What do You Do When Your Website is Down?

A very observant UK correspondent, who watches retailers Sainsbury and Tesco closely writes about Sainsbury's outages:

Sainsbury's website glitch fixed
"...Sainsbury's has fixed a "technical glitch" which put its online ordering system out of operation for two days..."
"...The supermarket giant said deliveries would resume from 0800 BST on Saturday..."
"...A spokeswoman said no-one had hacked into the website and customers' details had remained secure during the shutdown..." Via the BBC.

Sainsbury’s store IT problems caused website closure
"...Sainsbury’s closed its online store for two days this week as store IT problems prevented its shops from being able to process online orders for delivery, Computerworld UK has learnt..."
"...Sainsbury’s chose to stop access to its e-commerce site after stores could no longer process online orders..."
"...The news follows on from the completion of a major project to bring Sainsbury’s IT back in house. In 2005, Sainsbury’s began the project after cancelling a £1.7 billion outsourcing deal with Accenture..."

"...Some 8 percent of visitors to Sainsbury’s website went straight on to visit Tesco.com during the two day closure, Goad said. “On a normal day, one and a half percent switch from Sainsbury’s site to Tesco’s. That means there was more than a fourfold increase on the days its website was down.”..." Via Computerworld. And Google News.