Black Friday shoppers bog down retail Web sites

Retail sales on Black Friday topped last year’s sales by 11%, but the high volume of shoppers bogged down many retailers’ Web sites.

Almost all the sites that Keynote Systems tracks performed slower than normal on Nov. 27, and some crumbled under the pressure. On the plus side, overall performance improved this year as compared to last year, and fewer sites suffered major outages, according to the Internet performance measurement specialist.

"Overall the quality of the sites tracked on Black Friday improved this year over last, with fewer showing major outages and issues impacting a large number of users," said Ben Rushlo, director of competitive research at Keynote, in a statement.

Wal-Mart, Sears and Barnes & Noble delivered the best site performance. “Overall, Wal-Mart was the most stable site, showing not a single error (100% availability for the day) and very little slowdown,” Rushlo said. “Wal-Mart has struggled in the past with Black Friday traffic, but this year they got it right, offering their customers a consistently fast and reliable experience.”

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Retail sales on Black Friday topped last year’s sales by 11%, but the high volume of shoppers bogged down many retailers’ Web sites.

Almost all the sites that Keynote Systems tracks performed slower than normal on Nov. 27, and some crumbled under the pressure. On the plus side, overall performance improved this year as compared to last year, and fewer sites suffered major outages, according to the Internet performance measurement specialist.

"Overall the quality of the sites tracked on Black Friday improved this year over last, with fewer showing major outages and issues impacting a large number of users," said Ben Rushlo, director of competitive research at Keynote, in a statement.

Wal-Mart, Sears and Barnes & Noble delivered the best site performance. “Overall, Wal-Mart was the most stable site, showing not a single error (100% availability for the day) and very little slowdown,” Rushlo said. “Wal-Mart has struggled in the past with Black Friday traffic, but this year they got it right, offering their customers a consistently fast and reliable experience.”

Keynote’s Retail Transaction Performance Index benchmarks the performance for an online shopping transaction for each retail site, including product search, shopping cart and checkout process performance. Data is collected on an hourly basis from 10 cities across the U.S.

Keynote will continue to track the speed and reliability of the most popular U.S. retail Web sites throughout the holiday shopping season. Included among the dozens of sites in Keynote's retail index are Abercrombie & Fitch, Amazon, Apple Store, Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, Borders, J Crew, JC Penney, Kohls, Macy's, Overstock, Staples, Target, Toys R Us, Wal-Mart and Zappos.

Meanwhile, in terms of sales, Black Friday saw $595 million in online sales, which is an 11% increase compared to Black Friday 2008, comScore reports. Overall, $10.57 billion has been spent online during the first 27 days of the retail holiday season, marking a 3% increase compared to the corresponding days last year.

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