UK ecommerce site availability

The person I felt most sorry for the other week was not myself (despite some pretty intensive dental treatment*), but the Head of Debenhams Website Operations or whatever the exact role is at the department store giant. You see for several hours their flagship site was down during the Sale period.

This issue has occurred again, despite assurances of site improvements in 2006, when there were site stability problems and also when there were similar issues in 2008.

(That holding page has certainly been getting more than its fair share of usage over the years)

So rather than put myself in the shoes of that person at Debenhams, who would probably have had a molar drilled instead, I took solace from a report from the AT Internet Institute that gave the good news that:

British e-commerce websites have an average availability rate higher than that of the French, German and Spanish

It is perhaps worth pointing out that http://www.debenhams.com/ were not one of the UK websites tested as part of this test!

*one that left me dribbling for a few hours and something called "an inert substance" packing out the inside one of my teeth for a few weeks