" Click " Frenzy debacle !

Yesterday was supposed to be the " bricks and mortar " stores answer to the shopping on-line tsunami that is reducing their profits and wooing away customers.   For twenty-four hours these stores intended to take on the on-line crowd at their own game - and offer goods at prices reduced by up to ninety percent.

It was a two pronged assault.   A big number of retailers banded together to offer reduced prices both on-line and over the counter, hoping for a sales bonanza that would combine personal shoppers visiting their stores with the stay at home crowd buying from what they were seeing on their computer screens.

Most saw it as a total debacle, but a few voices claimed sales increases from the people who rushed the bricks and mortar shops.   The biggest calamity was the sheer volume of people who came on-line at the appointed opening time - and as a result the computers crashed for several hours.   Those that persisted and eventually gained access grumbled that the huge savings promised were very much " mediocre " - and didn't live up to the hype.

Rueful retailers admit that they have a lot of work to do to upgrade their computer facilities.  It would seem evident to most computer " geeks " that this was a bright idea ruined by it's implementation by people who lacked the understanding of computers and their limitations.   When you create a surge of people constrained by a narrow time opportunity, you are surely going to overwhelm the capacity of a computer network to handle that sort of situation.

It is a case of " old style thinking " being applied to " new style marketing " opportunities.   The bricks and mortar crowd were still thinking of their Boxing day sales scenario.   Huge crowds waited breathlessly for the doors to open - and then came a stampede of customers rushing to snatch the best of the bargains and get to the cash registers.

That simply does not work in a computer situation.   Forget the huge crowd waiting for a timed access.   Go the way of a steady release of bargain items over the course of the sale time to regulate the customer flow to what the computer system can handle.   It is obviously a case of " teaching old dogs new tricks ".   If the bricks and mortar retailers are going to compete in the on-line scene, they had better become savvy about the do's and dont's of on-line merchandising.

Today, yesterday's experience must be ramming that home clearly  to those in the retail trade.  It usually takes a debacle to wake new players to reality and the next time we see the bricks and mortar people take on the on-line crowd we can expect a more disciplined and nuanced approach that will have better results.

It is clearly a case of " live and learn " to survive in the computer age !