Friday 30 November 2012

Click Frenzy – The Positives

Click Frenzy is the web event that attempted to emulate the US Cyber Monday juggernaut with a massive online sale. Australia’s version has been labelled as a disaster despite some encouraging comments from high profile participants like Myer.

Basically, Click Frenzy expected 500,000 visitors to their site at one time but 2 million attempted to log on and the site crashed. There were some understandable reservations on how Australian consumers might react to an online event. The US has the luxury of a track record of successful Cyber Monday sales so they know what to expect. Their consumers come off a catalog mentality that goes back decades.
Australians haven’t yet embraced an online event of this magnitude although our high placing in technological take-ups should have been some indication to Click Frenzy organisers.
There is another big difference between the US event and our own. Retailers in the US start talking about their specials at least a week before the event. Shoppers are able to pre-shop before joining the sale on the day and, even though it is listed as a one-day sale, many retailers allow customers to take advantage of specials over a longer period. In Australia we simply announced an event with very little exposure to actual deals. Participants (or what turned out to be wanne-be participants) had to go in blind and look at everything at the last minute. No wonder there was overload.

Nevertheless, the consumer interest was encouraging and getting the capacity right could bode well for future events.