Mareile Osthus works on customer experience in ecommerce. Through humii, Osthus helps retailers understand where online shopping journeys create friction, using feedback from online mystery shoppers and comparisons with other retailers.
They are most useful for research and commentary on ecommerce customer experience and journey friction.
Best for
A CX or experience-measurement software company seeking a co-branded ecommerce experience benchmark.
Not for
A consumer activewear brand seeking paid social posts to drive direct-to-consumer product sales.
Key takeaways
NPS can show dissatisfaction without explaining what caused it.
A product gallery can work as designed yet frustrate shoppers who expect to swipe.
Customer experience is a leadership and hiring challenge.
Check first: Confirm audience data, partnership formats and commercial terms before contacting.
Main ideas
A rating tells you what went wrong, not why · Working as designed isn't the same as working as expected · Customer experience is a leadership and hiring challenge
Mareile Osthus works on ecommerce customer experience through humii, which uses online mystery shoppers to examine shopping journeys and compare retailers.
They show how small points of friction can affect a customer's decision: a product gallery can function as designed yet frustrate shoppers who expect to swipe, and an NPS score can register dissatisfaction without explaining what caused it.
Follow them for practical examples of how customer behaviour, journey design and measurement meet in ecommerce.
Osthus turns broad CX questions into specific, testable observations.
Rather than treating a score or a working website as the whole story, they ask what customers experienced, where expectations and design diverged, and how a retailer compares with the alternatives customers consider.
The Zara example makes the behavioural gap tangible; their critique of NPS explains why journey-level feedback and context can matter.
Other posts show a people-focused view of CX operations: they praise leaders who pair KPIs with attention to customers and teams, and value industry events for candid experience-sharing over polished success stories.
Mareile Osthus argues that ecommerce customer experience cannot be managed by a rating alone.
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A score shows that something went wrong; it does not reveal what happened, why a shopper changed their mind or how a retailer compares with the alternatives its customers consider.
At humii, online mystery shoppers walk the whole journey and provide structured, comparable feedback rather than a number.
Osthus also stresses that CX leaders must be willing to challenge how things have always been done, and that industry events should foster honest practitioner conversation rather than polished success stories.
A rating tells you what went wrong, not why
Osthus does not call NPS wrong, but incomplete.
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It gives a score without explaining what made someone abandon a website or why a customer completed a purchase but is unlikely to return.
It hears only from converted customers who choose to respond and does not show how an experience compares with competitors.
That gap led to humii: online mystery shoppers give unbiased, structured feedback across the complete customer journey, benchmarked against retailers a customer is also considering.
Aggregated at scale, that feedback appears in a dashboard designed to show where friction occurs and why.
The two questions Osthus keeps returning to are: what actually happened, and why did it change the customer's decision?
Osthus compares NPS to a manager saying, "I give you 6 out of 10," and walking away — a verdict with no explanation.
After years in ecommerce using NPS as a north star, Osthus built a mystery-shopping alternative. Their position reads as a conclusion reached from inside conventional measurement, not a rejection of it from outside.
Working as designed isn't the same as working as expected
Osthus describes a gap where nothing is broken, but the customer still leaves.
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A page functions as its designers intended, yet fails to match the behaviour shoppers have learned elsewhere, creating a moment of hesitation.
Osthus defines the behavioural gap as ecommerce that works as designed but not as customers have learned to expect.
The argument puts human expectations and learned habits, not function alone, at the centre of journey design.
On a Zara product page, the images load and behave perfectly, but shoppers instinctively swipe horizontally while the page requires them to move vertically. Osthus pairs this with a mystery-shopper question about whether live chat belongs on the right or the left, treating both as small interaction choices that shape whether a shopper stays.
Customer experience is a leadership and hiring challenge
Osthus sees experience quality as inseparable from the people running it.
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Promoting a Community Experience Manager role at LSKD, they point to a benchmark — LSKD sitting at the top of the Online CX Index for two years running — and spell out what the role demands: someone who has led leaders, built high-performing CX teams, and knows CX operations and KPIs without forgetting the human on the other side of the number.
The person should be comfortable challenging "we've always done it that way" and rethinking what world-class CX looks like.
