Black Friday · 27 Nov69 days to get your store ready
Will your WooCommerce store survive Black Friday?
Peak traffic finds every slow query, fragile plugin and checkout bug at once — on the day they cost the most. We load-test your store, fix what breaks and stay on call from Black Friday to Cyber Monday.
Assumes most Black Friday sales happen within 14 hours of the day. Your numbers are not sent anywhere.
Protect itFrom our case studies
One Black Friday, about 15% of orders lost to a slow checkout.
A nail polish retailer moved from Magento to WooCommerce. On the next Black Friday the checkout slowed down under load and roughly 15% of orders never went through. Peak email campaigns had to be split into batches, and the team was about to pay for a Kubernetes rebuild.
We spent a week on the audit and a couple of days on fixes: a dedicated, indexed orders table instead of wp_posts and wp_postmeta, and a broken plugin that disabled caching for every shopper with something in the cart. Pages started loading in 0.5–0.6 seconds, and the Kubernetes rebuild was no longer needed.
Read the case studyThe 48-hour readiness check
We break your store before Black Friday does.
On a staging copy of your store we simulate peak traffic, walk through checkout like a shopper and read what your server does under load. You get a written list of risks, each with a fix and an estimate.
Load test at peak traffic
We simulate several times your normal traffic on staging and watch where response times and errors start to climb.
Checkout under load
Cart, coupons, shipping rates, payment gateways and 3-D Secure — plus a backup gateway in case the main one fails.
Speed of the pages that sell
Home, category, product, cart and checkout on mobile — measured, with the heaviest scripts and queries named.
Caching & hosting capacity
Page cache and CDN rules, object cache, PHP workers and database limits — and whether your hosting plan will cope.
Orders & integrations under load Most checks skip this
During the load test we run your order pipeline too — stock and ERP syncs, marketplace feeds, webhooks and scheduled actions — and move heavy jobs to queues and off-peak times so they never block checkout.
Tracking that survives the peak Most checks skip this
Under load we compare real orders with purchase events in GA4, Meta and Google Ads, so your ads keep their signal in the most expensive week. By the team that built Stape’s server-side tracking plugin for WordPress, now on 10,000+ sites.
Free 10-second snapshot
See how your store behaves before the rush.
We request your homepage twice — once from cache and once with the cache bypassed, the way a shopper with a full cart gets it — and flag what will hurt first when traffic multiplies. It isn’t a load test, but it shows where to look.
What a snapshot can’t see — the full check can
- Your store at 3× and 5× traffic. A real load test, not one visit.
- Checkout under load. Cart, coupons, shipping rules and every payment gateway.
- Hosting limits. PHP workers, database, cache hit rate, rate limits.
- Background jobs. Stock sync, emails and scheduled actions that pile up at peak.
Example result
- Server response0.08 sFast for a normal visit
- With the cache bypassed1.92 sEvery cart and checkout visit waits for PHP — this is what melts at peak
- Cart fragments1.24 sRuns on every page view and is never cached — doubles PHP work at peak
- Scripts on the page46Many scripts to download and run
- CDNCloudflareStatic files are served close to shoppers
Requesting your homepage like a shopper…
One page, a few requests. The full check adds a load test at 3× and 5× traffic, checkout, payments, hosting limits and integrations.
1-minute self-check
How ready is your store right now?
Eight questions we ask every store before a peak. Answer honestly — the result shows your riskiest gaps first.
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Have you load-tested the store in the last six months?
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Are page cache and a CDN set up — with cart and checkout excluded?
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Does checkout load in under 3 seconds on mobile?
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Is an object cache (Redis or Memcached) running?
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Is a second payment gateway ready if the main one fails?
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Are imports, feeds and ERP syncs scheduled outside peak hours?
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Have you checked that purchases reach GA4 and Meta end to end?
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Will someone be on call from Black Friday to Cyber Monday?
Answer the questions to see your risk level.
Your answers stay in your browser.
Get the full check — $490What you get in 48 hours
A risk list your team can act on the same day.
