Target site crashes on Cyber Monday

Trying to access it has left shoppers getting a variety of screens, from a “please hold tight” message, to “access denied”, or in some rare instances, the actual Target home page.

An overload of Cyber Monday shoppers appears to have caused Target’s site to crash Monday morning. Companies ramp up server capacity on high traffic days, but it’s notoriously hard to predict how much traffic websites will experience during certain hours of the day. If you wouldn’t mind holding, we’ll refresh automatically & get things going ASAP. It’s not clear yet what that means for how Cyber Monday will shape up.

Target had also made an aggressive push to lure shoppers on Cyber Monday, advertising 15 percent discounts on all orders made Monday and even steeper discounts on specific items throughout the week.

Fewer people are expected to shop online Monday compared with a year ago, according to figures from the National Retail Federation.