Lowe's website crashed during Black Friday sales

Mary Hanbury

Nov 24, 2018, 01:04 IST

Lowe's

Lowe's site crashed on Black Friday.

Lowe's website crashed during Black Friday sales shopping.
Customers complained on Twitter that they were unable to make any purchases online. The website was then temporarily shut down.
On Friday afternoon, it relaunched.

Lowe's website crashed midway through Black Friday sales shopping and customers took to social media to complain.

"Lowe's, can you at least provide an ETA on the website fix so I can stop refreshing every 30 seconds like an idiot," one customer wrote on Twitter.

Other customers threatened to shop elsewhere.

Lowe's apologized to customers on Twitter and temporarily shut down the site. It was relaunched on Friday afternoon around 2.30 p.m. ET.

Lowe's is among retailers such as J.Crew, Lululemon, Walmart, and Ulta who have experienced problems with their websites crashing as Black Friday sales are in full swing.

Experts say these problems are likely due to stores not having the sufficient infrastructure to handle increased traffic online.

"If you have not load tested your site at five times normal traffic volumes, your site will probably fail," Bob Buffone, chief technology officer at web-optimization software company Yottaa, told Business Insider's Kate Taylor on Thursday.

According to Adobe Analytics, online shopping is booming this Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Online sales were up 28% on Thanksgiving Day this year and are on track to hit over $6.4 billion on Black Friday.