How to make sure your online business is failing and ways to fix it.
This is a more calm rant of a post I have done earlier today and removed. Everytime I have to use a proprietary online shop to buy something the thing is just of very poor quality. One example of last year is Best Western, their bookingsystem was so bad, I had to book the Room through Yahoo Travel.
So here is my top six of how you can make sure your online is failing (and how to fix it):
- Make sure your webpage only works with Flash, Internet Explorer 5 with the right locale, a Java plugin to enter the CVC number of your credit card… It is not that JQuery or website testing frameworks like Selenium needs to be invented…
- Make sure the user experience is bad, try to nest the content in as many frames as possible, make sure the user needs to scroll with at least two scrollbars. The easy solution is, test your content with 1024×768 and don’t use frames…
- Provide options on your purchase and then send long, very long boilerplate emails that the user needs to call your expensive hotline to pick another option. Provide fewer options, make sure the payment process is working for them, or use another good company for the payment.
- Provide wrong errors codes. E.g. when a flight is fully booked, claim the credit card number or the postal address is wrong. Blame it on the credit card company, it is easy, unless the customer calls the credit card company…
- Let the user enter his address multiple times, insist that he must have a landline number…
- Have a hobby programmer decide that + is not a valid part of an email address…