Black Friday and Cyber Monday put ecommerce stores under some of the greatest pressure of the year. Traffic can increase rapidly, customers expect fast and reliable experiences, and even small technical issues can have a direct impact on sales.
For Aero Commerce and its retailer and agency network, Black Friday provided an opportunity to put the platform through its paces under significant traffic and transaction volumes. The results demonstrated the importance of preparation, performance and a platform that could handle increased demand without compromising the customer experience.
More importantly, the period highlighted several lessons that retailers and agencies could apply when preparing for future peak trading events.
Performance mattered most when traffic increased
Peak trading exposed weaknesses that might not have been apparent during normal periods. A store that performed well on an average day could experience slowdowns when traffic, product views and checkout activity increased simultaneously.
During Black Friday, Aero stores handled significant increases in traffic while maintaining their usual shopping experience. The platform's lean architecture and the work carried out by agencies ahead of the event helped retailers remain online and responsive during one of the busiest trading periods of the year.
Aero's Head of Platform, Tim Spratt, explained:
Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2020 has allowed us to explore micro-optimisations to serving pages that yielded a 34% server load reduction.
He also reported that Aero retailers were able to remain online with more than 800 concurrent users, with pages being served in under 200ms on infrastructure costing less than $500 per month.
These were results from the 2020 Black Friday period rather than benchmarks that should be assumed for every Aero store today. They nevertheless demonstrated an important principle: performance needed to be considered before peak traffic arrived, not once a store was already under pressure.
Prepare for peak traffic before it arrives
One of the biggest lessons from peak trading was that performance preparation needed to happen well before Black Friday.
Retailers and agencies could reduce risk by reviewing:
expected traffic increases and previous peak performance
hosting capacity and infrastructure configuration
page load times across key customer journeys
checkout performance under increased demand
third-party integrations and their potential impact on performance
product feeds, search and other high-traffic functionality
monitoring and alerts, so issues could be identified quickly
Load testing could also help identify potential bottlenecks before customers encountered them. The goal wasn't simply to find out whether a store could cope with its expected traffic, but to understand where performance began to deteriorate and what could be improved beforehand.
Don't overlook the checkout
A fast homepage or product page meant little if the checkout became slow or unreliable when customers were ready to buy.
Peak periods placed additional pressure on payment gateways, order processing, stock management and other systems involved in completing a transaction. A retailer's checkout therefore needed to be tested as part of the wider customer journey rather than treated as a separate consideration.
Reducing unnecessary steps, ensuring payment methods were working correctly and monitoring transaction failures could all help minimise friction when demand was highest.
The experience reported by Aero's agency partners during Black Friday reinforced the importance of this.
Lucy Payne, Head of Client Services at Techquity, said:
Even with considerably larger volumes of traffic, there was absolutely no change in their experience on Black Friday compared to any other day. The checkout journey was seamless and fast as always.
Test the parts of your store customers don't see
Peak trading didn't just test the front end of an ecommerce store. It also put the underlying infrastructure and integrations under pressure.
Retailers needed to consider what happened behind the scenes when order volumes increased. Inventory updates, payment processing, fulfilment integrations, customer accounts and reporting could all become potential bottlenecks.
This made pre-event testing particularly valuable. Reviewing the complete order journey, from product discovery through to payment and fulfilment, helped identify dependencies that might otherwise only become apparent when real customers were placing orders.
Speed was a commercial consideration
Site speed was not simply a technical metric during Black Friday. When customers were comparing products, moving between pages and trying to complete purchases quickly, performance became part of the buying experience.
The Aero team used the Black Friday period to identify opportunities for further optimisation. The event therefore served two purposes: supporting retailers during peak trading and providing a real-world environment in which the platform could be tested and improved.
That feedback loop was important. Peak periods revealed how the platform behaved under pressure and highlighted areas where further efficiency could be gained.
Agencies played an important role
The platform was only one part of the preparation. Agency teams played a significant role in getting individual stores ready for peak trading.
Technical preparation could include performance optimisation, infrastructure reviews, testing, monitoring and resolving issues before traffic increased. Agencies also understood the individual requirements of their clients and could identify areas of risk specific to each store.
Techquity's experience demonstrated how platform performance and agency expertise worked together during the event.
Lucy Payne said:
We are so proud of how well our client’s sites performed this Black Friday. All the hard work that has been put in to get our clients where they needed to be in time for the busiest period paid off, and it has been hugely rewarding watching our clients thrive.
The lesson was that successful peak trading depended on preparation across the whole ecommerce operation, rather than on the platform alone.
Use peak trading to learn, not just survive
Black Friday could easily be viewed as a single event that retailers needed to get through. But the data and technical insight generated during peak periods could be valuable long after the sales had ended.
Retailers and agencies could review:
where traffic peaked and when
which pages or features experienced the greatest demand
where customers dropped out of the journey
checkout and payment performance
infrastructure and server utilisation
stock availability and fulfilment performance
customer service volumes and common queries
which promotions and products generated the greatest demand
These insights could then feed into the next peak trading plan, making each event an opportunity to improve rather than starting from scratch every year.
The key takeaway: prepare for the pressure
The biggest lesson from Aero's Black Friday experience was that peak performance couldn't be treated as an afterthought.
Retailers needed to understand where their stores could come under pressure, test those areas before the event and work with their agencies and technology partners to address potential problems.
A lean, well-optimised ecommerce platform could provide a strong technical foundation, but preparation still mattered. Performance testing, monitoring, checkout optimisation and close collaboration between retailers, agencies and platform teams all contributed to a more resilient peak trading experience.
As Richard Bendelow, Aero Commerce CEO, reflected after the event:
The many retailers using Aero have mostly had the best Black Friday they have ever had. Equally, with huge influxes of traffic and relentless demands, the past few days have presented a huge opportunity for Aero, allowing us to stress-test future concepts that will further improve efficiency and evolve our platform to be even quicker.
For Aero, Black Friday was not just a demonstration of platform performance. It was a real-world test that helped identify opportunities to make the platform more efficient and better prepared for the demands of peak ecommerce.
Preparing for your next peak trading period?
Book a demo to find out how Aero can support a fast, flexible ecommerce operation built to handle the demands of peak trading.
