In a repeat of the first Click Frenzy incident, the Web site of Australian retail giant Myer crashed on Tuesday evening due to the heavy volume of logins. The crash happened 30 minutes after the online launch of its mid-year sale.

Myer's semi-annual sale officially begins Wednesday, June 5, but the department store gave its online customers a head start by opening its e-Commerce site 5:30 p.m. of Tuesday.

Although the store promised the site would be back after an hour, two hours had passed and many online customers still experienced difficulty entering the portal, causing an onslaught of negative comments from frustrated online buyers who posted their angry remarks on Myer's Facebook page.

For its bricks-and-mortar stores, Myer expects three million customers on the opening day of the sale which is expected to last for a few weeks.

Along with Myer, David Jones is also starting its semi-annual sale on Wednesday. David Jones Western Australia Regional Manager Matt Temby said customers could expect the store's biggest and best clearance sale both in their physical and online stores.

He said it is the first time that the discounts are offered online, while David Jones's bricks-and-mortar stores would have extended hours to accommodate the expected big number of bargain hunters.

Myer Executive General Manager for Store Operations Tony Sutton said shoppers could expect a wide range of winter coats and boots are heavily discounted prices since the unusually mild autumn led to strong sales instead for lightweight jackets and knitwear. The price cuts for some men and women's winter coats could be up to 50 per cent off.

He said Myer, which expects to take in 13.9 million shoppers during the sale period, anticipates it would sell 50,000 coats and jackets, 70,000 dresses, 80,000 pants and 100,000 T-shirts.

Meanwhile, half of the 50,000 Australian consumers polled by Roy Morgan Research the past 10 years have shopped online. Their online spending reached $24.3 billion over the past 12 months to March 2003.

It represented an 11.9 per cent increase compared to the same 12-month period a year earlier.

On the average, they spent $285 online every four weeks, while 23 per cent have been doing less shopping at bricks-and-mortar stores compared to 10 years ago. About 45 per cent of the items or services they buy online are related to leisure and travel and 23.4 per cent on fashion.

The $24.3 billion figure, however, is just 9 per cent of the total $258 billion that Australians spent in the past 12 months.

"The Internet continues to transform Australians' shopping habits: more people shop online; they spend more; they buy products across more categories, and they visit stores less often," Roy Morgan Chief Executive Officer Michele Levine said in a statement.

Despite the increase in number of online shoppers, the bulk of Australian shoppers have trust issued with online shopping, particularly when it comes to providing their credit card details online. This results in almost two-thirds of survey participants purchasing only from e-commerce sites they know and trust.

Also on the rise is smartphone shopping which grew 101 per cent in the last 12 months as smartphone penetration in Australia also reaches 50 per cent, Ms Levine disclosed.

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