Not to use the free marketing materials or to run your own offer. Businesses that accept American Express cards may qualify for extra Shop Small benefits, such as a listing on its Shop Small map or online directory. American Express publishes this year’s criteria on its Shop Small page.

Should a small business offer a discount on Small Business Saturday?

It does not have to. Adobe forecasts that discounts will peak at around 30% off during Cyber Week, and a small store rarely wins on price. A gift with purchase, a gift card bonus, early access for subscribers or free local pickup usually protects margin better, and gives shoppers a reason to buy that only you can offer.

What is the difference between Black Friday and Small Business Saturday?

Black Friday (27 November 2026) is the day of the deepest discounts, and big retailers dominate it. Small Business Saturday is the next day. American Express created it in 2010 to send shoppers to independent and local businesses, so shoppers that day are choosing who to buy from, not only what price to pay.

How do I get the “small business” label on Google?

In Google Merchant Center, go to Settings, then Business info, then Details, and switch on the “small business” attribute. In Google Business Profile, choose Edit profile, then More. Google requires that you are not a franchise and have annual revenue under $10 million, and the label is for US merchants. Shopify stores can also add it through the Google & YouTube app.

Is there a Small Business Saturday outside the US?

The UK has its own Small Business Saturday on the first Saturday of December, which is 5 December 2026. It is a separate campaign, also supported by American Express.