Cyber Monday

The biggest shopping day of the year for retail stores is the Friday after Thanksgiving also known as Black Friday. On this day stores offer outrageous discounts with some stores opening at 4:30 a.m. With the boom of the internet in the last decade or so a new phrase has been coined; Cyber Monday. Cyber Monday officially started in 2005 when the term was coined based on research showing that 77% of online retailers reported a significant increase in sales on the Monday after Thanksgiving in 2004. Online shoppers can enjoy the discounts that are available to those on Black Friday without the hassle of waiting in lines and dealing with the crowds. It is very important that companies keep their websites up to date and make sure that they are offering deals that the consumers will not be able to say no to. Information technology plays an important role because they need to make sure the website is functioning properly and efficiently. This Cyber Monday lots of companies experienced difficulties with their online ordering services due to the heaving volume of customers. Sears, Saks Fifth Avenue, Costco, Dell, Victoria's Secret, Bloomingdale's and Williams-Sonoma all saw their sites malfunction at some point between Friday and Monday, according to companies that monitor Web performance. Some of the problems that people experienced included error messages, extremely long loading times, inability to recall previously stored account information, or collapsed all together. This turns people away from purchasing what they want and just causes aggravation. Many of the spokespeople from companies that were affected attributed the error to not properly testing the subsequent pages on their websites, and not preparing enough or realizing there would be a very serious problem. Due to the speedy reactions of the IT people in the companies the problem was communicated to them and steps were taken to try and solve the problem in a timely manner. A rep from Best Buy said that they ill begin preparing for Cyber Monday in January this year to ensure that every customer who uses their site will be satisfied with his or her experience.