American Eagle Website is Down

Here's a link to the story in the Wall St. Journal.

Here's a big hint. When your website is down for several days, you have a GOLDEN opportunity to analyze the impact of your e-commerce business on your total business.

• Did comp store sales increase, or did they decrease?
• Did customers try to order merchandise over the telephone?
  
• In the seven days after the website was down, did website sales increase vs. plan (i.e. recapturing sales) or did sales stay flat vs. plan (i.e. you lost all sales during the outage)?

If your comp store sales didn't change while the website was down, then what does that say about how your website drives sales to your stores?

These are magical moments for an analytics individual, or for a marketer. When your website is down, you have the most fertile analysis environment you're ever going to have!