Following yesterday’s unexpected and still unexplained crash of Target.com — not to mention all the other problems the site has had since launching in late August — the website’s president, Steve Eastman has “left the company to pursue other opportunities.” We’re going to assume those other opportunities involve “looking for a job” and “catching up on Breaking Bad.”
Remarkably, a Target rep tells the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that Eastman’s departure isn’t performance-related.
Since Target relaunched its website in August — after nearly a decade of selling its wares online through Amazon — it has been plagued with glitches.
The most high-profile problem occurred in mid-September when the rush to purchase items from the new Missoni for Target line crashed the site.
But the problems continued, including further crashes, missing items and mysterious debit card charges… and re-charges… and re-charges.
It remains to be seen what sort of impact these very public bungles will have on Target’s holiday sales.
Target.com president departs suddenly [StarTribune.com]
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If they were smart, they’d go back to the warm safe relatively crash-proof waters of Amazon for their web commerce hosting until the holidays are over.
breaking bad is an awesome show…
Looks like someone needs some serious help in designing, building, implementing, and managing a large-scale WebSphere Commerce site. Curious who their integrator was for this project!
The lowest bidder, naturally.
sapient, i think
Nice job working Breaking Bad in there via a Community reference.
Target as a whole has been going down hill the last several years. I can;t remember the last time I went into one.
If you can’t remember the last time you were in one, how can you know they’re going downhill?
That’s it! Season 5 consists of Walt taking over Target and uses it to distribute blue meth.
I think Target must have taken website software advice from the Washington Post.
He most likely got pissed off on not being able to get the funding and resources necessary to make their web site work right. Told them to take this job and shove it.
The target.com site is horrendous. It’s hilarious that when one goes to Target, they get a survey that directs them to go to http://www.target.com/survey
Try going there and see what happens.
(SPOILER: You’ll either get that the site is too busy or you’ll get the 404 error above.)
And, apparently, the Target dog’s name is Bullseye. (I was bored and zoomed in on the nametag.)
and a rip off of pete the pup.
maybe earlier, but it’s functioning now.
Target’s website appears to be closed for good….until they can properly launch it. You bet they’re going to have something functional by November.
It’s awesome that Target has employed out of work website designers from 1998.
I love the big “Hello!”, which was trendy, oh around 2009.
I get an “untrusted site” warning.
Might have something to do with this:
http://india.target.com/site/en/corporate/page.jsp?contentId=PRD03-004614
“Target.com
Help build the Target.com shopping experience on the internet and drive sales for the company. Work on applications for electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, online marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), automated inventory management systems and automated data collection systems.”
This made me grin. No comment.
Oh — wait. I just did.
The graphic over text is confusing and it looks a bit stupid. Hard to navigate. You just wanna buy stuff, not be wowed by their artsy fartsy web skillz.
Apparent failure in usability testing.