A number of major retailers’ websites went down as they failed to cope with the surge in Black Friday traffic last night.
Ted Baker was the first to experience problems not long after 9pm, with users only able to access the site intermittently.
Video game retailer Game’s site was also down for three hours last night, citing “maintenance”, while Calvin Klein’s paid Google adverts led to a blank page.
Elsewhere it emerged on Twitter that John Lewis’ website was down for periods during the evening, with its customer service page tweeting it was “experiencing some technical issues”.
“This just highlights that some retailers have not taken the necessary steps to prepare for Black Friday,” PushON managing director Simon Wharton said.
“Last year, Currys PC World’s website struggled in the early hours of Black Friday and there were also issues reported with the New Look, River Island and Missguided websites.
https://twitter.com/fayesharpe78/status/933728010708176897
Sorry about the wait, we’re experiencing some technical issues. We’re refreshing the website continually. We hope to be back with you soon.
— John Lewis (@JLcustserv) November 22, 2017
“So, why haven’t retailers like Debenhams and Ted Baker learnt from last year’s mistakes and took the time to make sure their sites were crash-proof early on?
“We’d recommend implementing scalable hosting solutions, such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure or Private Cloud, which will allow merchants to deal with peaks and troughs on Black Friday.
“Failing to prepare for peak can cause poor performance, site downtime, and ultimately lost revenue for retailers.”
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