Boxing Day Ecommerce: Turn Boxing Week into Post-Holiday Sales (2025)

Once the wrapping paper settles, Boxing Day ecommerce kicks off a second surge: a weeklong stream of post-holiday sales driven by self-gifting, gift-card redemptions, and end-of-season markdowns. 

Smart retailers treat Boxing Week as the bridge between holiday demand and new-year momentum. Ahead, we'll show you exactly how to capture that energy, turning leftover inventory and high intent into lasting profit with a Boxing Day ecommerce playbook you can put into action.

What is Boxing Day?

Celebrated on December 26, Boxing Day is a public or bank holiday widely celebrated in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and other commonwealth countries. 

The Oxford English Dictionary points to the origins of the holiday coming from Britain in the 1830s as "the first weekday after Christmas day, observed as a holiday on which postmen, errand boys, and servants of various kinds expect to receive a Christmas box.” It was also a day when servants and families celebrated their Christmas together.

But Boxing Day isn’t the only designation for December 26. Some people know it as the religious holiday of St. Stephen’s Day. In Ireland, it is sometimes called Wren Day, which used to involve killing a small bird, tying it to a pole, taking it along while singing the “Wren Song” (a practice that has largely fallen out of favor these days). South Africa named it “Goodwill Day” in the mid-1990s, while other countries, like the Netherlands and Poland, simply call it “Second Christmas Day.”

Today, it marks the start of Boxing Week, a stretch of post-holiday sales and inventory clearance that follows the Christmas rush.

You can find Boxing Day on the United Kingdom’s official bank holiday schedule and Canada’s public holiday list. Because Boxing Day is a recognized public holiday in many markets, ecommerce retailers must often plan for temporary warehouse closures, shipping pauses, and limited customer support availability. Carriers often operate on reduced hours, and some couriers do not collect or deliver on December 26.

For stores serving international customers, accounting for regional downtimes helps maintain transparency and prevent post-purchase friction during the Boxing Day ecommerce rush. For example, you might consider adding a Boxing Day message to your checkout flow or accounting for potential delays in your fulfillment estimates around the end of December.

Boxing Day vs. Black Friday and Cyber Monday 

For most retailers, Black Friday and Cyber Monday mark the peak of the holiday shopping season, pushing shoppers to buy gifts before Christmas. Boxing Day ecommerce, in contrast, captures the after-holiday mindset. This period includes shoppers rewarding themselves after the busy holiday season, returning and exchanging gifts, and redeeming gift cards and subscriptions.

For many businesses, it can be beneficial to pivot from urgency to value. Rather than the "beat-the-clock" campaigns that are effective in the weeks leading up to the holidays, focus on marketing that sustains engagement as you head into Q1. Understanding this shift prepares businesses to plan Boxing Week campaigns that extend their revenue curve rather than letting it crash after Christmas. 

Here’s how those tonal sales shifts play out.

Consumer intent shift

After Christmas, the motivation behind a click or cart changes. Where Black Friday and Cyber Monday traffic revolves around gifting, Boxing Day campaigns tend to do better when they focus on shoppers' post-holiday priorities: self-gifting, gift card redemption, and returns.

In Canada, Retail Insider found that 36% of holiday gift shoppers planned to shop Boxing Day sales in 2024, well below the 50% who shopped Black Friday. But while participation may be smaller, it can be of higher value. Each return or redemption becomes a new sales opportunity: The shopper is already reengaged and may be looking for add-ons or upgrades. Reframing post-holiday marketing from “gifts for them” to “a treat for you” sustains conversions long after shipping deadlines pass.

Timing and geography

Weeklong Boxing Week campaigns tend to outperform one-day sales, because holidays and reopenings are staggered across markets. For example, in the UK, The Guardian reported that in-person shopping on Boxing Day has seen slower growth than online shopping in recent years, especially as retailers moved discounts earlier and more purchases shifted online.

Running campaigns from December 26 through January 1 keeps your offers visible as shoppers travel, return to work, or wait for shipping and returns to normalize. It's also important to keep in mind that December 26 is a public holiday in many markets, so warehouses, carriers, and support teams may close or operate on reduced hours. Planning promotions and fulfillment around downtime prevents backlogs and captures momentum as regions reopen after Christmas.

Boxing Day ecommerce playbook (2025)

By the end of the holiday shopping season, the most successful stores already have their Boxing Day ecommerce strategy set and ready to execute. Treat this week as an operational relaunch before the start of the new year. Each tactic is an opportunity to clear seasonal inventory, raise average order value (AOV), and turn new customers into repeat ones.

Pricing levers

Pricing is one of the fastest ways to engage post-holiday shoppers who are browsing "just to see what’s left." Tactics like structured discount ladders tend to outperform flat sitewide markdowns because they protect your margins while rewarding spend.

What to do:

• Set tiered discounts. For example, 20% off sitewide, 30% off seasonal SKUs, and 40% off items you don't plan to restock.
• Build bundles and buy one, get one (BOGO) offers. Pair core products with accessories (such as "Buy a jacket, get gloves 50% off”). Bundles lift AOV and move complementary stock.
• Run limited-time "lightning deals." Create short-term discounts with countdown timers to trigger urgency without conditioning customers to wait for deeper cuts.
• Test price elasticity. A/B test two discount levels on low-risk categories to learn where conversion rises fastest without eroding margins.

Tiering discounts maintains your brand value, while bundling and timed deals drive higher-value baskets, increasing revenue per visitor, not just order count.

