Hermès is a French high fashion luxury goods manufacturer established in 1837. The firm is extremely attached to its traditional business model and rejects mass production, assembly lines, and mechanization; and it has been known for its purely handmade leather goods, and supporting creation and craftsmanship activities.

When New York City streets were empty on March 22nd 2020 as the city’s lock-down went into effect, requiring non-essential workers to stay home, I was wondering how this luxury house Hermès responded to this immediate lock-down order. Out of curiosity, I have placed four orders since April 24th 2020 with different category goods on Hermes.com USA website. Interestingly, each ordering experience had something disappointing, but also had triggered me, as a digital software consultant, to have a brief case study on this company.

Firstly “Design for trust” failed — Customers like to know what they can expect from you and by being transparent . Activities on the site can greatly improve trust. Don’t make it difficult for your customers to find important announcements or warnings when customers are paying products or services. On Hermes.com as by this post is written, you would have seen some small printed warning/announcement message on the top of the website (see two screen capture examples below). When my bank card was charged in April for the first order with Hermès, I had totally missed this small printed warning “We do not delivery in your country.”. (Fortunately, Hermès USA warehouse dispatch service was resumed around April 30th 2020).

If brand appearance is your selling point, then don’t miss/mess around it. — The visuals you use, the tone and language you use all impacts how your brand is perceived. For a luxury brand Hermès, nearly all customers love their orange boxes delivered with their purchased items. However that was not for my first order. Worse, then I was looking for some explanation on exception items without orange boxes packaged, then I had found this information page was redirected to a not-found 404 error page https://www.hermes.com/ca/en/faq/products-us/#orange%20boxes (see below screen captures).

Don’t make it difficult for your customers to find information, as they have a short attention span to look for what they need, and will quickly go to your competitor if it ultimately provides a better experience for them. — Regarding to this, I have noticed many improvements could be suggested on Hermes.com , e.g. reducing non-necessary three steps to help customers access their order list quickly, or giving clear product details to a customer:

Don’t make your customers to wait for the shipping too long — Sadly, the average shipping time for four of my Hermès online orders was around 2 to 3 weeks. It is a lot longer than other eCommerce counter-parties like Chanel, Burberry etc, which I had placed some orders to compare with, during this COVID19 lock-down or ease-off period. Today as I am writing this post on Jun 18th 2020, unfortunately I have NOT YET received one of my orders placed on May 2nd 2020. For those ready to wear goods, Hermès certainly could have products in stock. Dispatch on the same day would be a message that resonates with consumers these days.

A good return and refund policy — Unlike visitors to brick-and-mortar stores, online consumers don’t get to see and hold the physical product before they buy it. So e-commerce sites must ensure that their return policies are fair and appealing to their customers. Unfortunately two items I had returned to Hermès warehouse, and it had taken nearly 3 weeks to get my final refunds after I received the return reception confirmations on May 22nd 2020.

The last, but not the least, I want to re-state above highlighted viewpoints were truly based on personal online shopping experience during last couple of months with Hermes.com, that is to say, discussion posted here would not have profound research, data supporting, customer journey mapping, or service designing etc.. Thank you for reading !!!