E-Commerce Times Talkback

Re: Reports: E-Tailers Lagged in Black Friday Stampede
Posted by: Keith Regan 2003-12-05 08:39:18

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Some of the biggest retailers' Web sites reacted sluggishly during the post-Thanksgiving e-tail rush, with as many as one in five potential transactions failing at peak times, but overall the e-commerce sector held up under intense shopping activity, according to tracking data from two firms. Keynote Systems said poor performance by a small number of well-known retailers caused the average transaction success rate to fall to 80 percent between 9 a.m. and noon Pacific time on Friday. "Typically, the success rate across most sites is above 95 percent," Roopak Patel, product manager at Keynote Systems, told the E-Commerce Times.

Re: Reports: E-Tailers Lagged in Black Friday Stampede
Posted by: underscore 2003-12-05 08:56:20 In reply to: Keith Regan

Complaints may abound for online retailers where transactions took up to 100 seconds, but the bigger picture/question is: how much time would the entire process have taken in a traditional retail store? Besides playing human hockey to get through the throng of people during black Friday and into the weekend, consider the number of retail stores that could accommodate a check-out in 100 seconds (not many...if any). No system is infallible, and the peak in online activity is indicative of the continued migration of offline retail foot traffic into online retail web traffic.
Regards,
Eric