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Target.com Throttles Traffic So It Doesn't Crash Amid Big Cyber Monday Sale

A virtual line.

By Jason Del Rey
Target.com
Jason Del Rey has been a business journalist for 15 years and has covered Amazon, Walmart, and the e-commerce industry for the last decade. He was a senior correspondent at Vox.

Could Target.com’s first all-site sale end up being its last?

The mass retailer ran a 15-percent-off Cyber Monday promotion today, but the traffic and order volumes overwhelmed the site, forcing the company to set up virtual waiting lines for some customers. Shoppers were greeted with the message below.

Target.com

“As a part of our Cyber Week promotion, today, for the first time, Target is offering 15 percent off virtually everything online,” a spokesman said in a statement. “Both traffic and order volumes are exceeding Target’s Thursday Black Friday event, which was our biggest day ever for online sales. To help manage the volume, we have been metering traffic to the site. We have teams working diligently to restore Target.com to full functionality.”

While some shoppers may stick it out for the deals, you’d have to imagine some moved on without waiting for access.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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