Why can’t simple web transactions work the way they’re supposed to?
Last year some of those web 2.0 bloggers started talking about web 3.0. It was quite a buzz for about three days before they found something else to write about.
But even as we live in a world of “web 2.0”, why can’t big companies get simple web 1.0 stuff right? I have lots of examples, but here are just two.
First is DisneyShopping.com, the official online store for Disney (NYSE: DIS). After Disney World managed to lose my luggage, it sent me an apology note that included three $25 gift cards. I visited DisneyShopping.com where I saw an offer for free shipping if I spent $75 or more. Perfect! I loaded up the cart with toys for my daughter and went to check out. I entered the first gift card number, but there was no way to add additional gift card numbers. I had to call customer service, which informed me the system limited use to one gift card. I could use a grand total of two if I called in 30 minutes after placing my order and gave the customer service rep the second card number.
Isn’t the web supposed to prevent having to make a phone call? Is it that hard for a Fortune 500 company to program its e-commerce site to accept more than one gift card?
Another example that has me roiled up today is Paychex (NASDAQ: PAYX), which I use for payroll. I’m not going to complain about its 1994 user interface. It’s what goes on in the back end that throws me into a tirade.
I submit my employee payroll and deduction information through an online “time sheet”. It’s simple stuff: pay this much gross, deduct this much for dental, etc. Then I click submit, and you would think this sent the time sheet for processing automatically.
You’d be wrong. It sends the time sheet to a payroll representative who then has to manually key in all of the information into a different system. You can imagine what happens when you add a human to the process: stupid mistakes. Two months ago I had five errors on my payroll, including stupid ones like transitioning 72.37 to 73.27.
So while the blogosphere talks about the greatness of web 2.0 and 3.0, I’m going to quietly pray that companies get working on web 1.0.
David J Castello says
You make an excellent point, Andrew. I was thinking the saem thing last night as I was navigating the AMEX Membership Rewards site.
I believe a big part of the problem is that there is not much test field marketing with these customer sites. Most of the people who test them are not the type of people who use them.
Mike Maddaloni - The Hot Iron says
The problem is that many developers like doing the cool coding, but don’t think at all about those who use it. I know – I am a Web developer, and most of what I develop is highly functional, Web 1.0 applications.
mp/m
Johnny says
Developers also are notorious for typos also. It drives me crazy and makes me think a site is unprofessional.
The Disney thing you mention makes me think they want to force you into three orders so you spend more…..instead of being user-friendly.