For retailers, jewellers, sweet shops, electronics stores, travel agencies and plenty of service businesses, the stretch from Navratri through Diwali is the busiest time of the year. Online traffic can jump several times over. Last year we wrote about what a few of our client stores learned during the sale rush. This year, we've turned it into a checklist.
Six weeks before
Plan the offers and landing pages. Decide what you're promoting and build dedicated landing pages for each campaign. A generic homepage is not a good destination for an ad.
Check stock and pricing sync. If your website stock comes from a billing system or ERP, test the sync. Selling something that's out of stock is a guaranteed bad review.
Review your hosting. Ask your host what happens when traffic triples. If you're on a basic shared plan, consider a temporary upgrade for the season.
Speed test the important pages. Homepage, category pages, product pages, cart and checkout. Fix anything slow now, not in the middle of the sale.
Four weeks before
Load test. Simulate heavy traffic on a staging copy. This is how we find slow database queries before customers do.
Set up caching. Anything that doesn't change per visitor should be cached: menus, category pages, banners.
Test payments end to end. Make test purchases with UPI, cards, net banking and wallets. Check that confirmation emails and WhatsApp messages actually arrive.
Update festive creative. Banners, popups, homepage sections. Compress the images properly. Festive banners are often huge files.
Two weeks before
Freeze code changes. No new features, no plugin experiments. Only fixes for real problems.
Brief your support team. Prepare answers for common questions: delivery times, return policy during sale, gift wrapping, payment issues.
Check delivery promises. If your courier partners are overloaded during Diwali, update the expected delivery dates on your site. Honest dates reduce cancellations.
Take a full backup. And confirm you know how to restore it.
During the season
- Keep someone available who can actually log into the server.
- Watch the checkout conversion rate, not just traffic.
- Monitor uptime with alerts to a phone, not just email.
- Check that order notification emails aren't landing in spam.
Small touches that help
- A clear delivery cut-off for Diwali, prominently displayed. "Order by 25th October for delivery before Diwali."
- Gift options and a gift message field at checkout.
- Festive greeting on the homepage. It's a small thing, but customers notice.
- Easy WhatsApp support for last-minute questions.
Not just for online stores
Service businesses benefit too. A travel agency can promote Diwali holiday packages. A clinic can publish festive hours. A restaurant can take pre-orders for sweets and hampers through a simple form.
The festive season rewards businesses that are ready for it. A few hours of preparation now is much cheaper than a crashed website on the busiest weekend of the year.
