Wal-Mart Website Struggles to Handle Demand for 'Doorbusters'
November 27 2015 - 11:11AM
Dow Jones News
By Sarah Nassauer
Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s website malfunctioned during the
Thanksgiving shopping rush Thursday morning, throwing a wrench in
some shoppers' plans to avoid long lines by grabbing deals
online.
For the first time, the world's biggest retailer offered most of
its Black Friday "doorbusters" on its website hours before they
were available inside its U.S. stores. The discounts, which were
offered in stores starting at 6 p.m. on Thursday, went on sale
starting around 3 a.m. ET.
Wal-Mart's website was overloaded with demand which slowed
online checkout for some shoppers, said company executives.
Walmart.com did "slow down for a little bit when customers were
checking out," said Steve Bratspies, the company's new chief
merchant, in an interview. "The vast majority had no issues,"
shopping the site, he said. More people shopped online this
Thanksgiving versus last, he said.
"As [discounts] became available online, we saw an incredible
surge in traffic," a spokeswoman wrote in an email. The website
didn't crash, but did slow down, she said.
Some Wal-Mart shoppers took to Twitter to complain about
problems checking out on the retailer's website, leading to a
string of apologies from Wal-Mart's official Twitter account.
This holiday shopping season Wal-Mart has emphasized its effort
to sell both online and in stores, putting more deals online,
adding more features to its mobile app and promoting free in store
pick up for online orders. The company plans to invest $2 billion
this fiscal year and next boosting e-commerce sales as it works to
fend of growing competition from Amazon.com Inc. and other online
retails.
Target Corp. also offered most of its Black Friday deals early
online this year, but Target CEO Brian Cornell said the retailer's
website had no issues handling the holiday traffic and that he was
pleased with the site's performance. Earlier this year, the
retailer had trouble handling web traffic when it launched a design
partnership with Lilly Pulitzer and has said it would spend more to
try to fix those issues.
Write to Sarah Nassauer at sarah.nassauer@wsj.com
Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 27, 2015 10:56 ET (15:56 GMT)
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