Retailers have been steadily implementing websites over the past few years to accommodate customers who prefer to go online to browse for and purchase products. These merchants have seen that web platforms are a great source of revenue, and they also serve as effective tools for increasing shopper satisfaction and retention. However, sites sometimes go down, and this can cost retailers money as well as lost customers.

Online retail giant Amazon.com recently experienced downtime of its site on Thursday, as Internet Retailer reports that the company’s page was out for approximately an hour. While not all Amazon components were impacted, such as Web Services, online shoppers were not able to access main pages to view and buy products. The cause of the outage was not immediately known, reports the source, but it affected many customers who perhaps went elsewhere to search for wanted items.

To avoid these types of situations, retailers will want to ensure their sites are able to get back up and running following an outage, writes Retail Gazette. The news source recommends that merchants develop strategies to combat worst-case scenarios. In addition, pages need to be constantly monitored for any potential threats.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Tuesday, February 5th, 2013 at 5:08 am .