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Many Belgian e-commerce sites have made only minimal preparations for the increased number of visitors in December. The congestion caused by Sinterklaas meant that, on average, only one in five sites was continuously available. This was the conclusion of AutoWebCheck.com, a Belgian monitoring site, following a survey of 20 e-commerce sites. Even worse figures are expected during the weeks before Christmas. Excessive interest from customers can overload the server or have dramatic effects on response times. During the past month AutoWebCheck.com – at its own initiative – closely monitored 20 sites where consumers can shop on line. The survey shows that the up time – the time during which the server is on line – varies from 98% to 99.6%. "This may seem high, but a score of 98% means that a site is not available for half an hour per day. This makes 14 hours a month, or a week per year," says Gregory Liénard of AutoWebCheck.com. The consequences of this are reflected not only in loss of income. Liénard: "A web site that is not available can cause stacks of work for a help desk and, at the end of the day, damage the brand’s image. The problem is that many web site owners are unaware that sites are responding poorly, or not at all. If they were aware of this, taking action to intervene is simplicity itself, for example by adding extra server capacity or by switching to another web host." AutoWebCheck has concluded from its survey that only 20% of the sites have achieved optimum accessibility. Given the increasing trend in on line purchases, gigantic sums are involved. In the first six months of 2004, on line expenditure rose to € 775 million, a 35% increase. Each on line shopper spent € 227 from january through June of this year (Blauw Research, September 2004). December is also a top month for purchasing on the Internet. Liénard: "We saw response times and the number of error reports increase dramatically in the days leading up to Sinterklaas. This does not bode well for the even busier period before Christmas."
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