Osthus says experience in activewear or ecommerce is not required, signalling that they value what someone has led and changed over their category background.
The same instincts shape their own hiring: building the UK arm of humii meant rehiring Sophie Larsen-Jarrett, first hired at THE ICONIC in 2018, after looking for deep ecommerce experience, entrepreneurial drive, commercial sense, and someone willing to roll up their sleeves and build.
The hiring criteria Osthus quotes — CX operations and KPIs, without forgetting the human on the other side of the number — capture how they connect measurement to the people who act on it.
Osthus values industry gatherings where people share their experiences, ideas and time generously, including what went wrong, not just the success stories usually shown on LinkedIn.
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They describe two very different Melbourne events — Amazing Women in eCommerce and Growth Tank — as sharing the same core: candid talk about leadership, resilience, backing yourself and getting things wrong, in a room that wanted everyone on stage to do well. Osthus credits organiser Rad Mitic with bringing brilliant people together, cutting the usual industry-event fluff and making a gathering feel like a community rather than a networking session.
Growth Tank, Osthus says, brought together founders pitching, retailers asking questions and an audience that genuinely wanted every presenter to succeed — the opposite of a room waiting to be impressed.
What does Mareile Osthus see as the limit of conventional CX measurement, and what approach do they propose instead?
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Osthus questions using NPS as a north star for customer experience.
NPS gives a score but does not explain why someone abandoned a website or why a customer completed a purchase but is unlikely to return.
Osthus compares it to a manager saying, “I give you 6 out of 10,” and then walking away.
NPS also hears only from customers who have already converted and choose to respond, and does not show how the experience compares with competitors.
Osthus says this is why humii was created: online mystery shoppers provide structured feedback across the complete customer journey, benchmarked against the retailers a customer is also considering.
For brands planning a campaign
This is a strong starting point for a co-branded research angle on experience measurement.
Osthus can bring a framework for moving from a single score to a full-journey, competitor-benchmarked diagnosis of friction.
A CX software partner could combine its data with humii-style mystery-shopping feedback to explain what happened, how it changed customer decisions and where the experience breaks down.
How does Osthus explain journey friction that is behavioural rather than simply functional?
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Osthus defines a “behavioural gap” in ecommerce: nothing is broken, but the customer still leaves.
The example is Zara: product images work perfectly, but shoppers instinctively swipe horizontally while Zara requires them to move vertically.
That creates a small interaction and a moment of hesitation.
The behavioural gap appears when ecommerce works as designed but not as customers have learned to expect.
Osthus also asks mystery shoppers whether live chat should sit right or left, showing why journeys should reflect human expectations as well as function.
For brands planning a campaign
This original supports a benchmark campaign built around interaction patterns, not just page speed or functionality.
Osthus could contribute a behavioural-gap framework and help design tests for patterns such as swipe versus scroll, chat placement and other learned expectations.
A partner could use those tests to show where competitors differ in customer experience, even when their sites technically work.
What does Osthus look for in customer experience leadership, and how do they use a public benchmark to support a recommendation?
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Osthus promotes a Community Experience Manager role at LSKD and says the company has sat at the top of the Online CX Index for two years running.
They describe the role as suited to someone who has led leaders, built high-performing CX teams and understands CX operations and KPIs, but never forgets there is a human on the other side of the number.
The person should be comfortable challenging “we’ve always done it that way” and rethinking world-class CX.
LSKD moves fast, breaks things, learns quickly, does more with less and backs itself to figure things out.
Osthus also notes that activewear or ecommerce experience is not required, and thanks Jade Cameron.
For brands planning a campaign
This post shows how Osthus connects benchmark performance to a practical hiring and operating standard.
For a campaign, they could translate a strong experience benchmark into an employer-brand or CX talent angle.
The post is an example of Osthus’s public commentary and network activity, not evidence of a paid partnership.
How does Osthus describe the operational and commercial qualities they value when scaling a CX business?
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Osthus announces that Sophie Larsen-Jarrett joins humii as its first Head of UK.
They first hired Sophie at THE ICONIC in 2018, describing her as ridiculously smart, someone who understood ecommerce inside out, got things done and had a personality people naturally gravitated towards.
