How to prepare your business for Black Friday

Did you know that website traffic can surge by as much as 65% around Black Friday compared to a typical Friday? That kind of spike can overwhelm sites that aren’t prepared – but for those that are, it’s one of the biggest opportunities of the year.

Whether you run an online store, manage multiple client sites, or rely on your website to generate leads, knowing how to prepare your business for Black Friday can be the difference between a profitable weekend and a stressful disaster.

With record traffic levels and customer expectations higher than ever, now’s the time to put a plan in place. This guide walks you through practical steps, real examples, and a ready-to-use checklist to help your site stay fast, secure, and ready to make the most of the busiest shopping weekend of the year.

• Start early with planning, campaigns, and stock levels
• Optimise your website for speed and customer experience
• Protect your store with strong security and regular backups
• Test checkout processes thoroughly before the rush
• Support teams and agencies should centralise management across sites

Black Friday continues to break sales records each year, but the pressure on websites and businesses grows too. Research shows that even small delays in load time hurt conversions, and heavy traffic leaves sites open to outages or attacks. For agencies managing multiple client sites, these risks multiply.

The good news? With early planning and the right tools, your website can stay fast, secure, and profitable throughout the biggest shopping weekend of the year. Let’s look at the key steps.

Black Friday is too big to leave until the last minute. Start at least four to six weeks in advance to plan your campaigns, check inventory, and prepare your website for the traffic ahead.

• Set sales targets and map promotions to your key products or services
• Plan your marketing schedule – from email campaigns and social posts to paid ads and landing pages
• Order extra stock and prepare packaging, fulfilment, and shipping resources
• Update website banners and Black Friday landing pages ahead of time
• Review plugins and hosting to make sure your site can handle traffic spikes

Early planning also gives you time to test everything – from coupon codes and checkout flows to your backup and caching setup, before visitors flood in.

A slow website kills conversions. Even a one-second delay can increase bounce rates and cost you sales.

• Enable caching to reduce server load
• Compress and lazy-load images
• Minify and defer non-critical scripts
• Use a CDN for global audiences

Traffic spikes attract more than shoppers – they bring hackers, bots, and brute-force attacks. Common risks during Black Friday include login attacks, credit-card skimming, and fake account creation.

• Lock down admin logins with reCAPTCHA or two-factor authentication
• Limit failed login attempts and block suspicious IPs
• Keep plugins, themes, and WordPress core updated

An update gone wrong or a server overload can wipe out hours of sales. Without a backup, you risk losing orders, customer data, and revenue.

• Schedule automatic backups to secure cloud storage
• Run a fresh manual backup the night before Black Friday
• Restore your site in minutes if something breaks

Even tiny friction points in checkout can cost thousands in lost sales. Before the Black Friday, test everything:

• Coupon codes apply correctly
• Payment gateways process smoothly
• Emails send on order confirmation
• Shipping and tax calculations are accurate
• The flow works on mobile as well as desktop

Simplify wherever possible. Fewer steps mean fewer abandoned carts.

High traffic brings more questions and support tickets. Make sure your team is ready.

• Extend support hours during the Black Friday weekend
• Publish FAQs and troubleshooting articles in advance
• Train staff to handle common issues quickly
• Use chatbots or automated replies for simple queries

A responsive, well-prepared support team can turn one-time buyers into long-term customers.

Once the sales are over, it’s time to see what worked – and what didn’t. Tracking performance helps you understand where your sales came from, how visitors behaved, and which campaigns delivered the best results.

Use a tool like Burst Statistics to get privacy-friendly insights directly from your WordPress dashboard. You can monitor real-time visits, track conversions, and measure campaign impact – all without relying on external trackers.

For agencies or businesses running multiple WordPress sites, preparation can quickly become overwhelming. Jumping between dashboards, logging into different sites, and managing updates separately all eat into valuable time and increase the risk of something being missed when it matters most.

With UpdraftCentral you can manage all of your WordPress sites from one dashboard. It’s a smarter, faster way to stay in control, especially during high-traffic periods like Black Friday.

Use this checklist to make sure you’re fully prepared:

• ⬜ Plan promotions, campaigns, and stock
• ⬜ Optimise website speed with caching, compression, and clean-ups
• ⬜ Secure site against brute force, bots, and fraud
• ⬜ Schedule and save backups to cloud storage
• ⬜ Test checkout, payment, and email flows end to end
• ⬜ Prepare and train the support team
• ⬜ Centralise management (if running multiple sites)

Black Friday exposes every weakness. The sites that prepare with strong backups, robust security, and peak performance don’t just stay online – they turn more visitors into customers.

Black Friday is one of the biggest opportunities of the year – but success depends on how well you prepare. By planning early, securing your site, optimising for speed, and supporting your team, you’ll be ready to handle the rush with confidence.