The website of David Jones had crashed for several hours as online shoppers crowded the website during the company's "Christmas Frenzy" this afternoon.

The entire website was down for several hours and those who logged in to the site were greeted with a message that the website is experiencing high levels of traffic. The company thanked the shoppers on its page on social networking site, Facebook.

"We have received an unprecedented amount of traffic today in response to our Christmas Frenzy.

Our team has dropped everything to focus on returning the site to you as soon as possible and we are pleased to report we are now back live so the Frenzy can continue," the company wrote on Facebook.

The retailer is participating in Australia's first nationwide online sale Click Frenzy. The huge number of shoppers looking for cheap deals online led to the crashing of the site and users continued to press refresh aggressively while looking for products.

Other leading retailers like Harvey Norman and Apple are also participating in the sale. All the offers will be revealed in one go when the event opens and this means that the shoppers are required to remain logged in and wait for updates.