Valentine’s Day is one of the biggest days of the year at Hallmark.com and the company was prepared for more than twice the traffic it’s gotten in past years. But even that wasn’t enough this year. Traffic to Hallmark.com crashed the site several times Monday as users tried to send and receive cards. “It was unprecedented traffic for us,” says a Hallmark spokeswoman.
Hallmark would not reveal traffic at Hallmark.com, but comScore Networks Inc. reports 962,000 visitors to the site on Valentine's Day. The five days prior to Valentine's Day averaged 350,000 visitors, comScore reports.
Hallmark believes that the traffic was more than expected because Valentine’s Day fell on a Monday this year after being on a Saturday last year and consumers are more likely to have persistent, high-speed Internet connection at work than at home. In addition, the spokeswoman says the company believes consumers were attracted to Hallmark.com by the free e-cards, which are becoming harder to find online.
Hallmark.com tried to identify everyone who had problems getting cards and sent apologies to them on Wednesday. The spokeswoman says Hallmark is working with IBM, its hosting company, to prevent further such problems.
ComScore reports that AmericanGreetings.com web sites hosted 4.3 million visitors on Monday, up from an average of 862,000 in the five previous days.
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