Woolworths beef-up service for shoppers

Woolworths is installing a new four-processor IBM X330 server to cope with soaring demand on its internet shopping site in the wake of a television advertising campaign.

Spokesman Richard Harrison said registrations quadrupled after the start of the campaign, timed to coincide with expanded national coverage, and transaction volumes have more than doubled.

Since May 5, there have been more than 1500 new registrations, with the daily record so far being 215.

He said unlike earlier growth spikes which caused software to crash, this time there had been no outages on the website.

"However, at our peak time, from seven to nine in the evenings, performance has not been to the levels we expect. Some of our older customers have told us they notice the site is slower," Harrison said.

"When we have 100 people logged in to the site using our new 'quick list' feature with lists of 40 items all hitting the 'go find' button at the same time, that takes considerable processing power.

"The good thing is we are able to capture the information about who was on the site at the times affected, and once we get the new server up we will go back with a special offer for them."

Harrison said Woolworths had also beefed up its delivery systems. Staff at the Manurewa supermarket, which services Greater Auckland and Great Barrier, were now coming on at 10pm, rather than at 4am, to start packing the next day's orders.

Customers in Auckland, Hamilton, New Plymouth, Wellington and Christchurch can order a full range of groceries online, including fresh meat, vegetables and dairy products. Customers in other areas are restricted to dry goods.

Harrison said the new server should be able to cope with foreseeable demand.

"We have built the software in such a way we can move to a clustered array at any time, so we have exponential capacity."

Before the television campaign the Woolworths site generated about 5000 orders a month, with a 30 per cent increase needed before it was expected to be profitable.

Woolworths