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Quote:...retailers have to understand that the amount of bandwidth and processing power required is continuing to climb, and that could slow site performance. "E-commerce companies need to service a customer's request quickly," Smith told the E-Commerce Times. "If not, the customer will click away to a competitor's site."

Delivering quick response times has become a problem because retailers are working with new types of content. Many Web sites now feature video content to display products. This approach is now possible because many consumers now have the broadband connections needed to support these applications.

Also, the underlying software -- including multimedia players and video editing software -- required has become more commonplace. While this option helps the retailer engage with the customer, it consumes more bandwidth and requires more processing power than other programs...

Quote:A surge of e-commerce traffic on Thanksgiving night and all day Friday apparently caught several retail giants by surprise, with Lowe's, Macy's and Victoria's Secret especially hard hit.

But they were far from the exception, as almost a third of leading retailers suffered significant slowdowns on Black Friday, according to statistics released this weekend by Keynote Competitive Research, a firm that tracks Web site performance.

Many retailers count on Black Friday to turn their red ink black, but the fact that most slowdowns occurred during the transaction phase of the interactions may have reduced that salvaging effect considerably...