Although Mark Evans and Rob Hyndman both wrote recent posts about the eMarketer’s recent report about the slumbering state of e-commerce in Canada, at least one Canadian website couldn’t cope with demand.
Future Shop’s website was overwhelmed on Christmas Eve with people trying to get early access to its Boxing Day prices.
The sale was advertised to begin at 8:00pm on December 24, but users received a message for at least the first two hours saying:
The request cannot be processed at this time. The amount of traffic exceeds the Web site’s configured capacity.
Even after the website came up, the “buy now” button showed signs of being overwhelmed as well. It just didn’t pay to try to beat the rush to buy disk drives, a colour laser printer or expensive SD cards for the new cameras.
What was it? Unexpected demand, poor infrastructure planning, simply not being ready on time or the misfortune of a server outage taking place on one of the toughest nights to get people to work?
It doesn’t matter what happened. These kinds of problems reflect poorly on more than just Future Shop. When a major retailer fails to provide even adequate service levels (let alone a superior shopping experience), it can discourage users from even trying other sites.
I’ll send my son to the store when it opens at 6:00am on Tuesday. That’s what kids with driver’s licenses are for, isn’t it?
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Mark Evans, Rob Hyndman, Future Shop, e-commerce