Lowe's website crashed during Black Friday sales
- 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.
Lowes is your page down. Been trying for an hour to order an item and it crashes every time I enter my cart.
— J Music (@MrJMusic) November 23, 2018
@Lowes Your IT department must be going nuts. The website has been down half the day.
— LuckyThePainproofMan (@painprooflucky) November 23, 2018
So far, ordered online for Lowe’s. Was able to print order confirmation. Credit card has not been charged, and now their entire web site appears to be down.
— Julia (@JulFromFL) November 23, 2018
@Lowes You have the most broken site on the Internet !
— Renjith Nair (@shrirenjith) October 27, 2018
Other customers threatened to shop elsewhere.
So the @Lowes website is down and this bad news for them on Black Friday, guess I'll shop at @HomeDepot
— Fat Ted (@experienceTed) November 23, 2018
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.
Read more: Black Friday is starting earlier than ever — and companies like Walmart and Lululemon weren't ready
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.
More on Black Friday 2018:
- Thanksgiving is killing Black Friday by replacing it
- Black Friday deals sold out at stores like Walmart and Target before Friday even began — and people are furious
- Macy's, Best Buy, Kohl's, and JCPenney are being slammed for being open on Thanksgiving — and some people are threatening not to shop with them this holiday season
- Walmart says it's offering thousands more deals than last year on Cyber Monday in a direct shot at Amazon's most valuable day
- Walmart shoppers are complaining that stores are running out of iPhones as Black Friday sales begin