Loyalty and early access

Your best customers shouldn’t find out about the sale on December 26. By then, they should already be shopping. Early access rewards loyalty and encourages repeat purchases, driving up customer lifetime value (CLV).

What to do:

• Segment VIPs. In Shopify or your email platform, filter customers with high lifetime value or multiple holiday purchases.
• Schedule a preview for December 24–25. Send a “Private Boxing Week preview” email or SMS—and offer exclusive access before public launch.
• Use single-use discount codes. Limit sharing while tracking redemptions by segment.
• Tie in loyalty points. Offer double points or an extra 5% off for logged-in members to encourage repeat visits.

VIPs—especially if they have the opportunity to shop sales before the general public—convert at higher rates. Loyal customers feel prioritized, and your campaign starts generating revenue before it officially begins.

Remarketing and recovery

Holiday browsers who didn’t convert can be your warmest Boxing Week audience. Retargeting them turns sunk ad spend into profit.

What to do:

• Create a dedicated Boxing Week landing page. Centralize all your Boxing Week promotions and link paid, email, and social traffic there to keep your analytics clean.
• Build an abandoned cart email sequence. Send three messages within 24 hours:
• Reminder: A subtle nudge in the first two hours
• Incentive: An add-on offer, promo code, or free shipping at eight hours
• Countdown: A "sale ends soon" message to create urgency just before the window closes
• Retarget high-intent audiences. Sync site visitors and past purchasers to your ad platforms. Cap frequency and update creative daily to match your remaining inventory.

It's not uncommon for recovery sequences to reclaim 10%–15% of lost carts and raise overall return on ad spend (ROAS) for the post-holiday season.

Merchandising

After the festive season gifting rush, you'll need to shift your messaging. Effective Boxing Day marketing is about clarity and convenience: Shoppers want easy swaps, usable credits, and quick inspiration.

What to do:

• Build “Missed-my-list” collections. Highlight products shoppers may have wished for but didn’t receive.
• Feature gift cards—and gift-card-friendly products. Promote digital cards with banners and cart prompts like “Got one? Spend it here.”
• Showcase complementary items. On product pages, add “Complete the look” or “Pair it with” modules to raise AOV.

Boxing Day promotions work best when they focus on what customers are looking for in the days and weeks immediately post-Christmas: spending gift cards, circling back for items they didn't receive as gifts, and taking advantage of significant discounts after the holiday frenzy has died down.

Operations

Behind every smooth Boxing Week Sale is a smooth operations plan. And there's plenty to plan for, including holiday closures, delays, and fulfilment peaks.

What to do:

• Extend your returns window. Announce clear deadlines for holiday returns (for example, through January 15 or 31) to reduce support tickets.
• Publish price-match policies. Outline how adjustments work if shoppers see lower prices after purchase.
• Communicate regional schedules. Post notices about carrier delays and store hours in regions with Boxing Day closures.
• Coordinate fulfillment staffing. Use order-forecasting tools to stagger shifts and prevent post-holiday backlog.

Customer expectations are high during and after the holiday season. Clear policies will protect your margins and keep customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores high among Boxing Day shoppers.

Boxing Day marketing strategy prep checklist

As the shopping holiday approaches, here's how to prepare for Boxing Day success.

Do these seven things this week:

1. Publish your Boxing Week landing page.
2. Set tiered discounts and at least one lightning-deal window.
3. Set up VIP early-access email or SMS to send on December 24–25.
4. Activate your abandoned-cart flow with a three-message cadence.
5. Highlight “Missed-my-list” and “Gift-card hero” collections.
6. Extend and banner your returns window.
7. Post regional shipping and hours updates.

24-hour Boxing Day launch prep checklist

• Test all discount codes in checkout to prevent cart-stage drop-offs.
• Confirm landing-page links from ads and emails.
• QA countdown timers and start/end times to avoid customer confusion.
• Verify gift-card redemption flow to capture day-one redemptions.
• Check automation triggers (cart, email, SMS) to prevent message delays.
• Review fulfillment capacity by region to avoid same-day bottlenecks.
• Publish support-hours banner to manage expectations and CSAT around holiday closures.

When executed together, these tactics transform Boxing Week from clearance cleanup into a major shopping event that can raise AOV, clear inventory, and keep your brand top of mind as customers head into the new year.

Boxing Day benchmarks and reality check

With consumer confidence dipping and inflation still reshaping household budgets, shoppers are more careful, not careless, with their money. Boxing Day sales are still a valuable revenue window, but they need to be strategic.

Across major markets, growth remains steady yet restrained: People are buying, but they’re comparing prices, reading reviews, and stretching every dollar. For retailers, that means the winners this year won’t be those offering the loudest discounts, but those delivering clarity, value, and trust when customers feel cautious.

Holiday season at a glance

The 2024 holiday season showed modest but meaningful gains worldwide: In the US, retail sales rose 4% year over year to $994.1 billion, while the UK saw modest increases at brick-and-mortar stores and more meaningful gains for online stores. In Canada, more than a third of shoppers reported they planned to shop Boxing Day sales, showing many consumers still valued Boxing Day shopping amid tighter budgets.

Shopify’s 2025 global holiday retail report shows these patterns are likely to hold true this year. Consumers are still spending in 2025, but more deliberately. Average planned global spend during the Black Friday–Cyber Monday period rose from $155 to $192, yet 51% of shoppers set strict budgets and 23% planned to be stricter than last year. Discipline—not indulgence—is defining the season.

Holiday spending is healthy but measured. Shoppers are motivated by value and convenience, and regional patterns differ. Use these numbers as context as you plan your Boxing Day marketing tactics.