When Sophie moved back to the UK, Osthus says they were genuinely devastated.
Later, as humii ramped up in the UK, they wanted a “unicorn”: deep ecommerce experience, entrepreneurial, commercial, a doer, someone people remember and someone willing to roll up their sleeves and build.
Osthus says they hired that unicorn in 2018 and are now hiring her again.
For brands planning a campaign
This original offers a founder-led growth story for humii and makes the UK expansion concrete.
For a campaign partner assessing Osthus as a thought leader, it shows clear operating priorities: ecommerce depth, commercial drive, hands-on building and trusted repeat relationships.
A co-branded research angle could use this as evidence of founder credibility in scaling CX operations, not as proof of a particular partner relationship.
What kind of industry community does Osthus participate in, and what do they consider valuable about it?
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Osthus describes a week in Melbourne that included Amazing Women in eCommerce and Growth Tank.
The events were completely different but shared the same core: really good people generously sharing their experiences, ideas and time.
At Amazing Women in eCommerce, they highlight real conversations about leadership, resilience, backing yourself, getting things wrong and everything behind the version of success normally seen on LinkedIn, rather than polished success stories.
At Growth Tank, they describe founders pitching, retailers asking questions, clever ideas and a room that genuinely wanted everyone on stage to do well.
They give a shoutout to Rad Mitic for creating rooms people want to be in, bringing brilliant people together, removing industry-event fluff and making it feel like a community rather than networking.
For brands planning a campaign
This post signals that Osthus values authentic, peer-to-peer industry conversation over polished promotional formats.
A live event, community discussion or candid founder-and-retailer format may fit better than a standard corporate webinar.
A partner could use this evidence to propose a co-branded research launch with real practitioner discussion; the tagged names provide context, not confirmation of campaign partnerships.
Why a customer experience score does not explain the decision
Osthus argues that NPS indicates something useful but does not explain why a customer abandoned a website or completed a purchase without intending to return.
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The measure, they argue, only hears from customers who have already converted and choose to respond, and does not show how an experience compares with competitors. They illustrate the gap with an everyday analogy: a manager giving a six out of ten and walking away.
A short, conversational post pairing an everyday analogy with a product contrast.
For brands planning a campaign
A co-branded benchmark campaign could build on the argument that a score cannot explain the customer journey. Osthus critiques score-only measurement and offers the framing a CX software vendor could use to position a fuller diagnostic product.
Online mystery shopping as a journey-level diagnostic
Osthus presents humii as built on online mystery shoppers who give structured, unbiased feedback across the complete customer journey, benchmarked against the retailers a customer is also considering.
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Aggregated at scale, that feedback appears in a dashboard designed to show exactly where friction occurs and why. They contrast this with traditional feedback that captures a rating without the story behind the decision.
Online mystery shopping, full-journey coverage, competitor benchmarking and aggregated reporting.
For brands planning a campaign
A co-branded study could apply the same mystery-shopper method to a defined retailer set and publish findings on friction across the customer journey. Osthus can define the journey scope, shopper questions and benchmark framing—their most directly transferable contribution to an ecommerce experience benchmark campaign.
The behavioural gap between designed function and learned expectation
Osthus describes a gap where nothing is broken but the customer still leaves.
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In the example, a Zara product page works as designed, yet shoppers instinctively swipe horizontally while the page requires vertical movement.
That small interaction creates a moment of hesitation.
They define the behavioural gap as ecommerce that works exactly as designed but not as customers have learned to expect, and cite a mystery-shopper exercise on whether live chat sits left or right.
Close reading of a specific interface interaction, combined with a mystery-shopper question.
The post points readers to a longer article that is not included here, so the fuller version of this argument is not available here.
For brands planning a campaign
This offers a ready-made research angle on small interaction mismatches that precede abandonment. Osthus can contribute the close-reading method, the Zara-style worked example and a framing of journey design around human expectation rather than function alone.
Customer experience depends on the people leading it
Osthus promotes a Community Experience Manager role at LSKD, citing its two-year run at the top of an Online CX Index.
Read more
The criteria call for someone who has led leaders, knows CX operations and KPIs without forgetting the human behind the number, and is comfortable challenging how things have always been done.
