Black Friday Preparation: Is Your Website Ready?
Black Friday is an important time for sellers to maximise their revenue, attract new loyal customers, and establish a strong foundation for a successful holiday shopping season.
In this article, we’ll discuss the essential steps to help prepare your website for this busy period.
Black Friday falls on Friday 27 November 2026, so it’s advisable to prepare your website approximately one to two weeks before the event.
Here are the essential checks we recommend performing:
1. Back up your website
It’s advisable to create a website backup before implementing any significant changes.
You can generate a backup through your hosting control panel or use your preferred backup plugin. Make sure the backup includes both your website files and database.
2. Review your website’s performance
Review your website to ensure it’s properly optimised and performing efficiently.
If your website is built on WordPress, navigate to Tools > Site Health to review the built-in recommendations provided by WordPress.
3. Check your website’s caching
Verify whether your website is using caching, as this can improve loading speeds and reduce server load.
Depending on your website and server configuration, you might use a caching plugin or the built-in caching options available through your hosting control panel.
There are various caching mechanisms available, yet many website owners overlook object caching. This technique can help speed up an online store by reducing repeated database requests for frequently accessed information.
Object caching may require additional configuration and isn’t always available simply by installing a caching plugin. It’s worth checking whether your website supports it and whether it’s correctly configured.
Important for WooCommerce: Ensure that your Cart, Checkout and My Account pages are excluded from page caching, as these contain customer-specific information and need to remain up to date.
4. Consider using a CDN
Consider integrating a Content Delivery Network (CDN) with your website if you haven’t already done so.
A CDN can help reduce the load on your hosting server and allow visitors to access your website more quickly by delivering static content, such as images and other website assets, from servers closer to their location.
This can be particularly useful if your website attracts customers from different countries.
5. Clean up your website
Review your installed plugins and themes.
Consider removing inactive plugins or themes that are no longer necessary, as they can consume disk space and may present security risks if they’re left outdated.
6. Update your website software
Ensure your website and all active plugins and themes are updated to their latest stable, compatible versions.
Keeping your software updated can improve performance, resolve bugs and enhance security.
We recommend taking a backup and testing updates before applying them to your live website, particularly if you’re running an online store.
7. Check your PHP version and configuration
Check which PHP version your website is currently using.
WordPress recommends PHP 8.3 or newer, so if you’re running an older version, it’s worth planning an upgrade where your website software supports it.
Newer PHP versions can offer improvements to performance and security, although compatibility should always be checked before upgrading.
We strongly recommend testing any PHP version changes on a staging website before making them on your live store, particularly in the weeks leading up to Black Friday.
8. Check your SSL certificate
Ensure your website loads correctly using HTTPS.
Open your website in a browser and verify that it uses a valid SSL certificate, with no security or certificate warnings.
SSL certificates help encrypt the connection between your website and its visitors, which is particularly important for online stores handling customer information.
Although SSL certificates are normally provisioned automatically on our hosting services, it’s still worth checking that everything is working correctly.
9. Make sure your store is prepared
If you operate an online store, this is one of the most important steps.
Start by reviewing your products:
- Review your prices and any planned discounts.
- Verify that product images are loading correctly.
- Check your product descriptions.
- Make sure your products, particularly your best-selling items, are in stock.
10. Review your WooCommerce inventory settings
If you have a WooCommerce website, we recommend navigating to:
WooCommerce > Settings > Products > Inventory
Review the following options:
- Enable stock management.
- Enable low stock notifications.
- Enable out of stock notifications.
Make sure your product stock quantities and notification thresholds are correctly configured.
These settings help you stay informed when popular items are running low or have sold out, allowing for prompt restocking or other adjustments.
Correct stock management also helps prevent accidentally selling products you no longer have available.
11. Review your hosting resources
Review your website’s resource usage.
If your website experienced downtime or performance problems caused by CPU or memory limitations during last year’s Black Friday period, or at other busy times, consider whether a temporary hosting upgrade may be beneficial.
If you’re expecting a significant increase in traffic, it’s worth contacting your hosting provider in advance to discuss your requirements.
12. Become a customer yourself
Open your website and go through the checkout process as though you were a customer.
Select a product, add it to your cart and complete a test order.
Some payment gateways provide a testing mode that allows you to process test transactions without incurring real charges.
Where possible, carry out checkout and payment testing on a staging website, using your payment gateway’s test mode. This avoids interfering with real customer orders or payments.
We also recommend testing your website on both a desktop computer and a mobile device, as functionality can vary between platforms.
Given how many customers shop using mobile devices, ensuring your website works correctly on a smartphone is essential.
Note: We recommend testing with a real mobile device where possible, rather than relying entirely on browser emulators or mobile preview tools.
Final preparations
In conclusion, we recommend setting up a staging website to test updates and adjustments before applying them to your live site.
As a final precaution, take a fresh backup of your website around 20 November, one week before Black Friday.
From that point onwards, try to avoid unnecessary major changes to your live website unless they’re essential, particularly changes that haven’t been properly tested. Important security fixes should still be applied where required.
Following these tips will help put your store in a much better position to handle the additional traffic and orders expected during the Black Friday period.
Wishing you an incredibly successful and stress-free Black Friday!