Why Is Chanel's Website So Rude?
It's not an oversight. It's a strategy.
On social media yesterday, I noticed more than a few people complaining that Louis Vuitton’s website was glitchy and asking others if they were having the same experience. According to my (very scientific!) skim of comments, it seems that yes, LouisVuitton.com was having some issues. My hunch is that this was due to increased traffic/ your usual run-of-the-mill tech errors vs. a sinister desire by Louis Vuitton to thwart shoppers from transacting.
However, Chanel.com is a different story completely. Chanel is one of the only brands to have no online sales (which is part of what has driven the spike in prices of Chanel resale online over the last decade), but even when you take “I can’t buy anything here” completely out of the equation, browsing Chanel.com is still a miserable time.
The organization of the site is not intuitive. The layout is more magazine-format that e-commerce site, which could work beautifully (Hermes.com does a fabulous job with this), but Chanel’s load is clunky, and links don’t work consistently. The product lineup is woefully sparse. And once you find a product, there is zero basic information beyond its dimensions. Want to know how many pockets that style wallet has? Hope you can count based on an angled photo! Curious if the inside of a minaudière has a pocket? Ha!
This is not an oversight. This is a strategy. The one feature on Chanel’s site that is reliable and steadfast is the “Contact an advisor” button. This is because Chanel doesn’t want you purchasing or researching online. Chanel wants you 1:1, building a relationship with a Chanel advisor, purchasing from that Chanel advisor, and coming to see that Chanel advisor as your conduit for all things Chanel. (Though they don’t always make even in-person interactions easy, which has led to the rise of the personal shopper.)
The brand has doubled-down on this strategy post-Covid, in part in an effort to get more shoppers to spend more time (and therefore more money) in their stores. Pre-Covid, sales associates were allowed to charge your card and ship bags to your home if you were a known client; however, now, they are being instructed to require the client to come in to the store to pick up the bag. Whether this is being followed religiously, I do not know, but it is definitely being encouraged.
None of that is necessarily bad. It’s a choice to want to push for an in-person experience for your clients. But if that’s your strategy, I would argue that you should take Hermes’ approach and create a site that’s a pleasure to visit without being a great place to shop.
What do you think? Tell me in the comments!