Industry background is explicitly not required.
In a separate post, they welcome Sophie Larsen-Jarrett back as humii's first Head of UK, recalling an earlier hire at THE ICONIC in 2018.
For brands planning a campaign
This is a secondary angle for a benchmark campaign, but it gives Osthus standing to speak about CX leadership, team building and changing operating habits. A vendor campaign with a talent or culture dimension could use it; a pure measurement campaign likely would not.
Community building in the ecommerce and CX industry
Osthus recaps a Melbourne day that began with Amazing Women in eCommerce and ended with Growth Tank, praising both for real conversations about leadership, resilience, backing yourself and getting things wrong—not polished success stories.
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They credit Rad Mitic with bringing people together and creating rooms that feel like a community rather than networking.
For brands planning a campaign
This supports event-based collaboration, community co-hosting or a launch built around a live industry gathering. It is a weaker fit for a research benchmark than Osthus's measurement and journey arguments.
Osthus says they created humii, the online mystery-shopping platform.
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They also refer to past employment at THE ICONIC and shared a role at LSKD.
humii
Owned business
Osthus writes that they and colleagues created humii, an online mystery-shopping platform that benchmarks a retailer's customer experience against competitors.
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In a later post, they describe humii as 'our' team while welcoming its first Head of UK.
Mareile Osthus writes about why ecommerce customer experience cannot be managed by a rating alone, and about the people who lead that work.
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A post arguing that NPS gives a score without an explanation also sets out what humii does instead: online mystery shoppers walk the whole journey and return structured, comparable feedback.
A Zara example puts the method into practice: a page that works exactly as designed but not as shoppers have learned to expect.
It is the clearest demonstration of how they reason about friction.
Two further posts shift from measurement to management: one on what a CX leadership role at LSKD demands, and one welcoming a former colleague back to lead humii in the UK.
A recap of two Melbourne industry events shows where they spend time and the practitioner conversations they value.
Use the tags to explore a subject, or follow similar creators covering shopper insight, AI-driven commerce and ecommerce decision moments.
Rabin works with the same raw material as Osthus — what shoppers actually say and do in ecommerce — and turns large volumes of feedback into published research that brands use to change decisions.
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Her write-ups share their habit of leading with a striking number, then explaining what it means for a retailer. Both treat customer input as a basis for decisions, not just sentiment.
Rabin's analysis draws on tens of millions of existing reviews for a trends report, and her posts promote those findings alongside a reviews product. Osthus works from commissioned mystery shopping: shoppers take a journey they would not otherwise take, and the comparison is with competing retailers, not with what reviewers choose to write.
Nenadic writes about how buying behaviour in ecommerce is changing and which teams are falling behind, using personal experience and a market figure to make the case.
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The approach is close to Osthus's: name a practice everyone thinks is working — asking questions in ChatGPT or leaning on a rating — and show why it falls short.
Nenadic focuses on AI agents and agency capability, from agentic shopping to the tools teams should use daily. Osthus focuses on the customer journey and how to measure the experience, rather than AI adoption itself.
Salomon focuses on the same decision moment as Osthus: whether a shopper converts while still on the page.
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His loyalty launch puts benefits where the decision happens, and both writers turn shopper data into a research or planning resource brands can act on.
Salomon's public material covers product launches and AI-visibility work at a loyalty and reviews platform, including a planning toolkit for search and AI engines. Osthus offers a diagnostic service that benchmarks a retailer against competitors' journeys: a different product built on a different method.
Mareile Osthus’s posts address ecommerce customer experience, including online mystery shopping and customer-journey friction.
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For an ecommerce experience benchmark campaign, ask for recent audience geography and role data, with documented survey results or another source for professional attributes such as employer, occupation, and seniority.
Mareile Osthus argues that customer-experience scores such as NPS show a result but not why customers hesitate or leave, making the case for online mystery shopping to identify friction across the buying journey.
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In a post about Zara, they illustrate how a functional design can still clash with shoppers’ learned behaviour.
Their writing also covers CX leadership and community, including a hiring post that ties operational expertise to developing people.
Ask for available partnership formats and terms, as their posts do not describe a commercial offer or brand enquiry route.
