Jenn Beach – Page 5 – Marketing & Design

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.

Dick Smith recently announced the launch of their new mobile website, we’ve had a good look at the site’s capability and functionality and were also interested to read the comments made by Daniel McMahon, Head of eCommerce at Dick Smith in a recent interview with Power Retail. Dick Smith have been watching the growth of handset sales through their own shops and the growth in the percentage of customers using mobile devices to browse Dick Smith’s website.

Dick Smith analysed customer behaviour and identified that most customers on their site use their mobile to research products. The mobile site has been designed to meet this primary need.

A key decision any retailer needs to make when defining their mobile strategy is whether to create a mobile website, a mobile app or potentially both. Dick Smith decided to build a mobile website to provide mobile access for the range of handsets being used online, ensuring they provide mobile access to the broadest range of mobile customers.

The Dick Smith mobile homepage is dominated by a list of offers and on site search. Mobile has obvious limitations to present large amounts of data or extensive directory structures. On site Search helps customers find products quickly and easily and is key to an effective customer experience on a site with a large range of products and categories.