How to Prepare Your Magento Store for Peak Sales Season

Practical steps for business owners and developers

The busiest shopping periods – Black Friday, Christmas, seasonal sales – can make or break your annual revenue. For Magento stores, peak season is not just about offering discounts, it’s about surviving heavy traffic without breaking.
Here’s a comprehensive preparation plan that covers both sides: what you need to do as a store owner, and what your developer should handle.

1. Audit Current Performance

For Store Owners

• Run your site through tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix – keep screenshots for comparison.
• Note pages that feel slow, especially checkout and top-selling product pages.
• Identify your highest revenue categories – they’ll need the most attention.

For Developers

• Perform a server and application audit:
  • Check PHP version (should be 8.x).
  • Run bin/magento deploy:mode:show – must be production.
  • Measure TTFB (Time to First Byte) with tools like WebPageTest.
• Review slow database queries (pt-query-digest or Performance Schema).
• Audit Core Web Vitals via real-user monitoring (CrUX, GA4).

2. Strengthen Hosting and Infrastructure

For Store Owners

• Ask your hosting provider if they offer burst scaling for traffic spikes.
• Ensure your hosting has DDoS protection and SSL in place.
• If your store serves multiple countries, confirm a CDN is in use.

For Developers

• Upgrade PHP-FPM settings (pm.max_children) to match expected load.
• Ensure OPcache is enabled and pre-warmed after deployment.
• Set up or tune Redis for cache/session storage.
• Use Varnish as Full Page Cache; check X-Magento-Cache-Debug: HIT for cacheable pages.
• CDN configuration: long TTL for static assets, hashed filenames.

3. Optimise for Speed

For Store Owners

• Reduce heavy image usage on banners unless necessary.
• Avoid uploading oversized product images; stick to pre-optimised formats.
• Minimise third-party widgets and pop-ups during the peak period.

For Developers

• Convert hero and product images to WebP/AVIF; preload the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) image.
• Inline critical CSS for above-the-fold content; load the rest async.
• defer non-essential JavaScript; remove unused libraries.
• Reduce CLS (layout shift) by setting width/height attributes on images and placeholders for dynamic content.
• Monitor LCP ≤ 2.5s, INP ≤ 200ms, CLS ≤ 0.1 on key templates.

We wrote about this in more detail in this article: Magento Speed: a Technical Plan That’s Easy to Follow

Secure the Store

For Store Owners

• Enable two-factor authentication for admin users.
• Restrict admin access to known IP addresses if possible.
• Ensure your payment gateway and SSL certificates are valid.

For Developers

• Apply the latest Magento security patches.
• Audit user roles – remove unused admin accounts.
• Set up a Web Application Firewall (WAF).
• Block unwanted bots at server or CDN level.

Checkout Process – Make It Failproof

For Store Owners

• Test the full checkout as a customer: add to cart, apply discount codes, choose shipping, pay.
• Simplify payment options to those most used by your customers.
• Avoid introducing new payment gateways right before the peak season.

For Developers

• Ensure checkout pages bypass cache but remain optimised.
• Reduce JavaScript execution on checkout to avoid input lag.
• Validate tracking scripts – move them after the main content render.
• Test under load (JMeter, k6) to simulate peak checkout traffic.

Inventory, Orders, and Integrations

For Store Owners

• Check stock levels of bestsellers; confirm supplier timelines.
• Ensure your fulfilment team is ready for faster dispatch.
• Review return/refund policy visibility.

For Developers

• Verify ERP, warehouse, and shipping API integrations are stable.
• Monitor cron jobs to avoid backlog (bin/magento cron:run logs).
• Set alerts for failed orders, payment errors, or API timeouts.

Backups and Recovery Plan

For Store Owners

• Ask your team: if the site goes down, how quickly can we restore it?
• Ensure backups are stored in a separate location from the live server.

For Developers

• Automate daily (or more frequent) backups for code and database.
• Test the restore process before peak season.
• Document rollback steps for deployments.

Marketing and Load Preparation

For Store Owners

• Plan campaigns early; give the dev team dates and expected traffic spikes.
• Avoid unplanned design changes during the busiest days.

For Developers

• Pre-warm caches before campaign launches (crawl top pages).
• Enable full-page caching for all static content.
• Scale server resources temporarily if needed.

Monitor in Real Time

For Store Owners

• Have someone watch live orders, customer chats, and social media mentions.
• Be ready to pause ads if the site struggles.

For Developers

• Monitor server load, PHP processes, Redis latency, and Varnish hit ratio.
• Set alerts for errors in logs and slow queries.
• Use tools like New Relic or Datadog for application performance monitoring.

After the Peak – Review and Improve

For Store Owners

• Analyse sales data: what worked, what didn’t.
• Get customer feedback on the shopping experience.

For Developers

• Review performance logs, error reports, and uptime.
• Note bottlenecks and plan fixes for the next peak.

Final Checklist

Store Owner

• Performance audit done
• Hosting/CDN confirmed
• Checkout tested
• Inventory ready
• Campaign dates locked

Developer

• Production mode enabled
• Redis + Varnish configured
• Images, CSS, JS optimised
• Security patches applied
• Monitoring and alerts active

Peak sales season is a stress test for your Magento store. By splitting responsibilities – owners focusing on business readiness, developers on technical resilience – you’ll have both the speed and stability needed to handle the rush.