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Karen Brown
Long lines.
Long delays.
Slow service.
Merchandise out of stock.
And this is Web shopping.
Holiday shoppers hitting the Internet rather than their local shopping mall are finding Web buying is not as easy as they thought.
Sure, they avoid frustrating hunts for parking spaces or listening to 59 nauseating versions of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," but the reality is they are facing shopping snarls online. Many Web retailers are struggling to keep up with the estimated 8.6 million customers who are shopping with a mouse rather than a shopping basket between Thanksgiving and New Year's, according to Forrester Research Inc. figures.
Indeed, the Massachusetts-based think tank recently issued a dour report predicting holiday e-commerce problems. The report focused on two trouble spots: Because most traditional retailers have no previous holiday e-commerce experience, they won't invest in high volume systems until they are stung by sales losses from Web site failures. And most retailers simply don't understand the potential volume of Internet traffic their sites could draw.
Already, there have been notable snarls. At Toysrus.com, problems began before Nov. 6 with a site slowdown, which a company spokeswoman blamed on three simultaneous major marketing campaigns.
"The site has never crashed," she said. "It has actually been quite healthy the whole time. But it did have a slowdown."
The toy distributor had quadrupled the number of servers for the crucial holiday season, but when it became clear response was even greater than anticipated that number was again tripled, the spokeswoman said.
Toysrus.com has resorted to restricting access at peak times.
At the same time, the company's customer support center has added staff and is available 24 hours.
The story is different at E! Online's shopping site, according to e-commerce director Sandra Choi. Shop E! Online is offering free second-day shipping and has experienced a 50% traffic increase since Nov. 1, but beefed up distribution, customer service and Web site staff are handling the load, "so we're keeping our fingers crossed," she said.
"We've been OK," she said. "We were well prepared and we prepared several months in advance."
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