More holiday traffic, more jams for Web sites

An Overstock.com Inc. executive estimates that a 15-minute shutdown causes a loss of $250,000.
WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON -- Agonizingly slow Web sites. Maddening error messages. And, most frustrating of all, unavailable home pages.
Online shoppers intent on skipping long lines and clogged parking lots at the mall are discovering a different kind of traffic problem this holiday season: overcrowded Web sites that are cracking under the pressure.
Since Thanksgiving, some of the biggest names in online retailing -- Amazon.com, Kmart.com and Sears.com among them -- have experienced significant glitches that blocked visitors from making purchases, according to industry analysts and research firms.
"The story of this holiday season, for the big retailers online, is a surprising amount of inconsistency," said Matthew Poepsel, director of product management at Gomez Inc., a firm that tracks Web site performance.
Cause and effect
Analysts attribute the holiday hiccups to a dramatic jump in online traffic, propelled by a crush of new Web-only sales promotions and the rapid growth of high-speed Internet access at home, which has extended peak Web browsing times from the traditional working hours well into the night.
Holiday sales have already reached $11.1 billion, a 23 percent increase over the comparable period of 2003, according to ComScore Networks Inc., a research firm that tracks online sales. On several retail sites, such as Walmart.com, HomeDepot.com and Staples.com, traffic is up 50 percent or more, the firm found.
But the troubles are a potent reminder that the 10-year-old business of Web retailing, known as e-tailing, is still very much a work in progress. Every year, retailers spend millions of dollars to upgrade their Web sites, but analysts say there is still no foolproof method for avoiding overloads.
"It is still a very young discipline," said Matthew Rechs, chief technology officer at Schematic, a Los Angeles technology company that has designed Web sites for retailers. "The reality is that we don't know that much about how to predict Web traffic."
Overloaded by consumers lured by its $500 sweepstakes, Kmart.com experienced a major slowdown on its Web site the weekend after Thanksgiving, making it inaccessible for extended periods, analysts said.
The retailer had aggressively advertised the promotion online and in its stores "so the response was overwhelming," said Kmart spokeswoman Caryn Klebba.
What's more, Kmart had just relaunched its Web site Nov. 18, so the busy Thanksgiving weekend represented what Klebba called "the first true test of the site."
A little more than a week later, on Dec. 6, Amazon.com malfunctioned from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., according to Keynote Systems Inc., a research firm that tracks Web site performance. The firm found that the site was unable to complete about 20 percent of transactions in that period.
Amazon.com spokesman Craig Berman would not discuss the cause of the Web site's troubles but confirmed that it suffered "intermittent outages" and that "some people could not access the site." He said the company quickly fixed the problem "and we are pleased with the site's performance since then."
Both Amazon.com's and Kmart.com's breakdowns were brief, but even temporary glitches can be costly, analysts said.
Cost per minute
Shawn Schwegman, vice president of technology at online retailer Overstock.com Inc., estimates that for every 15 minutes the company's Web site is down, it loses about $250,000.
As a result, the company has installed alarms in its information-technology office, which sound the second there is a potential problem with the Web site. "Our whole business revolves around the holidays," Schwegman said. "If we fail here, we are all out of our jobs."
Retail Web sites typically falter when shoppers clog their home pages, overloading computer servers with requests -- say, to retrieve the image of an iPod or a pair of Ugg boots. During the holidays, when consumers are bombarded with TV and print promotions and rush online to make purchases, such traffic jams happen with greater frequency, Rechs said.
Keynote and Gomez use different methods to gauge Web site performance. But both use high-speed Internet connections and multiple computers positioned around the country to repeatedly attempt to buy a single product.
Each measures, as a percentage, how frequently a product can be located and prepared for purchase without glitches, starting at a Web site's home page and scrolling through several links, just as a consumer would. (They do not complete the purchase, however.) For Web sites such as Walmart.com and Sears.com, the success rate is typically 99 percent or above, retailers and analysts said.
But when Gomez tried to buy a digital camera on the Sears Web site from Nov. 22 to Nov. 29, it had a success rate of 92.3 percent. For the same period, when Keynote tried to buy a stroller, it had a success rate of 95.6 percent. For sites as popular at Wal-Mart and Sears, a 1 percentage point decline in the success rate translates into failed purchases for thousands of shoppers.