PERFORMANCE
Black Friday website readiness checklist
An interactive Black Friday and Cyber Monday readiness checklist for ecommerce — load testing, code freeze, monitoring, promotions and war room.
By VISIBI Performance team·Reviewed by Saeed Ak, Co-founder & CTO·Updated 29 September 2026·8 min read
QUICK ANSWER
An interactive Black Friday and Cyber Monday readiness checklist for ecommerce — load testing, code freeze, monitoring, promotions and war room.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
✓Start preparing at least 8 weeks before Black Friday.
✓Load test real journeys, not just the homepage.
✓Freeze code and have a war room plan for peak days.
INTERACTIVE CHECKLIST
Black Friday readiness
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Eight weeks out
- Load test at 2–3× last year’s peak
- Fix slow queries, search and checkout
- Confirm autoscaling and CDN caching
- Review third-party scripts
Two weeks out
- Code freeze
- Test promotions and discount codes
- Check payment providers and fraud rules
- Pre-warm infrastructure
On the day
Live dashboards, on-call engineers, a runbook for scaling and rollback, and a queue page if needed.
Common mistakes to avoid
✕Only testing the homepage
✕Optimising lab scores instead of real-user data
✕Adding third-party scripts without a performance budget
✕Leaving load testing until the week before peak
HOW VISIBI CAN HELP
How we help with performance
01MeasureReal-user Core Web Vitals and load tests on key journeys.
02Fix in codeOur developers fix the root cause, not just the symptom.
03Protect peaksAutoscaling, caching and war-room cover for big days.
04MonitorAlerts on speed and checkout regressions with VISIBI Guard.
Book a free audit →Free · No obligation · Reply within 24 hours
Frequently asked questions
When should we load test?
6–8 weeks before, leaving time to fix and retest.
What is a code freeze?
A period with no non-essential deployments to reduce risk.
Can you provide war-room cover?
Yes — see Peak Traffic Readiness.
SA
Reviewed by Saeed Ak · Co-founder & CTO25 years engineering high-traffic ecommerce, cloud and security platforms. Written by the VISIBI Performance team.Meet the team →
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