Strong fit as a research-and-commentary partnership. Negotiate commercial terms case by case; the material reviewed includes no published format, rate card or enquiry route.
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Brief
A CX or experience-measurement software company wants a thought-leader partner for a co-branded ecommerce experience benchmark: a study that measures retailers in one category and explains, journey by journey, why shoppers hesitate or leave.
Reasons
The campaign premise already appears in Osthus's writing. Their NPS post argues that a rating gives a number but not the reason someone abandoned a site or bought once and did not return. They compare it to a manager saying "I give you 6 out of 10" and walking away. A benchmark study needs exactly that gap as its reason to exist, and Osthus has stated it publicly in their own words.
The same material defines the method. Online mystery shoppers give structured feedback across the complete journey, benchmarked against the retailers a customer is also considering, then aggregated and reported in a dashboard. That gives a software partner a workable study design to co-publish, rather than something it would have to teach Osthus from scratch.
The behavioural-gap post offers testable, visible subject matter rather than opinion. The Zara example (shoppers swipe horizontally, the page requires vertical movement) and the live-chat left-or-right question give a benchmark concrete interaction checks that reveal differences between retailers even when every site technically works.
Osthus's credibility with the practitioner audience is evidenced, not assumed. They cite an Online CX Index when recommending a CX leadership hire, describe what a CX operator should be able to do, and have built a team around people with deep ecommerce experience. That is the register a benchmark campaign needs if it targets retail and CX operators rather than consumers.
Osthus also appears in industry rooms built for candid practitioner conversation rather than polished promotion. A benchmark launch could include that kind of live session. Their demonstrated preference for people being generous with their experience suggests a format they would take part in.
Caveats
Osthus's posts do not establish audience composition: follower roles, employers, seniority or geography. Ask for audience data before promising how many retail decision-makers the campaign will reach.
Whether humii competes with the sponsoring vendor is an open commercial question. Osthus runs an online mystery-shopping business, and a benchmark campaign sits close to its own product.
Settle the reach of the partner's own channels and the disclosure wording for co-authored research before launch.
When to choose a specialist
Poor fit based on Osthus's posts.
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Brief
A consumer activewear brand wants Osthus as a paid social creator to drive direct-to-consumer product sales through conversion-focused posts, discount codes, product demonstrations and reach targets against consumer shoppers.
Reasons
The posts show what Osthus discusses, not who follows. Ask for role, geography and seniority data before promising a consumer brand that its shoppers are in the audience.
The material documents no sponsorship offer, media kit, rate card, sponsorship policy, disclosed paid work or public enquiry route. Treat paid promotion as a bespoke first conversation, not a listed format a buyer can plan around.
The content is diagnostic argument aimed at retail and ecommerce operators, not purchase persuasion aimed at shoppers. Score-versus-diagnosis, journey friction and behavioural expectation are the kind of material a category manager reads, not the kind that sells a pair of leggings.
The one activewear-adjacent post is a recruitment recommendation, not a promotion. It promotes a Community Experience Manager role at LSKD and cites that retailer's standing on an Online CX Index. It also says the role does not require activewear or ecommerce experience. A recruitment reference is not a commercial placement.
Osthus's posts do not show formats that usually drive consumer conversion: product demonstrations, try-ons, unboxings or offer-led posts. Building a conversion campaign on this basis would mean inventing a capability rather than describing one.
Caveats
This is a judgement about what Osthus's posts say, not a claim that Osthus never takes sponsorship or never works with consumer brands. It means Osthus's posts here do not mention such an arrangement.
The event and hiring posts show a genuine industry network and a talent-recruitment voice. Those are real assets for the right brief, but not consumer conversion assets.
A worked campaign example
Brief
Co-branded ecommerce experience benchmark for a CX software partner, using the reader brief for this profile: assess Osthus as a thought-leader partner, propose a co-branded research angle, and name the frameworks they would contribute.
Open questions
Determine whether the partner and humii are commercial competitors, and how to structure a co-branded study if they are.
Choose the study's market. Osthus's posts mention UK expansion alongside Australian event and hiring activity, so geography is a live decision.
