Black Friday traffic will go well past our usual MAU, how should we plan?
We run a streetwear store on Shopify and i expect around three times our normal traffic across Black Friday week. Our plan's MAU covers normal months fine, but the spike will go past it.
I want to plan this in advance, not discover it live. What exactly happens to visitors above the quota, and what should I enable now so the campaign runs uninterrupted?
1 answer
Here is exactly how the quota behaves during a spike:
- Returning users are always served, regardless of quota. Anyone who has visited before keeps getting their personalized content.
- New users above the quota simply receive the default slot content until overage is enabled or the next billing cycle starts. The store keeps working normally for them, they just see the defaults instead of variants.
- The Growth plan includes pay-as-you-go overage for exactly this situation. Enable it before the campaign and new users above the included MAU are served without interruption, billed for the extra volume.
One more thing that helps during peaks: known bots do not count toward MAU on paid plans with bot traffic filtering enabled, so make sure that is on. Bot volume tends to spike alongside real traffic during sales.
There is a related thread on the exact serving behavior at the quota boundary if you want more detail: What happens to existing users when MAU is exceeded.