Website slowdowns may have lost R$8.1m in 12 hours of Black Friday

Slowness and technical instability in e-commerces in the first 12 hours of Black Friday may have generated a loss of BRL 8.1 million to retailers. This is what Sofist’s projection points out, a company that monitors the performance of large retailers during the event and is now in its fifth edition.

The survey monitored 116 e-commerces between 22:00 this Thursday (25) and 10:00 this Friday (26). During this period, information regarding the loading time of these stores was collected, in addition to an analysis carried out to understand how many of them were down, for how long and how much was the financial loss generated by this instability.

Bruno Abreu, CEO of Sofist, comments that the unavailability can occur due to technical errors, because the site took more than 45 seconds to load or because of the use of wait pages when the site reaches many simultaneous accesses.

“However, regardless of the reason, this unavailability represents an inconvenience for the consumer and, consequently, a financial loss for the stores”, he says.

The entire event is also monitored by the company, covering the period between 22:00 on the 25th and 23:59 on November 29, to assess performance both on Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday.

The company also monitors the entire event, covering the period from 22:00 on the 25th to 23:59 on the 29th of November.

The performance of e-commerces in the first 4 hours

The impact of the high volume of consumers trying to make their purchases was already felt in the last hours of Thursday, when stores began to publicize their promotions and make heavier activations through various media.

During this period — between 10 pm on Thursday and 2 am on Friday – it was noted that the average loading time among all stores was 4.1 seconds. The fastest store loaded, on average, in 0.3 seconds, while the slowest had an average of 15.2 seconds.

“This may have been a time when consumers started looking for offers in this virtual store, significantly increasing the loading time in the period”, comments Abreu. “Although the demand for this company’s products may have increased during this period, it is very difficult for the user to wait 35 seconds to be able to perform any action within the site.”

For Abreu, e-commerces showed a better behavior during the opening of the event when compared to data observed in 2020. Many retailers say that the turn of the day is the most aggressive moment of Black Friday, as it is when consumers come into force for check discounts and make purchases.

“However, according to the website Black Friday Hora em Hora, the volume of sales in the midnight range was lower than last year, which may have meant fewer people accessing the sites, causing less problems.”