Agree how results and disclosure will be worded; no sponsorship terms or disclosure practice are documented.
Optional angle
If the partner wants a talent dimension alongside the research, Osthus's CX leadership writing supports a commentary piece on what a benchmark result means for the team a retailer hires. Treat this as secondary; it is not the core measurement story.
Osthus contribution
The score-versus-diagnosis framing that makes the study worth doing, already argued publicly in Osthus's NPS post.
The journey scope and shopper question set draw on how Osthus describes online mystery shopping across the complete customer journey.
Behavioural-gap test design and worked examples, including checks on swipe versus scroll and chat placement.
Practitioner interpretation: translating friction findings into the operating and hiring standards Osthus has publicly set out for CX teams.
Premise
Start with Osthus's argument: a rating indicates something useful but does not explain the decision. The study treats measurement as the beginning of the diagnostic, not the answer. Each retailer gets a journey-level account of what happened and what changed the shopper's decision, with results compared against the other retailers in the same set.
Steps
Choose one category and a defined retailer set, giving every result a comparison baseline rather than a standalone score.
Recruit online mystery shoppers to complete full-journey tasks rather than post-purchase surveys, capturing people who abandoned as well as those who bought. Surveys of converted customers miss the reasons people abandoned—the problem the campaign is named for.
Pair each measured friction point with the shopper's own account of their hesitation. Keep both in the report: a friction count without an explanation repeats the failure of the score it replaces.
Add interaction checks drawn from the behavioural-gap material: swipe versus scroll on product galleries, and live-chat placement. These are inexpensive to test, easy to show visually and distinguish retailers whose sites all work as designed.
Benchmark every retailer against the set and show where the differences appear. Then have Osthus interpret why those differences matter to a brand deciding where to invest.
Publish the aggregate in a report and dashboard, and launch it with a live practitioner session at an industry gathering, matching the candid community style Osthus participates in.
Working title
The score is not the story: what shoppers did and why they left
Choose Danna for a campaign about what customers say in reviews and how those patterns can guide product and merchandising decisions.
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In a Yotpo report post, the author describes analysis of 51 million reviews across 14,000 brands and eight industries. A second post turns one finding—disappointment with the color red—into practical suggestions about product imagery and visual reviews.
That review-led perspective helps explain product expectations at scale.
Mareile Osthus’s posts make a more direct case for comparing the shopping journey itself: their NPS critique argues that a score alone does not explain why customers leave, while their behavioural-gap example focuses on small moments of friction.
For a campaign aimed at diagnosing journey-level hesitation, these examples are the closer fit.
Choose Mey for a campaign about AI-mediated product discovery or how agencies can adapt their working practices.
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In a shopping example, the author describes using ChatGPT to find size-50 sneakers in stock. Another post argues that teams should embed AI in how they work, rather than treat it as a standalone tool.
These examples offer a strong angle on changing discovery habits and AI adoption. When the brief is to compare retail experiences across brands, Mareile Osthus’s mystery-shopping example is more relevant: it shows where a customer journey falls short of shopper expectations.
Choose Ben for a campaign about loyalty-program engagement at the point of purchase or ecommerce visibility in AI-driven discovery.
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A loyalty feature post focuses on putting loyalty features on product pages and in carts. A separate post offers a planning angle for improving brands’ visibility in AI engines.
Those topics suit a campaign about loyalty mechanics or AI visibility. For a brief on why shoppers hesitate or leave during a retail journey, Mareile Osthus’s NPS critique and behavioural-gap post offer a more specific starting point.
Mareile Osthus's posts here cover a critique of NPS and the case for online mystery shopping, a worked example of behavioural friction on an ecommerce product page, promotion of a customer experience role at LSKD, humii's first UK hire, and a recap of two Melbourne industry events.
The posts explicitly state that humii is a business Osthus says they created, that Osthus previously worked at THE ICONIC, and that the LSKD job post has no stated commercial tie.
Comparisons with other creators appear only in the similar-creators section.
The posts do not say when they were published, so how these arguments developed over time cannot be established, and the longer article referenced in the friction post is not included here.
The posts do not say anything about audience data, sponsorship terms, biography or transcript, so nothing here should be read as a claim about those.
