Cyber Monday ’08: The Butterfly Effect In Action
Written by Fred J. AunDecember 2nd, 2008
Whether the wing flapping of a bug can eventually cause a tornado is debatable, but Cyber Monday 2008 should serve as a warning to E-tailers to avoid the lesson learned by Staples and Dell on Monday (Dec. 1): Don't ignore the butterfly effect. In both instances, these major E-tail sites were brought to a halt because of glitches with relatively minor site components. It was a minor search engine problem that brought Staples' availability way down, while Dell was knocked off by some coding that prepopulated forms with customer information, based on access to a CRM database.
Despite those incidents—in part fueled by record-breaking traffic, which decided to not be influenced by the recession—this year's Cyber Monday was relatively uneventful, with most of the major retailers faring quite well. But for those who didn't fare so well—including Costco, Bloomingdale's, Borders UK, Gap, Home Depot, Victoria's Secret, Williams-Sonoma, Tiger Direct, Wegmans and H-E-B—it was a memorable day.
This Story Is Only Available For Premium Subscribers. Click Or Login In Below To Read The Rest Of This Story.
Already a Subscriber? Login Here
One Comment | Read Cyber Monday ’08: The Butterfly Effect In Action
Leave a Reply
Readers, specifically those who want to comment on a story:
Our Comment SPAM system is getting very aggressive these days and has been blocking legitimate comments. If you post a comment and don't see it appear within 2 hours or so, can you please send a heads-up to customer-service@storefrontbacktalk.com? Ideally, please include the time you posted the comment. That will allow us to try and hunt for it. Thanks! P.S. We're working on fixing the system, but we don't want to lose any valuable comments in the meantime.
Our Comment SPAM system is getting very aggressive these days and has been blocking legitimate comments. If you post a comment and don't see it appear within 2 hours or so, can you please send a heads-up to customer-service@storefrontbacktalk.com? Ideally, please include the time you posted the comment. That will allow us to try and hunt for it. Thanks! P.S. We're working on fixing the system, but we don't want to lose any valuable comments in the meantime.
-Christine
December 8th, 2008 at 11:19 am
Websites may always have problems. I think the right thing to do is to capture contact info – email or mobile – and tell them when you are open for business.