Black Friday and Peak Traffic Monitoring Checklist

Peak traffic periods — Black Friday, Cyber Monday, seasonal sales, product launches, major marketing campaigns — are when downtime is most expensive. These are the moments your infrastructure is under maximum strain and the moments when every minute of downtime translates directly to lost revenue.

Use this checklist in the week before any major trading period. Don't discover a gap in your monitoring setup during the event itself.

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One Week Before

Review Your Monitor Coverage

• Verify all critical endpoints are monitored — homepage, checkout, payment pages, account login, cart, key product pages
• Add any new pages created for the event — landing pages, sale categories, promotional pages
• Check that content matching is configured — a page that returns 200 with an error message passes a status check but fails a content check
• Add monitors for third-party integrations — payment processor, inventory system, email service. See how to monitor third-party API dependencies

Check SSL Certificate Health

• Verify SSL certificates won't expire during the peak period — check all domains and subdomains
• Renew any certificates expiring within 60 days — don't leave this until after the event. See what is SSL certificate monitoring
• Verify the certificate chain is complete on all monitored domains

Verify Alert Contacts

• Confirm all alert contacts are current — phone numbers, email addresses, Slack handles
• Remove contacts for team members who have left
• Add the on-call person for the event period to all critical monitors
• Confirm SMS alerts are enabled for all high-priority monitors — email is too slow during an active incident
• Test that alerts fire correctly — send a test from your monitoring tool and confirm receipt

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Two Days Before

Increase Check Frequency

• Move critical endpoints to 1-minute check intervals — during peak traffic, knowing about downtime a minute sooner matters. See how to choose monitoring check frequency
• Review response time alert thresholds — a slow checkout is nearly as damaging as a down checkout; consider tightening response time alerts for the peak period

Prepare Your Incident Response

• Document who is on call during the event window (dates and times)
• Confirm escalation paths — if the first contact doesn't respond within 5 minutes, who is the backup?
• Have hosting provider support contact bookmarked — not just the URL, the direct support number or chat link
• Draft a holding message for your site in case of extended downtime. See planned maintenance notice templates for communication templates
• Prepare a social media update template for quick posting if the site is down

Status Page

• Verify your status page is live and reflecting current monitor status
• Confirm the status page is independently hosted — it should stay up if your main site goes down. See how to create a public status page
• Share your status page URL with your customer support team so they can direct customers there during incidents

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Day of the Event

Pre-Event Checks (1-2 Hours Before)

• Confirm all monitors are green — no active incidents, no recent alerts
• Check response times are at baseline — no unusual slowness before the traffic spike
• Verify on-call person is reachable and has confirmed they're available
• Set a maintenance window in your monitoring tool if you have any planned deploys or configuration changes. See maintenance windows

During the Event

• Keep your monitoring dashboard open on a secondary screen if possible
• Don't deploy changes during peak trading unless absolutely necessary — stability over features
• Acknowledge alerts quickly — even if it's a false alarm, acknowledge so your team knows someone is looking at it
• Update your status page proactively if you detect any degradation, before users notice

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After the Event

• Review the monitoring log — were there any incidents, close calls, or elevated response times?
• Write a brief post-event report covering any incidents and contributing factors. See how to write a post-incident report
• Return check intervals to normal once peak traffic subsides if you increased them for the event
• Update your monitoring runbook with any lessons learned for the next peak event

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Preparing Your Website for Black Friday

See preparing your website for Black Friday for infrastructure preparation guidance alongside this monitoring checklist.

Domain Monitor supports 1-minute check intervals, SSL monitoring, and immediate SMS alerts — everything you need for peak period coverage. Create a free account.

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Related Articles

• Preparing Your Website for Black Friday
• How to Monitor Checkout Flows and Payment Pages
• How to Reduce Alert Fatigue in Your Monitoring Setup
• How to Write a Post-Incident Report