Gap explains online site gap These days, particularly, there are certainly bigger issues in the world, but I was still so perplexed about Gap’s Web site continuing to be down, more than three days after I first noticed it, that I finally called the Gap this afternoon to hear what people there had to say. (I'm also waxing nostalgic for Sarah Jessica Parker, obviously.) First, here’s the back story: on Monday, I  saw the site was down for what is being described as “scheduled site improvements,” right as the chain was breaking a new campaign, and during the last minute scramble to get the kids new outfits for school. Afterward, I even checked out the Gap Inc. 10Q for the second quarter to see how much the Gap chain (as opposed to sister chains Banana Republic and Old Navy), does in online sales. For the twenty-six weeks ended July 30, 2005, it’s $95 million. While a small portion of the chain’s overall sales, it still contributes to the bottom line. That's not a bad thing—ever—but particularly when Gap sales have been declining. Gap representative Kris Marubio told AdFreak the site closure is part of an overhaul that encompasses all Gap Inc. e-commerce sites and that this time was chosen to close Gap.com since online sales for back-to-school happen in late July. (More proof that many women are organizationally superior to me. ) Still, why not do what most sites do, I asked, which is to keep the old site up until the new one is ready? “That’s something for our technical group, our online division,” she said. At AdFreak we’re mere bloggers, not technologists dammit, so are there any AdFreak readers out there who can knowledgeably speculate as to why the old site can’t stay up until the new one is ready? It's just not often these days you see e-commerce sites go completely down for days at a time. I kinda thought those days were over.  —Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

September 1, 2005 | Permalink

Comments

---

Someone could have accidentally hit the "Delete Website" key, so now there is no old website to show.

Posted by: Merrell Ligons | Sep 1, 2005 6:52:15 PM

As someone who worked for AOL for 12 years: There is no *good* reason to take down a site for any length of time before putting up the new one.

With proper preparation, you can cut over a site instantly - the old site exists until the new one is live. (AOL itself, for instance, hasn't been down since 1998.) If you are making major back-end changes, it might be easier to take it down for an hour or three while you implement them, instead of dealing with two versions of the database simultaneously, etc. But three days? No.

The only reason for such a lengthy outage is that (a) you're so lazy that you didn't plan at all, or (b) your software and/or sysadmins are still living in 1995, or (c) you did plan, but something went horribly and irreversibly wrong. (I once managed to cause (c) for 36 hours, so I -can- throw stones.)

Posted by: Jay Levitt | Sep 1, 2005 9:54:05 PM

The people who work for the Gap are probably as disinterested in their own company as we non-employees are, so they don't care if the site goes up or not because hey, who really does care?

Who even shops there anymore? I haven't seriously shopped there since college when I knew nothing about clothes. Now that I know a teensy bit more, stepping back into the store, well, makes me feel even more stupid for having shopped there. The clothes are insulting. The decor is nonexistent. I do love SJP and those fabulous posters that hung in the store when she was their face. But really... they do not keep up with styles and still push khakis and crap jeans.

Posted by: mark baratelli | Sep 1, 2005 11:06:24 PM

Well, as someone who's built quite a few ecommerce sites, I can say that the only times I've seen extended outages like this have come from one of two places:

1) Supply Chain replacement - if you are deploying a new ERP system or something similar, and trying to relaunch the website at the same time, it can be really hard to get the ingredients to "bake" at the same time- if the ERP system (which is far more important) is ready, and the website slips, then the company has no choice but to turn off the website.

2) Systemic failure in the production environment. Slight changes in the production network from the test networks can really screw stuff up, and they can take days to troubleshoot. Sometimes rollback isn't an option, if the customer isn't willing to pay for the redundancy. We ran into this with a firewall guarding the production databases- they didn't have one in the test environment, and it was screwing up how the database connection pools worked.

I'm betting on the ERP or supply chain upgrade myself- otherwise, you'd see the site going up and down as load hit it.

Posted by: Tim Howland | Sep 2, 2005 12:21:56 AM

It's deja vu all over again: Toby Lenk is head of Gap.com. Same guy who crashed eToys. Heads are going to roll.

Posted by: Mark Nathan | Sep 4, 2005 2:08:53 PM

Though I work for Gap, Inc. in the stores, I became aware of the outages only through my own research. Not much was spoken of it in the store. Banana Republic's came back up much quicker.

However, my home computer did pull up the site for a while on Sunday. It said I was one of a select few (for whatever reason) to preview the new site. It is an extensive overhaul, and Gap's product lines are much bigger than Banana's and Old Navy's, but I find it odd that they'd choose this timing.

No matter the reason for the delay, the new site is MUCH improved. Some of the same features are already up and running on Banana's site.

Posted by: Ben | Sep 6, 2005 4:24:02 PM

I don't know how many women out there wear a size 0 Long or size 1 Long, but Gap stores do not carry them. For women of a little extra height, the sizes start at size 2 Long in the Gap store. This has always aggravated me that the stores do not carry the 0/1 Long and must be ordered on Gap.com. Therefore, they have lost my business completely.

Posted by: Mindy | Sep 11, 2005 3:10:48 PM

I was also magically allowed to view the site after typing the url (gap.com and oldnavy.com) multiple times in my browser. I've been on the site about 5 minutes now and am unimpressed. Good luck.

Posted by: Emily L | Sep 12, 2005 9:13:02 PM

Not a bunch of bright folks over at GAP. But if you want to see the new store you should be able to go to http://www.gap.com/browse/home.do

Have fun....

Posted by: Chris | Sep 13, 2005 12:14:50 AM

I went to gap.com yesterday and again today, 9/21. There was a very boring note that I had been selected to comment on the new online store. I went 'shopping' but couldn't get past the first page for each of the categories. When I clicked on page 2, I was directed to one of the shirts or something on the page. I tried to go back and comment (it sucks) but the page wouldn't load.

Yes, the stuff is boring. And since they dropped SJP their clothes have gotten very dull. At least make a nice jacket. How hard can that be? Still, I fondly remember the days in the late 80s when I was just starting out. I could walk in and in about 30 minutes, but a complete wardrobe of nice stuff. Now, even still at my girlish size 4, I can find nothing that interests me anymore...or that isn't marked as a size 10. Who are their fitting models anyway?

If he is the one that killed eToys, he's my enemy forever.

Posted by: redinla | Sep 21, 2005 4:03:25 PM

Post a comment

Name:

URL:

Remember personal info?

Comments:

The opinions expressed in comments are those of the individual poster. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Adweek or Nielsen Business Media. Comments of a promotional nature or comments that are otherwise inappropriate may be removed.