The Best Buy website is up and running after crashing under Black Friday shopping pressure early Friday morning. The website crash likely cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars, with customers turning to other online storefronts for Black Friday shopping needs.
The website crashed early Friday morning. A few hours later the company issued this statement:
"A concentrated spike in mobile traffic triggered issues that led us to shut down BestBuy.com in order to take proactive measures to restore full performance," said Best Buy in a statement. "Our consumers can return to BestBuy.com in the next several hours to take advantage of today's door busters."
The website likely went down due to the spike in traffic experienced while Black Friday shoppers stormed the website. Shoppers trying to access the site were met with a online note that said: "We're sorry. BestBuy.com is currently unavailable. Check back soon."
Thankfully for shoppers, now that the website is back up, most of the deals, or at least those for products that have not yet been sold out, are likely still available.
The website glitch comes at an important time for Best Buy, which is competing against other online retailers for the $50 billion in sales that is generated during Black Friday. Best Buy alone generated $11.5 billion in revenue during the holiday season in 2013.
The shopping day is extremely competitive and the company's website being down likely cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars, especially because of the fact consumer electronics are often at the top of Black Friday shoppers' lists, with shoppers looking to the shopping day to replace TVs, tablets and smartphones.
A number of websites suffered the same fate Friday, especially in the UK, where Black Friday is a relatively new event. Among the retailers whose websites went down are Currys, an electronics retailer, and Argos and Tesco, general merchandise retailers.
While Cyber Monday is often dedicated to online sales, that does not mean that deals aren't available online on Black Friday and even Thanksgiving day. Wal-Mart said Friday morning that Thursday evening, now called "Gray Thursday" by some, was its second busiest day for online sales after Cyber Monday in 2013.
Online sales are becoming increasingly important for retailers, with customers opting to purchase items from the comfort of their own home rather than by going to brick-and-mortar stores. The online sales business reported a 20 percent increase in the U.S. for the fiscal year that ended on February 1. Online sales are an integral part of Best Buy, which is trying to compete with online marketplaces such as Amazon.
