Online woes impact Neiman Marcus, others over Black Friday
Three leading retailers suffered varying degrees of difficulty with their e-commerce sites during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
Walmart, Neiman Marcus, and Newegg all experienced unwanted events ranging from glitches to extended outages during different portions of the three-day Nov. 27-29 period. Most significantly,
Neiman Marcus saw its e-commerce site crash several times for extended periods during those three days.
According to CNBC, Neiman Marcus’ site first started displaying an error message the morning of Friday, Nov. 27. The retailer acknowledged the outage with a tweet at 10:21 a.m. that day.
At 11:54 a.m., Neiman Marcus tweeted that due to continuing site issues, it would extend its extra 33% off sale. The retailer tweeted that its site was back up at 5:27 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 28, and said it would extend the sale until 6 p.m. CT that evening.
However, at 1:02 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 29, Neiman Marcus acknowledged continued site issues with a tweet thanking customers for their patience and saying the site was back up. One minute later, Neiman Marcus tweeted it would offer Cyber Monday deals early, and one minute after that tweeted customers could receive up to a $500 gift card with their online purchase.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal, some Walmart customers experienced slowness and difficulty checking out online orders early in the morning of Friday, Nov. 27. Walmart began offering online “doorbuster” deals at 3 a.m. that day, leading to a surge in traffic and purchases. Media reports also indicate some online deals did not launch at their scheduled times, but the site never actually crashed.
Newegg also experienced site slowness and difficulties throughout the day Nov. 27, with a full outage lasting from roughly 11:45 – 12:30 p.m. ET. Walmart and Newegg both engaged in Twitter conversations with customers who experienced Black Friday online difficulties, but did not tweet general messages of apology or explanation like Neiman Marcus.
Other retailers including Jet.com and Footlocker were also reported to have experienced site slowness during Black Friday.
In 2014, Best Buy experienced a notable Black Friday site outage. Earlier this year, Target’s site went down as a result of heavy discounting on Lilly Pulitzer products. Both retailers apparently learned from those mistakes, as neither reported any issues during Black Friday 2015.
Considering that digital Black Friday traffic and purchases surged this year and show every sign of continuing their exponential growth, the retail industry as a whole must learn from these online issues. Black Friday 2016 will surely put even more of a strain on retailers’ e-commerce infrastructures, with even less room for error.