Click Frenzy passes the million mark Grant Arnott is happy with this year's Click Frenzy. More than half a million shoppers have jumped on the Click Frenzy website in the first 12 hours of the 24-hour online shopping bonanza. As the sales event passed the halfway mark, organisers said there had been more than a million visits to the websites of participating retailers and they were "very happy with the results so far." Organisers were also relieved the clickfrenzy.com.au website had withstood the rush for a bargain after the site crashed in the opening hours of the sale last year under the weight of heavy traffic. The meltdown, which lasted for three hours, was an "embarrassment for Australian retailers" and was quickly dubbed "Click Fail" on social media. "There were plenty of smiling faces in the office after a smooth start," Click Frenzy's Grant Arnott said. At the same point last year, I wanted to crawl into a hole. Click Frenzy organisers had invested heavily in their hosting infrastructure in the lead-up to this year's sale to ensure there wasn't a repeat of last year's disastrous opening. More than two million shoppers tried to visit the site when it opened at 7pm last year. This year there were just over 200,000 visitors in the first hour. Some reported they were still seeing the pre-event site once the site went live but Mr Arnott said the problem appeared to be "isolated" and was being investigated. In the lead-up to the event, Mr Arnott said last year's widespread meltdown had provided a "wake-up call" to Australian retailers to invest in hosting infrastructure. The websites of several other participating retailers, including Myer and Toys 'R' Us, also failed during the opening hours of last year's sale. Mr Arnott said the websites of most participating retailers seemed to be coping well. "We have received reports of some retailer sites that are running slowly and we have a full team monitoring that and alerting the relevant retailers," he said. He said Big W, Myer and Bonds had received the most traffic in the first half of the sale. While the most popular categories for bargain hunters so far were women's fashion, electrical goods and toys. Click Frenzy has enlisted computing giant Amazon Web Services to host this year's sale, which has 300 participating retailers - up from 200 last year. "We don't have sales figures to report yet," Mr Arnott said. But I certainly feel that it is on track to parallel or surpass the 2012 outcome. More than two million shoppers participated in last year's event and Mr Arnott estimates they spent between $15 million and $20 million. Cyber Monday in the US last year attracted close to 130 million shoppers who spent more than $US1 billion ($A1.07 billion) on online bargains. This year's Click Frenzy event has sparked a string of copycat sales including David Jones' "Christmas Frenzy"; "Kogan Frenzy" by online electronics retailer, Kogan; QBD The Bookshop's "Book Frenzy"; and DeCjuba's "Fashion Frenzy." Mr Arnott said the attempts by the retailers to gatecrash the official event designed to support Australian retail were "disappointing" and he had issued a cease-and-desist letter to Kogan accusing it of breaching its registered trademarks for the Click Frenzy phrase and logo. However, Kogan founder Ruslan Kogan says a national online sales day should be open to all retailers as it is during Cyber Monday in the US, and not "owned" by one central body. Click Frenzy closes at 7pm.