A week before Christmas I was shopping online, as usual, but this time with some relatively clear requirements rather than purely as a displacement activity from the important business of writing a report.
These were the requirements:
- delivery before Christmas (this was Tuesday 16th, so I thought that was reasonable)
- a decent bottle of red wine from anywhere other than AustraliaĀ (note for Australian readers: I love Australian wines but had reasons why I didnāt want this one to be from Oz)
- overall price to be under Ā£25.
So now for the naming and shaming.
Failure no 1: Waitrose.com
Way that they lost the order: delivery had already closed.
Usability lesson learned: No matter how good the front-end, you have to have the back-end systems to support it.
Failure no 2: Tesco.com
Way that they lost the order: the website continually crashed with an obscure programming error message.
Usability lesson learned: no matter how easy it is to use, it has to work.
Failure no 3: Sainsburys.co.uk
Way that they lost the order: inadequate product offerings.
This one didnāt crash or anything, but after a few clicks around and viewing fiveĀ or so pages of products I hadnāt found anything that looked like it fulfilled my criteria. More important, I hadnāt built up any confidence that persistence would reveal something. My impression was that the site was easy to navigate but the navigation didnāt deliver me to what I wanted.
Usability lesson learned: quick navigation to your standard offering is great, but donāt forget some routes for the customer who wants something fancier.
Failure no 4: www.vintagewinegifts.co.uk (or was it a success?)
Way that they lost the order: over my budget.
As I wandered about this site, it dawned on me that they really didnāt want my business at a paltry Ā£25. I clicked away happily and gradually noticed the āgo awayā messages: āFree delivery over Ā£39ā, āPrice range: Under Ā£40, Ā£40 – Ā£70, Over Ā£40ā, the only red wine under Ā£25 being out of stock.Ā So in one sense this was a success – they turned me away without insulting me. But in another sense it was a failure: it didnāt persuade me to extend my budget to take advantage of their wonderful service, because I never really saw anything to justify the extra expense.
Usability lesson learned: you need to cater as politely for the people that youāre not doing business with as for those you want. Maybe you can persuade them to change their criteria or come back another day.
Success: www.laywheeler.com
Ways that they gained the order: good selection, easy to find, within my budget, met my requirements.
The reassuring thing about the Lay and Wheeler site was that the top price in the range was Ā£30, with the range going down to Ā£7.50. Ordinarily Ā£7.50 is the maximum that weād spend on a bottle of wine in the Jarrett household (and whatās wrong with the Ā£2.99 Cotes du Plonk anyway?) but this was a special occasion.
A few fairly easy clicks, a registration process that wasnāt too onerous, easy to specify a delivery address different to mine and a couple of nice details: the option to specify delivery instructions, and the option to be informed of the actual delivery date. Well done Lay and Wheeler. Even the Ā£7.95 delivery charge (ouch) didnāt put me off. If the bottle arrives as anticipated, I may even get another one to toast the New Year.
Usability lesson learned: ifĀ the overall site experience is good enough, users will forgive a minor problem.
This article first appeared in Usability News
Image, Wine, by Denise Mattox, creative commons