Get ready for Black Friday: Prepare for peak demand with AWS

One day – two words – can make or break your year. Because while Black Friday brings the biggest revenue opportunities, it also carries the highest risk.

Just moments of downtime or poor performance can mean missed calls, lost customers and lasting brand damage.

With the right cloud infrastructure though, your business can manage peak demand, maximise revenue and protect your reputation. And Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides the tools and solutions you need.

Managing Black Friday demand

For online retailers, Black Friday brings sudden, dramatic spikes in website traffic, orders and transactions. Shoppers expect fast-loading pages, seamless checkouts and absolute reliability.

Accommodating these peaks in demand has traditionally meant wasted resources during quieter periods. But AWS presents a better solution: infrastructure that scales effectively – and cost-efficiently – to handle surges in demand.

How AWS keeps you ready for anything

Here’s what those AWS benefits look like in practice:

Scalability on demand

AWS lets you instantly scale computing power as traffic grows, then scale back as demand returns to normal. No endless debates about capacity planning, and no panic-buying servers at the last minute. This flexibility means you avoid spending on resources you don’t need, giving you the power to control costs without compromising performance.

Reliable and secure

AWS infrastructure spans multiple global availability zones, so your business stays online even if one data centre has a problem. This built-in redundancy keeps your services running, protects your revenue and safeguards your customers’ experience.

Consistent, fast performance

AWS provides tools like Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) and Elastic Load Balancing, helping make sure your website and apps perform consistently – even when thousands of customers visit at once. Speed and reliability are critical, and AWS delivers both.

Scaling for peak demand: the Merlin Cycles story

Merlin Cycles, a leading UK bike retailer, faced a challenge common to many growing businesses: their legacy infrastructure was over-provisioned, expensive and inflexible. They paid for excess capacity all year just to handle seasonal peaks like Black Friday. And when their hosting provider was acquired, reliability and support suffered even further.

Zen began with a Discovery assessment and a Well-Architected Review, mapping Merlin Cycles’ business and technical needs. Working closely together, we designed and delivered a new AWS architecture using auto-scaling EC2 instances, managed databases (Amazon RDS), centralised file storage (Amazon EFS), and high-speed in-memory caching (ElastiCache). A detailed cost analysis helped strike the right balance between efficiency and resilience.

The result? A new platform that automatically matches real-time demand, so Merlin Cycles only pays for what’s needed, when it’s needed. Proactive monitoring, automated deployment and Zen’s Managed Service ensure consistent performance, security and guaranteed SLAs. But what does that mean in reality?

• Significant cost savings by right-sizing for demand.
• Higher uptime and resilience, even at peak times like Black Friday.
• Improved agility and a solid foundation for future digital modernisation.
• Confidence from ongoing support and clear accountability.

By moving to AWS with Zen, Merlin Cycles turned a business risk into an advantage, leaving them ready for every peak trading day. Read the full Merlin Cycles story here.

Preparing your business for Black Friday

If you’re ready to get started, we recommend beginning with the basics and building from there. Here are our top tips to get your business ready for Black Friday:

• Evaluate your current infrastructure for scalability and reliability.
• Stress-test your website and applications under peak load conditions.
• Review your disaster recovery and backup plans.
• Set up real-time monitoring and alerts for critical systems.
• Book an AWS Well-Architected Review with Zen to highlight risks and opportunities.
• Work with Zen to develop an optimisation and management plan for Black Friday and beyond.

Put these steps into action and you’ll be ready to make the most of Black Friday and every other peak period that follows.

Why choose Zen as your AWS partner?

Zen is an independent, B Corp-certified, AWS Advanced Services Partner dedicated to doing right by customers. We provide expert guidance from initial architecture and migration to ongoing optimisation. With no sales commissions and a core purpose to “Do right by people and planet”, we’re focused on your business success.

Our managed services include proactive monitoring and regular reviews to ensure you’re fully prepared for peak trading events like Black Friday. We’ll give you clear, unbiased advice and practical solutions designed specifically for your business.

Book your Black Friday AWS consultation

Are you ready to take control of your peak demand period? To capitalise on every sales opportunity? Schedule a pre-Black Friday consultation with Zen’s AWS experts and let us build the right solution for you. With AWS and Zen, you can trust your infrastructure to keep up – no matter what Black Friday brings.

Find out more about AWS from Zen and schedule your consultation today