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Target, Barnes&Noble Fared Best During Holidays

Written by Evan Schuman
January 11th, 2007

Out of 30 top E-Commerce sites analyzed this past holiday season by web traffic tracking firm Keynote Systems, only two sites made it all the way from Black Friday through Christmas Eve without crashing: Target and Barnes&Noble.

This holiday season saw several notable E-Commerce site crashes—including Wal-Mart and Macys–but to lose its crash-free virginity label, a site needed to record only one hour’s worth of outage. Target and B&N achieved that distinction, with two others—OfficeMax and CircuitCity—getting close with just one hour of downtime apiece, said Keynote senior manager Ben Rushlo.

“A lot of these sites were unable to pull off a flawless holiday,” Rushlo said, adding that his team also looked at responsiveness, where JC Penney, Ambercrombie & Fitch, CircuitCity, OfficeDepot and Staples fared well. In general, apparel sites fared the worst, with one site—which Rushlo wouldn’t identify—showing a routine slowdown of about 70 percent.

Posted in E-Commerce, IT Strategy/Industry
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