Although online store Takealot’s website went down in the Black Friday frenzy, it still predicts its current sale will be the most successful in its history. "Having experienced a 227% increase in traffic last year‚ we worked incredibly hard to plan for up to five times the usual traffic, and we’ve been really pleased with strong site performance so far. "In the course of the day‚ we experienced some challenges at checkout — unfortunately our payment gateway reported that banking processing was feeling the nationwide Black Friday pressure and slowing down checkouts‚" the company said. According to IT company Snapt CEO Dave Blakey‚ site crashes such as Takealot’s caused by high traffic volumes‚ could be avoided with proper IT infrastructure. If not dealt with, they could lead to customer loss‚ he said. But Takealot does not seem too fazed by that, with web traffic growing by the hour on Friday. "After our initial spike at midnight‚ traffic has been building hourly from the early hour...

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