Dive Brief:
- On Black Friday, Macy's Inc. struggled to keep up with the volume of website traffic, citing "heavier traffic than normal," according to a Bloomberg report.
- Online shoppers were pushed to a landing page with a countdown clock for when they could return to the main site. The mobile site also had issues on Black Friday, with users ending up on a landing page that said its site was "temporarily unavailable due to routine site maintenance," according to the report.
- Macy's wasn't alone in its website challenges. Other retailers such as Victoria's Secret, Express Inc. and Pier 1 imports also fought website slowdowns and transaction delays.
Dive Insight:
The Black Friday failings for Macy's comes at a time when it is rapidly downsizing retail stores across the country. For the ailing retail giant, e-commerce could be lucrative for its future.
Retailers with sites that could not keep up with the network capacity did a disservice to their customers and could have potentially harmed their Black Friday sales. But with Black Friday over, Cyber Monday is now the main focus. More than 122 million Americans are expected to shop online on Monday, according to a survey from the National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights & Analytics.
The increased traffic days can serve as a lesson in network capacity. Those that can keep up with enthusiastic shoppers are set for record sales. However, those that cannot will have to work with service providers and evaluate their infrastructure to make sure websites don't fail during future critical retail seasons.
