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The Glitch Grinch Strikes Again

Don't let high traffic surges cause delays on your ecommerce site, which could result in customers abandoning their shopping carts.

High traffic is a good thing, right? Wrong, according to Saturday’s edition of the New York Times which reported that high traffic disrupted Wal-Mart’s website for most of Friday, which was expected to be one of the year’s busiest shopping days both on and off the net. The Walt Disney Company also had problems handling the rush of online activity Friday, while Amazon.com’s site had brief disruptions a day earlier due to a Thanksgiving Day sale on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 video game machines.

For most of Friday morning attempts to open Walmart.com resulted in blank pages, delays or other problems. By early afternoon, visitors were simply told to come back later. Walmart.com spokeswoman Amy Colella blamed “a higher than anticipated traffic surge.”  While there is never a good time to have a glitch on your ecommerce site, a glitch that occurs on one of the busiest days of the year’s biggest shopping season has to be among the worst things that can happen. This had to come as major financial blow for the retail giant who has unabashedly gone head to head with Target to lure holiday shoppers to its stores and its web site.

Picture this. Thousands of shoppers, credit cards in hand, wanting nothing more than to sign on to the Wal-Mart site and spend their money. When the retail giant couldn’t meet their needs, it is reasonable to assume that some other online store did. And if their second choice met their needs quickly and efficiently they may be the first choice next time. Ouch. It’s much easier to keep shoppers than recruit new ones or bring the old ones back.

That’s why it is essential that you and your web host have ongoing dialogue and interaction this time of year. Make sure everything on your site is up and running at peak performance. Don’t let delays and glitches cause your customers to abandon their shopping carts on your site in search of greener, more user friendly pastures.

At the risk of stating the obvious, there’s a whole lot at stake here. According to Internet Retailer, 80% of internet users in the United States expect to purchase gifts online between now and Christmas, spending an average of $504. The spending represents 39% of shoppers’ intended spending of $1,282. A full 24% plan to spend most of their holiday budget on line.

Convenience and the ability to comparison shop are the main drivers for online shoppers according to a poll conducted by AOL Shopping.  The nasty winter weather makes the prospect of sipping eggnog in front of the fireplace while leisurely completing your holiday shopping with a few clicks seem mighty attractive. No lines, no retail rage, no waiting. The AOL Shopping Poll also listed the following as incentives to shop online:

• 58% said they shop online to save time.
• 32% cited the ease of comparison shopping
• 29% said they found gift items online that are not available in local stores.
• 24% cited the value of free shipping
• 17% said they are attracted by online sales promotions
• 17% cited easy last minute shopping
• Only 9% said they shop online to avoid spending money on gasoline.

Asked which items they were most likely to purchase online rather than in a bricks and mortar store, 64% selected books and music, 35% stated electronics, 31% cited toys or games, 29% said clothing and accessories, and 23% said computer software.

For some people online shopping is also a matter of security. Holiday shopping rage resulted in a 911 call to police officers in San Jose Friday night at the CompUSA store.  Police arrived at the scene at 9:30 p.m. to restore order. Retail sales manager Christopher Dickson doubled as a bouncer, holding back throngs of shoppers from overcrowding the store during the special sale form 9 p.m. until midnight. The line outside the store stretched around the outdoor shopping mall as 1,000 waiting in line for hours in the cold (instead of sipping egg nog by the fireplace).

While online shopping may seem like a procrastinator’s dream, internet users are 30 percent more likely than non users to say they have started their holiday shopping. This pattern may be explained, in part by the groups that are most likely to be online: namely younger and more affluent adults according to PEW internet research. Internet users under the age of fifty are more likely than their non-user counterparts to have started shopping. Those with less income to spare are both less likely to have started shopping and less likely to be internet users.

The shoppers are out there with Christmas Club cash and credit cards in their hands. Talk to your web host to make sure you are ready for them. Don’t let the glitch Grinch steal them from you. They may never come back.