Lessons Learned from Cyber Monday

Today was the official kick off of the online holiday shopping season, according to, Shop.org, a division of the National Retail Federation. While there is much todo about the day being a bellwether for online sales, there are also clues that tell us some things about the state of Web Operations Management among e-tailers.

Given the importance put on holiday sales, it's surprising to think that any retailer would be caught off guard by the amount of traffic generated between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. Yet large retailers like Victoria's Secret, Williams-Sonoma and Dell experienced performance issues according to a report from Gomez, Inc.  Another news report  described how Sears.com went down due to a large volume of traffic over the weekend. What did they expect? How could you announce the return of the layaway and incredible "one-day only" bargains in the midst of an economic recession and not expect a stampede of traffic to your site? 

Savvy marketers should take a lesson from this. Next year, as you plan for the big online shopping season, look to your site metrics to gauge anticipated traffic based on previous years' data. You should also check out what the industry analysts have to say about the overall market. Then, talk with your IT/Web Infrastructure folks to make sure your site can take the anticipated traffic. Finally, make sure you have an ROI defined so you can measure how well your site did against anticipated traffic.