MINNEAPOLIS – Target’s website crashed Monday morning as the retailer coped with high traffic volume on the day billed as the busiest for online shopping.
The company offered 15 percent off all goods on its website, a first, and free shipping on all orders Monday.
“Both traffic and order volumes are exceeding Target’s Thursday Black Friday event, which was our biggest day ever for online sales,” Target spokesman Eddie Baeb said in an email.
The trouble began around 9 a.m. Central time. The site came back up shortly before 10, but it wasn’t fully operational until around 10:45.
Minneapolis-based Target Corp. previously experienced traffic overloads and site crashes on days when the company offered limited release of designer collections from Missoni and Lilly Pulitzer. Earlier this year, the company increased its mobile app’s capacity sevenfold to handle growing demand.
Online sales account for about 3 percent of Target’s $73 billion in annual sales. Target shares were down 1.5 percent in morning trading.
Also Monday, some Internet users noted problems with the online payment company PayPal.
Sales among all U.S. retailers were expected to reach $3 billion Monday, making it the biggest online shopping day ever.
Online sales were up more than 21 percent on Friday compared to last year, according to IBM Watson Trend, which monitors millions of transactions from retail websites.
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