Hitwise, the competitor intelligence company recently purchased by Experian, released some data recently suggesting that the Kate Moss clothing range at Topshop helped the site reach its highest UK visits over the past year – the range sold out within 12 hours and was a resounding success. Or was it?

Whilst the range may well have sold out within hours, customers continue to visit the site to try get hold of this most have clothing range. Now, every single item is sold out (trust me, I checked) and yet the site still has a message saying:

Due to considerable demand for this collection, and to be fair to all our customers, you will only be able to buy 1 of each style and can buy no more than 5 items at a time. So chose wisely!

Let’s have a think about this and see what experience it offers to the customers. Someone comes online, finds the item they want and tries to order it. It’s all sold out, they try some other items and after a long time spent on the site realise that there are no items on sale and they have just wasted hours of their life for nothing.

Does this offer a good experience to the customer? I would suggest that it does not and it’s about time that brands as big as Topshop start to understand that offering a high level of customer experience online is a must – a competitor site is just a click away after all! A ‘competitor’ site such as eBay perhaps, which according to the same Hitwise report was the 2nd most popular site for people leaving Topshop…

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