The Reiss website crashed after Kate Middleton was seen wearing the Reiss ‘Shola’ dress due to the volume of traffic and fashionistas seeking to buy their own version of the £175 ($268) dress. The site has reportedly crashed twice, and appeared to still be down for multiple days following.
Clearly this is frustrating for the retailer hoping to leverage the media attention that such great publicity generates, and for shoppers who are commenting on their Facebook page about their inability to purchase the item.
Smartly, Reiss is providing alternatives through other social media, with their Twitter feed initially explaining about the website crash, and thanking everyone for their patience. The most recent tweets cleverly provide alternative routes to purchase, advising of the phone numbers to call in UK or USA to purchase the dress through that channel instead.
A quick response providing alternatives to online shopping is a good idea, to take advantage of what will be a small window in capturing the attention of shoppers. Hopefully they’ll be able to keep shoppers happy, sell plenty of the dresses, and implement some improvements to their website in time to cope with the traffic the next time Kate wears their designs.