Common Ninja November newsletter

Newsletter: November 2026 Edition Get your site ready for Black Friday A free Black Friday countdown, a new Image Map widget, and holiday tools to get your site ready. 1 new widget10 new free tools5 dates to plan for Welcome to the Common Ninja newsletter, your monthly roundup of product updates, widget ideas, fresh how-to guides, and key dates worth planning around. Singles' Day (11.11) is next week, then Black Friday on 27 November and Cyber Monday on 30 November, so this issue is built around getting ready. There is a free Black Friday countdown you can share today, a holiday hours sign maker, a new Image Map widget, and a stack of new free tools. One more thing: we are preparing our own Black Friday deal too. Keep an eye on your inbox later this month. What shipped The latest from Common Ninja Free Black Friday countdown. A live Black Friday 2026 countdown that shows the time left in your visitor's own time zone. Open it full screen, or turn it into an image to tease your sale on social media. There are matching countdowns for Christmas, Hanukkah and New Year. Want the timer on your own site? The Countdown widget does that. Open the Black Friday countdown → New widget: Image Map. Turn any image into something visitors can explore. Draw clickable areas that follow the real shape of a room, a seating section or a product part, then give each one a tooltip and a link. Made for floor plans, venue maps, store layouts and product diagrams. See the Image Map widget → Holiday tools for the busy season. Print a holiday hours sign with the 2026 dates already filled in, make holiday bingo cards, run holiday trivia, or rank the best Thanksgiving food. All free, no sign-up. Browse all free tools → Six more free tools for everyday business. A Restaurant Menu Maker, a Now Hiring Sign Maker for seasonal staff, a Potluck Sign-Up Sheet, an Open House Sign-In Sheet, a Bar Graph Maker and a Venn Diagram Maker. Browse all free tools → Widget of the month Image Map Some pictures need explaining: a floor plan, a venue, a store layout, a product with parts. Image Map lets visitors hover or tap any area to see its name, details and a link, so the picture answers questions on its own. Draw areas in any shape, pick when tooltips appear, and the shapes stay in place on every screen size. A good fit for showing where this season's deals are in your store, or which room a booking includes. Try Image Map From the blog Fresh reads and how-to guides 6 Free Widgets to Get Your Website Holiday-Ready Updated for 2026: the widgets worth adding before Black Friday, and the dates to have them live by. Read the guide → Countdown Timers in Email: Urgency That Works How a countdown in your sale email builds real urgency, and how to set one up without it feeling pushy. Read the guide → Designing a Custom Countdown Widget for Your Site Match the timer to the moment: launch, sale, event or deadline, with design choices for each. Read the guide → Visit our blog → Trending in your world What we're reading lately Shopify Shopify lets merchants control what AI shopping agents know about their store Shopify announced its Fall '26 Edition on 28 October. A new knowledge base in the admin lets merchants review and publish the facts AI agents get about their store, like return windows, shipping destinations and gift services, and nothing reaches an agent until the merchant publishes it. Worth a look before Black Friday, when more shoppers will ask an assistant before they ask you. Read the article → Shopify changelog Shopify merchants can now schedule and test discounts Since 2 October, Shopify's Rollouts can schedule a discount and test an offer on a share of online store traffic. If you sell on Shopify, that means you can try two Black Friday offers on real visitors before the big weekend, instead of guessing which one works. Read the article → Google Search Central Google plans to honor a shared 'don't train AI on my site' setting On 30 O