Missguided’s website crash sparks social media backlash

March 16 2016

By @G_Parsons33

Published in Crisis

Missguided is on our crisis radar this week after having experienced some embarrassing technical difficulties. The fashion brand’s website crashed catastrophically on Monday during a one-day-only sale, leaving many unable to make purchases.

Fans were understandably furious, and we used the Visibrain media monitoring platform to take a look at how the crisis unfurled and how the brand handled the situation.

How did we do it?

We monitored online activity around “Missguided”, either as a hashtag, Twitter handle or expression, as well as tweets from the brand itself.

The brand kicked off the sale with a tweet at 7 am on Monday morning, inviting shoppers to use the promo code NOJOKE:

News of the sale initially got very positive reactions:

Missguided rapidly fell victim to their own success however, as their website crashed under the sudden rush of traffic. Customers found themselves unable to complete their transactions, and the complaints started from 8.39 am:

We can see from the graph below that activity volumes around the brand rose alarmingly from 8 am, quickly exceeding 1000 tweets per hour. In the 24 hours after the website crash occurred, 18,015 tweets were posted by 10,609 users:

An overview of activity volumes around Missguided during the website crash

Customers and competitors take to Twitter to criticize the brand

Missguided found themselves having to deal with an avalanche of complaints. Customers tweeted about difficulties with accessing the site:

Others managed to access the site, only to find themselves unable to check out:

The top hashtags around the topic reflect customers’ feelings: #annoying, #stressed, #whatajoke and #fail are all visible in the word cloud.

The top hashtags used in tweets about Missguided's website crash

The irony behind the NOJOKE promo code being unusable was not lost on customers. The code was hijacked by disgruntled shoppers to complain about the crash:

Tweets containing the nojoke promo code

It didn’t take long for other brands to catch on to the backlash around Missguided too. Benefit sent this slightly mocking tweet:

Ann Summers hijacked the opportunity to promote their own sale:

A relatively contained crisis

Missguided’s crisis certainly attracted a lot of complaints on social media, but it could have been much worse.

The whole affair got little attention from the press: if we look at the top users who were sharing the story, there are no major press accounts.

The top users who tweeted about Missguided's website crash

The mishap was covered by the Independent and City A.M, but the publications were not widely shared.

The fashion bloggers were out in force: 321 users tweeting about Missguided had the word “blogger” in their Twitter bio, the most influential of which had over 100,000 followers:

Fashion and beauty bloggers who tweeted about the Missguided website crash

However, the whole affair gained surprisingly few retweets: 73% of tweets posted were originals, showing that people were mostly tweeting about the woes they were experiencing rather than sharing others’ posts. This may have helped to contain the crisis in spite of the sheer volumes involved.

What it means for the brand

Experiencing serious technical difficulties during a campaign is a nightmare for any brand, but Missguided handled things well. The @Missguided Twitter handle posted updates throughout the day and calmed angry customers with the promise of extending the offer:

And finally, this tongue-in-cheek post on Tuesday morning:

This was undoubtedly an embarrassing time for Missguided, and although it sparked a hefty backlash, it’s unlikely that they lost many customers over it.

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Published in Crisis