I survived another Black Friday. I manage the technology operations for a top 10 retail website. Traffic and sales were up again this year, by at least 20%. And mobile had 100% gains from last year.
Database tier was solid this year, but application servers were running hot and made me nervous at around 1100. A big web crawl might have tipped us over the edge.
We spend months preparing for these days. Oh, and cybermonday will be busier!
Anybody else host and operate a large web property? How was your black Friday?
I’ve never really understood the “Cyber Monday” thing. I’ve never bothered to do any internet shopping until later in December and never had any problems waiting until then. The idea that there would be a reason to rush to a computer on the Monday after Thanksgiving makes no sense to me.
Rush? No need. But definitely check for good sales as sometimes they come up. Think of it like a one day Steam holiday sale: there’s going to be a lot of stuff that’s cheap that either sucks or you don’t need, but if you’re lucky that one game/whatever that you’d held off on until the price dropped may finally come around for sale. Sure, you can wait until the next sale, but you know you want it know …
Not really. I have a budget for Christmas gifts and whenever I get to around to doing the shopping, the budget still applies. The Monday after Thanksgiving doesn’t move me to shop earlier then I feel like. But then again neither does the Friday after Thanksgiving. I guess I’m not wired to get caught up in the hype.
