ClickFrenzy pre-launch facts
(source:theage.com.au)
Post launch failure
The ClickFrenzy.com.au launch was to be “the sale that stopped the nation”. Instead of displaying Australia’s first national online-only mega-sale, the website suffered a total meltdown. There was no redirect to a fail-over website to tell visitors that the site was not available.
Instead, for 2 hours a short message informing visitors “http 408/409 server busy, The website is too busy to show the page”. There was so much hype and marketing before the launch but they where were not prepared for the influx of visitors.
You can’t just have a nicely designed web front-end and hoped that the web servers will cope during the site launch. You also have to think of your back-end systems and how everything is going to perform when there is a stampede of potential customers.
Another example of poor web infrastructure planning. For something simple like a friendly 404 page to guide a visitor to a sitemap. They forgot to add a friendly 404 page or a redirect. Nobody wants to see your websites “404 Error page!!“.