PathThe alert, before your store opens
Alert screenshot: failed step, time, store. You get it before the site opens.
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Black Friday 2026 barometer
Before Black Friday, how many online shops have a broken buying page?
On 8 November 2026 we read 613 online shops, without buying or sending anything. 2.0% of those with at least one readable buying page have a confirmed fault. This is a floor: faults that need a click cannot be seen this way.
- The broken step, in plain words: the click on “Pay” goes nowhere.
- The screenshot, as the visitor saw the page.
- The journey’s steps, green up to the one that breaks.
Screenshot of the Pathly app, with demo data.
The result
Out of 555 shops with at least one readable buying page, 11 have a confirmed fault, or 2.0% (95% confidence interval: 1.1% to 3.5%). In detail: a dead link to a product page for 10 shops, to the cart for 2, a form not displayed for 1. One shop can have two. Counting dead menu links too, 20 shops out of 613 are affected, or 3.3%. No server error was confirmed.
What this figure does not say
This figure is a minimum. We only read pages. No product was added to a cart and no form was sent. A broken add-to-cart button or a declined payment is therefore not visible here. The checkout page was read on only 16.0% of shops, because robots.txt usually forbids it (1.7% on Shopify). It was read with an empty cart. A shop that was completely down during the visit could not be recognised as a shop, and sites that block robots count as not measured, never as broken.
The method
We drew 10,156 domains at random from the public Tranco list (list 94P72) and kept the 613 shops recognised as WooCommerce, Shopify, PrestaShop or Magento. GET requests only, on the home page, a product page, the cart, the checkout and at most two menu links. robots.txt is respected, with at most 10 requests per site and one request per second, from a robot that states its name. Each fault was read again at least once, five minutes or more apart. Faults that did not happen again, or could not be read again, are not counted. This concerns at most 5 shops. No site is named and no screenshot is kept. Raw results were deleted after the calculation.
By CMS and by country: read with care
These groups are small and their intervals overlap. They do not show that one CMS or country is better than another, and we draw no ranking from them. The country is the domain extension, not the company’s headquarters. The .fr, .de, .es, .it and .uk domains were drawn additionally to have enough shops, and cannot be compared with the overall figure.
Check your shop before 27 November
The free audit reads your site in 30 seconds. To go further, Pathly watches what this barometer cannot see. A Flow replays the buying journey in a real browser, without paying, and alerts you with a screenshot of the step that breaks. A Ping checks that the site responds. Sign-up is free, with no card.
Reusing these figures
These figures can be reused freely, with the measurement date, the sample size and a link to this page. Please keep the caveat that goes with them: this is a reading of pages, not a purchase test.
Cite this figure
Copy as is: Pathly, “Black Friday barometer”, measured on 8 November 2026 across 613 shops (Tranco list 94P72): 2.0% with a confirmed fault outside the menu (95% interval: 1.1% to 3.5%). https://pathlyhq.com/en/black-friday-barometer
The figures
| Measure | Shops read | Affected | Share (95% interval) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Confirmed fault, outside the menu | 555 | 11 | 2.0% (1.1% to 3.5%) |
| Confirmed fault, menu included | 613 | 20 | 3.3% (2.1% to 5.0%) |
| Dead link to a product page | 488 | 10 | 2.0% (1.1% to 3.7%) |
| Dead link to the cart | 429 | 2 | 0.5% (0.1% to 1.7%) |
| Checkout page in error (too few readings to conclude) | 98 | 0 | 0.0% (0.0% to 3.8%) |
| Dead link in the menu | 402 | 9 | 2.2% (1.2% to 4.2%) |
| CMS : Shopify | 325 | 5 | 1.5% (0.7% to 3.6%) |
| CMS : WooCommerce | 128 | 4 | 3.1% (1.2% to 7.8%) |
| CMS : PrestaShop | 61 | 0 | 0.0% (0.0% to 5.9%) |
| CMS : Magento | 41 | 2 | 4.9% (1.3% to 16.1%) |
| Domain .fr | 68 | 1 | 1.5% (0.3% to 7.9%) |
| Domain .de | 65 | 1 | 1.5% (0.3% to 8.2%) |
| Domain .es | 83 | 1 | 1.2% (0.2% to 6.5%) |
| Domain .it | 65 | 3 | 4.6% (1.6% to 12.7%) |
| Domain .uk | 57 | 2 | 3.5% (1.0% to 11.9%) |
Product proof
What you show the client
The invoice attachment
First page of the monthly PDF report, to attach to the maintenance invoice. Included in every plan, under your brand on Business.
Nothing to install on the client site
No admin access, no plugin, no FTP. You record the checkout as a visitor. Data in the European Union. One measurement origin.
Is your shop affected?
Run the free audit, no sign-up needed, then create a Flow if you want to monitor the buying journey.
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