Unbelievable. According to reports, many Yahoo! store merchants were going strong with their “cyber Monday” sales and suddenly the Yahoo! Stores have gone down. Some merchants report that they have lost more than 4 hours’ worth of online sales.
the 3 million is Y!SB Web hosting and domains customers, not the 45,000 Yahoo! Store accounts (last publicly available number I have)
There are sporadic reports this afternoon, November 26, 2007, that Yahoo! web hosting customers are experiencing an outage. Some are reporting that they’ve seen these reports on CNBC.
The latest updates are being reported on the Updates page on the Yahoo! Small Business site:
8:31 AM (PST) – Error Message During Checkout
Some merchants are reporting that shoppers are receiving an error message indicating “system unavailable” during the checkout process. We are aware of this issue and are currently investigating. More information will be provided as it becomes available.
This is yet another reason why e-tailers should have backup plans. Online retailers who rely on their sites being up and running 24/7 should be prepared for situations like this. As an online retailer, what can you do to make sure that your site is always up and running?
– Consult with your current web host to see what type of backup plan(s) they have.
– Consider setting up a backup server on another web host. Keep additional content up and running on that other web host. The backup content does not have to be your full shopping cart. It could actually consist of a well-designed web page explaining that you’re experiencing difficulties…shoppers can place their orders by calling a particular phone number. Having this content on another web host would allow you to change the nameservers of the domain name if your current site goes down.
Whatever the case, whether you sell merchandise online, have a corporate website, or if you have a blog, you need a backup plan. Some way of dealing with technical issues that arise from time to time.
Updates to this Post
Reuters is reporting that – Yahoo Inc’s payment processing system is “suffering periodic outages” … “that prevent some consumers from completing shopping transactions, according to a company Web site for merchants.”
CNBC reports that “Yahoo Can’t Cope with Cyber Monday”… “On a day that’s arguably one of the most important for online shoppers during the holiday shopping season, the so-called “Cyber Monday,” Yahoo’s shopping and transaction algorithm appears to be down.” Catherine Seven was mentioned in the article: “Search engine optimization consultant Catherine Seven runs seowhat.com and says she works with 22 clients who use Yahoo Shopping: None she’s spoken to today have had any transactions processed. She’s sending notes out to all her clients warning them that there is an issue.”
Yahoo Stores Crashing on Cyber Monday – “This is absolutely devastating to a small business that relies upon cyber Monday for a large portion of its business.”
Black Monday for Yahoo! Merchant Services – “The solution is unclear as I would expect Yahoo! To be a great partner for merchants as they already receive more internet traffic than any other site.”
Yahoo’s E-Commerce Services Buckle Under Cyber Monday Traffic – “Yahoo’s services for powering shopping carts for small businesses are suffering from intermittent outages today as shoppers flock to e-commerce sites on company time.”
CNET News is reporting that the outage was “a deliberate attack”…”A three-hour outage today on Yahoo was the result of a malicious attack intentionally aimed at disabling the service, according to company executives….Yahoo president Jeff Mallett said a “distributed denial of service attack” overwhelmed its Web hosting company’s routers beginning at around 10:20 a.m. PST, and apparently ending shortly after 1 p.m. PST.”
Updated: Yahoo Small Business Servers Struggle on ‘Cyber Monday’: Report – “The moniker “Cyber Monday” is something of a PR creation, but Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) is looking at a PR problem today due to glitchy small business servers, which power third party e-commerce sites. “
