Gap Insists: No We Really Don't Want You To Shop Yet

from the excuses-getting-weaker dept

It's getting more and more difficult to figure out what's going on with The Gap and its various websites. Beyond the surprise that the Gap couldn't afford any extra servers to build the new site while keeping the old one online, we were then told that the new site would be so spectacular that it would all be okay. So far, the early reviews haven't seen the spectacularness promised. However, the Gap continues to try to spin this story. The latest report is that the various stores still aren't fully working, but the Gap says this is on purpose because they want to throttle the traffic so they can "closely monitor the site and study traffic." That doesn't make any sense at all. Why would you need to "throttle traffic" in order to monitor traffic? It certainly sounds a lot more like the new site just can't handle the traffic. So, now, we have a site that was offline for weeks, isn't that special now that it's (partially) back and can't handle normal traffic. Sounds like a great move.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    TJ, 15 Sep 2005 @ 6:56pm

    Sending resumes?

    It sounds like a good time for skilled IT professionals interested in a change to send their resume to The Gap. They clearly need some help badly. On second thought, they seem so mismanaged that it is probably a miserable place to work. It would be nice though to be able to take a production e-commerce system down for weeks and have management say it was a good thing.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    J Surdilla, 16 Sep 2005 @ 6:00am

    No Subject Given

    You have established a good point overall except that you missed one major factor: the season that drives GAP sales.

    I am not sure about the exact figure but from what I remember, 50-70% of GAP's total annual sale is from the winter season. That leaves the remaining 30-50% profit divided throughout the rest of the year, which isn't really evenly divided--most of the remaining percentage will be out of pre and during summer season. By the time the GAP took down its site, summer season is ending.

    Now, whether it was more expensive to buy and set up a new server or lose thousands of dollars in sale, who knows? Only they do.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      W Klink (profile), 16 Sep 2005 @ 8:36am

      Re: No Subject Given

      > By the time the GAP took down its site, summer season is ending.< br>
      And "Back to School" was in full swing...

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Pete Austin, 16 Sep 2005 @ 9:32am

    Classic Excuses

    Next time you're faced with a Website that keeps crashing and you are desperately analyzing the logs to try and work out what's going wrong, you know what to announce: "The traffic is being temporarily throttled on the [your domain] site so that the company can closely monitor the site and study traffic, a company representative said."

    Guys, screw the cost, lease more servers and reinstall the old version. You probably won't need it, but the peak sales period for a lot of business is Thanksgiving and that's too close.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      fuzzmanmatt, 16 Sep 2005 @ 4:03pm

      Sounds like...

      Sounds like what Spymac is doing! Promised up and running september 1, still isn't functional. Hooray!

      link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.