Best Buy site crashes TWICE as holiday shoppers flood the net for Black Friday deals

• The site was up online Friday morning after being down for an extended period only to crash again that evening before being restored
• Company blamed heavy traffic for the problems
• Despite the issues, analysts estimated the company's sales rose 16.32 per cent Thursday compared to last year's sales

By Mail Online Reporter

Published: 19:02 EST, 28 November 2014 | Updated: 19:28 EST, 28 November 2014

As shoppers went online for Black Friday deals without the crowds, Best Buy's website went down twice over the biggest shopping day of the year.

The site was up online Friday morning after being down for an extended period only to crash again that evening before being restored.

Best Buy officials said the problem was due to heavy traffic.

As shoppers went online for Black Friday deals without the crowds, Best Buy's website went down twice over the biggest shopping day of the year

ChannelAdvisor, which tracks same-store sales for roughly 2,700 online businesses, estimated the company's sales rose 16.32 per cent Thursday compared to last year's sales

'A concentrated spike in mobile traffic triggered issues that led us to shut down BestBuy.com in order to take proactive measures to restore full performance,' Best Buy spokeswoman Amy von Walter said in a statement reported by CNBC.

Shoppers took to social media to complain about the issues at about 5:30 p.m. as the company's Twitter told shopper it was working to fix the outage.

'Well, after a good few hours of setting up what I'm gonna get for my first potentially amazing black friday..... you crash,' wrote shopper Sean Martin. 'If you intend to be one of the leaders among sales in technology and electronics. ....... maybe, just maybe you should know how to run tech.'

The company's stock closed up 1.7 per cent despite the problems.

Shoppers took to social media to complain about the issues at about 5:30 p.m. as the company's Twitter told shopper it was working to fix the outage

ChannelAdvisor, which tracks same-store sales for roughly 2,700 online businesses, estimated the company's sales rose 16.32 per cent Thursday compared to last year's sales.

At Wedbush Securities, analyst Michael Pachter told CNBC the outage was a testament to the store's traffic and doubted it would have a major effect on sales as many people will compare prices online before heading out to the store to shop.

'This shows how hard it is to manage a website when it's busy, but props to Best Buy for being busy,' he said. 'Their Black Friday deals are quite competitive.'