The details of the Click Frenzy fiasco can be found all over the web, so we won’t go too deeply into the specifics in this forum. Just to recap: On November 20, 2012 Click Frenzy launched in Australia as the local version of the US’s Cyber Monday. With tremendous media lead up and anticipation, this event was heralded to take Australian online retailers to a new level. Featuring an extremely wide range of participating retailers where patrons could use their credit cards to purchase at reduced prices, the Click Frenzy management assured everyone that handling the anticipated level of online traffic would not be a problem. Yet, within moments of going live, the site crashed from the more than a million people trying to log on at the same time and was rendered inaccessible the rest of the night. There are many lessons from this apparent debacle.
First, there is no such thing as bad publicity.
Many participating retailers, despite Click Frenzy’s crash, did indeed report excellent sales on that very night as shoppers bypassed the down Click Frenzy site and went directly to the online stores themselves. In fact, in light of the Click Frenzy failure, many of these retail sites extended their sale prices to accommodate the demand. Still, many retailers are asking for their hefty sign-up fee to be returned as they clearly did not get the services they were expecting. One wonders how this could have happened. Did the good folks at Click Frenzy not do proper testing for traffic and bandwidth before going live? Did they not consider setting up a redundant operating system in the worst case scenario which did actually occur in the end? Who really knows? But we hope that these lessons have been incorporated into their business model if and when they offer a second round. What is clear from their site is that they are not letting this initial road bump stop them from moving forward. Click Frenzy presents a very optimistic and productive view towards their future and many retailers have still remained on board for more rewarding online shopping. This alone is an important lesson in business:
a failure is just an opportunity to do something better in the future.
