E-Commerce: Are Your Databases Black Friday Ready?

By Charlotte


Black Friday, more traditionally marks the start of the Christmas shopping season for United States, following on from Thanksgiving. However, in 2022, Black Friday is recognised as a highly promoted marketing opportunity with discounted prices across the globe.

It has fast become the busiest shopping day of the year, with a forecast value of spending estimated at 8.71 billion GBP, for this year alone. And, while many companies have meticulously planned their business operations, most will have focused on preparing social media campaigns, designing website landing pages and organising maximum staff levels in customer services and dispatch. However, many will have failed to prepare their applications for a surge in demand and higher website traffic.

Customer Expectations

Customers expect fast page load speeds of no more than three seconds, as standard. But, when a deal is to be had, pressure piles on to convert through the checkout quickly. When it comes to Black Friday, your database cannot fail for a second. And, if it does, you’ll risk bounce rates increasing by up to 73%. So, why are e-commerce retailers failing to consider the speed and availability of their database environments? That’s some food-for-thought.

Fail To Prepare, Prepare To Fail…

GymShark is one of the most pressing cases of Black Friday Downtime, which demonstrates the catastrophic effects that database failure can have on ambitious marketing campaigns, if servers/applications are not considered. In 2015, the fitness apparel and accessories retailer suffered an outage of 8 hours – estimated to cost the company a staggering £100,000.

With a small amount of planning and some additional database housekeeping, you can scale and maximise performance of your servers, to hit sales targets this Black Friday weekend. If you’re unable to facilitate database expertise in house, you should consider WellData’s Database Management Services. It’s your complete solution to improving performance, preventing downtime and increasing data security, 24/7/365. Otherwise, you may benefit from our rapid incident intervention and disaster recovery solution planning.

Preparing For Black Friday

Here’s our top tips on how to prepare your databases for Black Friday, this year:

Scale Up

Analyse yearly website traffic and add a sizeable margin to forecast the demand on servers. You should load test environments as part of your risk assessment for a disaster recovery plan to check for lags in performance and make adjustments as required.

Back Up

Ensure you have an up-to-date successful backup which you can rely on during the high-traffic event. If you do experience a disaster, you can replicate data in another system to restore performance.

Turn Up

Plan for the A-Team to be onsite to restore application functionality quickly and efficiently. If the proactive and preventive measures cannot prevent downtime, you should also make sure a team is available to monitor and maintain your environment, around-the-clock. You should do so all-year-round, but especially during a Black Friday sale.

Get In Touch

Speak to the experts! WellData can maximise the performance of your databases to prepare for your next retail event. Contact us today to find out how our database consultants can assist your IT department.

Get in touch

<< Back to Knowledge Centre

Join Our Newsletter

Contact Email  *
First Name 
Last Name 
*Required Fields
I agree to the  Privacy Policy and  Terms of Use 

Here's what other people think

Google Rating
5.0
High standard, professional service. I've worked with Welldata for a number of years and always found their DBA's to be knowledgeable and proactive. Throw any question at them and it will be resolved, it gives real peace of mind knowing you have a partner you can rely on from emergencies to general questions. They also like a challenge and we do throw a few curved balls at them.read more
Paul Miller
Paul Miller
12:34 27 Aug 21
The support I receive from Well Data is extremely responsive. Richard Parsons is my contact and keeps me informed daily on the health of our SQL Databases. Whenever I ask for assistance from Well Data it is quick and professional.read more
Kay Riley
Kay Riley
13:41 19 Aug 21
Really know their stuff and their response times are very good. They provide us with a vital service.
Andy Cole
Andy Cole
13:36 19 Aug 21
The guys at WellData really know their stuff. We wanted a quick route to doing something complex and they sorted it for us very quickly and to a high standard. Very professional, no ego, just excellent and to the point consultancy.read more
Steve Goacher
Steve Goacher
11:31 14 Nov 19
I have worked with the WellData team for many years now and they have always delivered.I would highly recommend them to any business looking for best-value outsourced Expert DBA’s.Being able to offer a rolling contract on the basis that if they don’t deliver you can leave shows their confidence and commitment.Their professionalism and knowledge is second to none.read more
Petro Bartoszyk
Petro Bartoszyk
08:51 18 Oct 19
A very dedicated team of extremely professional and knowledgeable experts
Giulia Iannucci
Giulia Iannucci
14:08 16 Nov 18
We use Welldata for SQL support and are very happy with their service.
David Sadler
David Sadler
09:40 15 Nov 18
Really know their stuff and their response times are very good.
Andy Cole
Andy Cole
11:45 06 Nov 18
Our partnership with WellData has enabled us to resolve critical database problems. Their attitude and service makes them a natural extension to our own technology team, which extends our capability in a critical area of our business.read more
Steve Fenton
Steve Fenton
10:56 05 Nov 18
Having worked with the team at Welldata for approaching 17 years, my company and I have always found them professional, reliable and generally a great firm to work with.read more
John Lynes
John Lynes
14:00 04 Oct 17
WellData provide an excellent level of support and their team are very knowledgeable and always go the extra mile. I would wholeheartedly recommend them.read more
Stefan Parrott
Stefan Parrott
13:12 19 Sep 17