Last-minute updates are the most common cause of downtime...

Preparing for Black Friday & Cyber Monday

Black Friday and Cyber Monday remain the busiest periods of the year for most eCommerce stores. The uplift in traffic, orders and customer expectations can be significant, which is why preparation is critical.

Plan for Capacity - Don't forget to book your over-flow

Expect traffic to exceed normal baselines. Make sure additional resource is available and tested in advance. On Sonassi, overflow capacity can be booked ahead of time and enabled instantly when needed to absorb short-term peaks, without committing to permanent infrastructure cost. Book overflow resources early to guarantee availability.

Code Freeze

We recommend you lockdown and implement any major changes at least two weeks before Black Friday. This change chill period allows for thorough testing and reduces the risk of introducing instability during peak. Last-minute updates are the most common cause of downtime. Speak to us now if you need work scheduled before the cut-off.

Chill out Sonassi

We will be having a Change Freeze period ourselves, so please do bear this in mind.  Our dates are as follows - 21st  Nov @12:00hrs until the 2^rd December @ 9:00hrs.  Again, please work with us on this, we do it for a reason, the clue is in the title.  Critical infrastructure work will continue during this period.

Test Under Load

Simulate traffic spikes ahead of time. Check caching layers, checkout flow, promotions and third-party integrations while your store is under stress. Identify issues now, not during the busiest weekend of the year. Sonassi can always help with performance audits and load testing, so, you know you’re ready.

Review Monitoring & Support

Monitoring should cover the customer journey, from add-to-basket to order confirmation. Ensure alerts are in place and support arrangements are clear. Schedule developer time in advance — availability in November is limited.

Keep Security Current

Apply all Magento and extension patches ahead of the cool period. Validate backups and review WAF or DDoS protection to minimise risk during peak.

How Can Sonassi Help?

Store Support: Our Magento developers can assist with upgrades, promotion setup, troubleshooting and audits. If you think you may need some extra hands, please let us know in good time. Speak to us now.

Performance Testing: We can work with your team to test load handling, caching, and checkout stability so you know the store is prepared.

Monitoring & Emergency Response:  Proactive monitoring of store functions combined with 24/7 emergency support keeps you covered if the unexpected happens.

Make the best use of the platform: MageStack provides everything you need to optimise Magento performance, including Varnish, Redis, RabbitMQ, and CDN integration.

• Varnish cache ensures faster delivery of dynamic, static, and semi-static content. With proper configuration, Magento stores can reach a 60–70% cache hit rate for smoother performance.
• Redis handles frontend and full-page cache, as well as sessions, reducing disk usage and speeding up Magento by cutting slow server operations.
• RabbitMQ handles heavy tasks asynchronously by queuing them and letting background workers process them at a controlled pace. This decouples task execution from the main application, helping keep the store stable and preventing crashes during intensive operations.
• A Content Delivery Network (CDN) accelerates static content delivery, lowers bandwidth usage, and reduces latency by serving cached content closer to users. Sonassi integrates Cloudflare CDN directly from its dashboard for easy setup.

Thanks, and stay frosty out there.

Matt and the Sonassi team.