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It was supposed to be "the sale that stopped the internet".
Instead, it was the sale that crashed the internet.
- Herald Sun headline - Melbourne
Last week I wrote the following about the upcoming 'Click Frenzy' event
"Taking it's lead from the American 'Cyber Monday' it will be interesting to see how the Australian equivalent fares."
"One of the interesting things to watch out for is how will the various sites handle the web traffic if it really takes off? This years Cyber Monday in the US saw a peak of 1.6 Million pages views per minute - there is nothing more frustrating to customers than not being able to get the deal they were after due to technical issues."
Well the technical issues certainly became the talking point VERY quickly with the majority of customers unable to log on to nearly every participating website.
"there is nothing more frustrating to customers than not being able to get the deal they were after due to technical issues"
As with anything online, there is no hiding if things don't go right.
In no time the event was trending on Twitter for all the wrong reasons.
Facebook pages, such as Click Fail, were popping up everywhere with people venting their frustrations.
One of the first things I learned in retail while dealing with angry customers was to NEVER, EVER say to them "Don't get angry" - it's like a red rag to a bull.
So when Grant Arnott, the main public face and co-founder of Click Frenzy told consumers not to get angry it was always going to cause a backlash. (more of that later)
Part of the problem I feel was that consumers thought that the deals were 'door buster' offers. First in, best dressed and if you are late you miss out.
They were also looking for the advertised 'up to 90% off' deals.
The reality was the event was a more general sale that had offers that would last the full 24 hours with modest discounts akin to 'normal' sales offered by retailers.
Sure there were some products that sold out but there were plenty of offers available up until the close of the sale.
The rush to market of this event clearly left flaws in how the organisers conveyed the event to the public.
As traffic 'normalised' on the sites, consumers started being able to buy with the majority of purchases being made from 9am - 6pm on the following day.
The wash up of all the 'frenzy' seems to be that some sites saw a 2 1/2 fold increase in turnover over their best previous online sales days. A more interesting by product though would have to be that some NON participating sites saw a 30% increase in their sales. A clear sign that people were checking the sales prices on products across multiple sites and buying where it was cheapest.
Australian consumers have now been primed for more online shopping.
There is an obvious thirst and it will be interesting to see how retailers tap into that demand over the coming months.
The Click Frenzy people have grand plans to expand into Europe and the USA but will Australian's follow them again next year? | 
