Google's Great Online Shopping Festival website crashes on first day

The Great Online Shopping Festival website crashed on Day 1 causing much embarrassment to the organisers.

People who visited the website came across a blank page with a 'Hello World' test message.

Great Online Shopping Festival or GOSF, a Google India initiative, aims to bring together 240 e-commerce sites to offer the best bargains and deals. If one was planning to buy that camera, it was the time as industry experts hailed the online event along with the new trend in online shopping.

GOSF took off last December, with the second edition of the online festival happening between 11-13 December starting at 9 am. The GOSF is based on the concept of Black Friday and Cyber Monday in US.

The e-commerce concept is fast gaining ground in India with major sites like Flipkart, E-bay and MakeMyTrip offering deals on multitude of products at discounted rates.

The initiative brings together e-commerce sites that offer discounts to increase their sales. The festival last year, helped the e-commerce sites to increase their sales by three times. The festival is therefore seen as a major connector between consumers and various shopping sites.

Meanwhile, with increasing internet penetration coupled with growth in affordable smart-phones seen as major drivers, experts expect the multitude of small cities with limited array of goods on sale, particularly foreign brands, boosting online growth.

The Hindu quoted Sumider Pal, GM, sales and sourcing, Fashionandyou.com, as saying that though last year was lacklustre, the company, this year expected 3-4 times increase in sales.

Sites that normally offered large discounts would be offering additional discount of a flat 25 per cent.

According to diamond jewellery e-tailer BlueStone's founder Gaurav Kushawaha, GOSF provided good visibility and introduced the brand to a wider audience, while another new e-tailer, Juvalia and You, expected sharp increase in traffic, the report said. The company had also launched a mobile app for the occasion.

According to Narasimha Jayakumar, COO and business head, HomeShop18, it witnessed about 150 per cent jump in traffic and 200 per cent growth in sales in just 24 hours last year.

He said the shopping window, this year was three-days, adding such shopping festivals added credibility to e-retail and spread awareness.

He said the company was hopeful of getting around 25 per cent new users this time.