New online trading website List Sell Trade has delayed its launch following technical problems, becoming the second site to go down this week.

After launching at 3pm Thursday, the company was forced to close its online operations as users struggled to sign up to the site.

The Trade Me rival is the second site to struggle this week, with fellow start-up company Wheedle going down twice before closing indefinitely on Tuesday.

Users were greeted with a similar message when they visited the site, with a a post saying:

"As you may be aware, List Sell Trade brought its launch forward this week.

"We've since received an overwhelming response and thousands of products have been sent in by new users through .csv files for bulk upload.

"In order to ensure these products are available at the full launch, we will be loading these products onto the website throughout today and the weekend.

"To ensure an efficient transition to full operation List Sell Trade have delayed their launch time to ensure the servers are switched over smoothly.

"We apologise for the delay."

List Sell Trade hoped to resume online activities as early as today but has since pushed the re-launch back to Monday as it struggles with maintenance issues.

In a week of site closures and struggling servers, both List Sell Trade and Wheedle find themselves offline as their war with Trade Me fails to materialise.