Every finding has a severity, the evidence, the fix and an estimate in hours — plus a short screen-recorded walkthrough, so nothing gets lost in translation.
- CriticalCart fragments request bypasses cache for every visitor~4 h
- CriticalStock sync from ERP runs every 5 min and locks the orders table~6 h
- HighNo object cache; product queries repeat on each page~3 h
- HighOnly one payment gateway; no fallback if it throttles~2 h
- MediumPurchase event missing for 1 in 8 orders in GA4~3 h
Illustrative example of the report format — your findings will differ.
- Load test resultsResponse times and errors at 1×, 3× and 5× your normal traffic, with the first thing that breaks.
- Checkout & paymentsReal test orders through each gateway, coupons and shipping rules, on mobile and desktop.
- Prioritised fixesCritical, high and medium, each with evidence, the fix and hours — ready for your team or ours.
- Walkthrough videoA short screen recording that explains the findings in plain words.
- Go / no-go for the peakA clear verdict and what must be done before the 20 November code freeze.
Packages
Check, fix, then sleep through the peak.
Start with the check. If it finds risks, the fix sprint gets them out of the way before the code freeze — and the check price is credited.
Readiness check
$490/ fixed
48 hours after access
Load test on staging, checkout and speed review, a written risk list with fixes and estimates.
- Peak-traffic load test
- Checkout & payment gateway review
- Prioritised risk list with estimates
- Nothing worth fixing — your $490 back
Fix sprint
from $1,900
1–2 weeks · check price credited
We fix the biggest risks: caching, slow queries, checkout, integrations and tracking — then re-run the load test.
- Fixes shipped through staging
- Re-test with before/after numbers
- Rollback plan for the peak
Peak cover
on request
Black Friday → Cyber Monday
Engineers on call with monitoring and a rollback plan while your store takes the biggest traffic of the year.
- Uptime and checkout monitoring
- Agreed response time
- Post-peak report and next steps
WooCommerce stores on any hosting. We work on a staging copy, sign your NDA and never load-test your live store without your host’s approval.
Timeline to the peak
Fixes need time to settle before the freeze.
Changes shipped the week before Black Friday are the ones that break on Black Friday. This is the schedule we plan with every store.
Today: 69 days to Black Friday
- By 16 Oct
Book the check
Access to a staging copy and your hosting details.
- By 23 Oct
Check done
Load test, checkout review and a risk list with estimates.
- By 6 Nov
Fixes shipped
Biggest risks fixed and re-tested, with before/after numbers.
- 20 Nov
Code freeze
No risky changes. Campaign pages and coupons tested.
- 27–30 Nov
Peak cover
Black Friday to Cyber Monday with engineers on call.
Why stores trust us
Stores keep us for years, not for one audit.
WPWP is an in-house WooCommerce team — engineers, QA and project managers in Europe, with an office in Bristol, UK. Most of our work is long-term development for online stores, so we know what breaks after launch day.
- Since 2021
Sporting-goods retailer
14,000+ hours of complex development. 20,000+ products and orders kept in sync with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central through Sync-Hub, our WordPress + AWS service.
Read the case ↗ - 3 years
Norwegian online retailer
Three years of ongoing WooCommerce development and support.
- Years of releases
Nail polish brand
Moved from Magento to WooCommerce, automated tests on every release, performance work — and the Black Friday fix above.
Read the case ↗ - 10,000+ sites
Stape.io
We built Stape’s GTM Server Side plugin for WordPress — server-side tracking now running on 10,000+ sites.
Read the case ↗
Before you book
Straight answers.
Something else? Put it in the form — a WooCommerce engineer reads every request.
What happens in the 48-hour check?
Will you load-test our live store?
Our store is on managed hosting. Is that a problem?
What if the check finds nothing serious?
Is it too late to start?
Why is the check only $490?
Can you test orders and integrations without touching production?
Do you only work with WooCommerce?
Book a readiness check
Tell us about your store.
One minute. A WooCommerce engineer replies within one business day with the next step and the dates we can start.