Black Friday website crashes is one of the seven e-commerce trends we are watching for this holiday season, and BestBuy.com appears to be the first major U.S. shopping site to break under the strain of holiday traffic.
BestBuy.com Crashes on Black Friday (Updated)
It’s every e-commerce chief’s worst nightmare.
Jason Del Rey has been a business journalist for 15 years and has covered Amazon, Walmart, and the e-commerce industry for the last decade. He was a senior correspondent at Vox.
Best Buy’s website has been down since at least 9:50 am ET on Friday. CNBC reported the website also experienced issues around 9 am ET. The message on the website currently reads, “We’re Sorry. BestBuy.com is currently unavailable. Check back soon.” Best Buy’s app for the iPhone is also experiencing problems; it opens but isn’t loading any products.
Earlier, Nike.com said on Twitter that it was having some trouble processing orders. Last year, Walmart.com stumbled on Thanksgiving Day.
We’ve reached out to Best Buy for comment.
Update: A Best Buy rep said a surge in Web traffic on mobile devices was the cause. “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,” the company said in a statement. “Our consumers can return to BestBuy.com in the next several hours to take advantage of today’s door busters.”
As of 11:20 am ET, BestBuy.com and Best Buy’s iPhone app appeared to be working again.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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