{"id":1941,"date":"2019-12-13T08:00:52","date_gmt":"2019-12-13T08:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uptime.com\/blog\/?p=1941"},"modified":"2024-02-16T02:21:33","modified_gmt":"2024-02-16T02:21:33","slug":"black-friday-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uptime.com\/blog\/black-friday-2019","title":{"rendered":"Black Friday 2019 Website Performance Report by Uptime.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tis\u2019 the season for website downtime. No matter how great your web infrastructure is, many ecommerce sites experience downtime on Black Friday.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re not alone. New research by Google Cloud<\/a> says that one out of ten retail executives reported downtime on Black Friday 2018, and four out of ten reported outages during one of the past three years.<\/p>\n

\"black-friday-retail-outages\"<\/p>\n

Source: Google Cloud<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This year was no exception. As online sales on Black Friday topped seven billion dollars,<\/a> website outages started a day before the famous shopping holiday.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll take a look not only at major outages, but also the performance of a handful of top shopping websites. We also ran our own tests to get an idea of how their performance stacks up.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with a rundown of the major website outages from this year\u2019s shopping frenzy.<\/p>\n

\n
Table of Contents<\/h5>\n
    \n
  1. Holiday Shopping Outages<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. Which Websites Were Included in the Black Friday Site Test<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. Website Performance Test Methodology<\/a><\/li>\n
  4. Fastest Response Time for Login<\/a><\/li>\n
  5. Slowest Response Time for Login<\/a><\/li>\n
  6. Fastest Homepage Response Time<\/a><\/li>\n
  7. Slowest Homepage Response Time<\/a><\/li>\n
  8. Speed Test Results<\/a><\/li>\n
  9. Number of Requests<\/a><\/li>\n
  10. Page Size<\/a><\/li>\n
  11. Final Observations<\/a><\/li>\n <\/ol>\n <\/section>\n\n

    Holiday Shopping Outages<\/h2>\n

    Website outages started on Turkey Day USA as shoppers looked to swap info on social media and get a head start on shopping. Not only were retailers affected, but social media and banking suffered as well.<\/p>\n

    Here\u2019s the scoop.<\/p>\n

    Facebook family of apps<\/h3>\n

    Both Facebook and Instagram<\/a> went down on November 28. Though pictures of Thanksgiving meals went unshared until the site was back up, the material loss was for retailers.<\/p>\n

    Facebook accounts for over 80 percent of social referral shares to ecommerce websites. And since retailers can sell directly on Facebook, they are learning hard lessons firsthand about monitoring outside services for downtime to ensure smooth shopping.<\/p>\n

    Instagram also attracts buyers worldwide. Shoppable posts<\/a>, which allow in-app purchasing through Instagram posts, are a popular weapon in the ecommerce arsenal. Without those perfectly styled pictures of their products, shoppers will have to look for products they love on Google.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    However, the sites were back up by Friday and all was right in the world again.<\/p>\n

    GHD Hair Products<\/h3>\n

    Black Friday<\/a> was a really bad hair day for hair care product company GHD. The site was down and customers looking to score holiday deals found an error page instead. Though we\u2019re not sure how long the outage lasted, customers complained on Twitter they couldn\u2019t access the site for the entire day. Others were unsure if orders went through even though the company debited money from their account.<\/p>\n

    The company assured shoppers that payment problems will be corrected and to email customer service with issues. That\u2019s one busy support team.<\/p>\n

    \n

    pic.twitter.com\/udDQGc88Y2<\/a><\/p>\n

    \u2014 ghd (@ghd) November 29, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n