March 2000 Archives
Friday, March 31, 2000
Of Hype and Craft: A long but good article about the clashing cultures of hype and craft within many Internet companies today. "Craft people" (designers, programmers, etc.) want to create "cool" solutions, while "hype people" (marketers, executives, etc.) look for ways to quickly increase revenue. The article ends by proposing a solution: create structures within the company so that teams can learn and grow at a reasonable pace.
The article is good, but it conspicuously lacks any mention of the customer experience, or a focus on the customer. Companies can take good care of their hype people and craft people, but if the customer isn't at least as important, the prospects will be dim.
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Thursday, March 30, 2000
Tweney.com: Dylan Tweney on "the misery of Web apps," those websites that try to replace a piece of software you've happily used for years -- online calendars, for example.
Dylan writes:
[J]ust when I start getting used to the convenience of a Web application, something happens... The application's site is suddenly unavailable, or it takes longer than expected to display a page -- say, ten or fifteen seconds. Or my Internet connection goes down. Or I lose data that I've spent the past fifteen minutes entering into an HTML form when my browser crashes -- and there's no backup, because I haven't yet uploaded the data to the server.
I have an idea for a great Web startup: its new technology allows 24/7 access to the application, with instantaneous response times. Everything is simplified: No more waiting to display each page, no more ad banners, no more privacy and security problems, no user names and passwords to deal with, no browser plug-in problems. And the business model is simple, too: just pay a one-time fee, and the application is yours. And guaranteed that the application will be around as long as your computer works.
I have a name for this little technology: I call it "software." Any takers? (If we're lucky, we'll get it patented!)
In all seriousness, it's true that some Web applications make a lot of sense and are good for the customer. But it's important to tell the difference. Many Web apps have little value, considering all the drawbacks of current Web technology.
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Wednesday, March 29, 2000
Wired News: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is beefing up its technology patent review processes. (See March 16 for the last update on the patent situation.)
Just for fun: A little fancy-shmantzy Web development makes for an interesting clock. (Thanks to webword.com for the pointer.) By the way, how do you spell "fancy-shmantzy"?
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Tuesday, March 28, 2000
Get Rich by Ignoring the Customer: This site has stated many times that the customer rules the Web, serve the customer, create a good customer experience, etcetera etcetera. But let's face it: there are plenty of people who want to get rich online without worrying about those pesky customers.
For those profit-minded folks who would rather not worry about creating something good in their work, I highly recommend these guidelines for IPO-driven web design. I especially like Step 5 in this proven process:
Step 5 - Avoid being distracted by the issue of whether members of the public can use the site. This means you can move a lot faster. There will be no usability testing or tough site design compromises. And you won't have to track down a Web-building firm that creates user-friendly, hard-to-design features such as fast download times. Remember, your IPO-driven site will download fine on the investment bank's broadband Internet connection - and that's all that counts.
So... if you know someone who is building an empty shell of a company in order to sell it off and move on to their next score, you might point them to those guidelines. (For that matter, you might point them to the Web Economy BS Generator I mentioned on Friday :)
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Monday, March 27, 2000
Industry Standard: James Fallows reports on the recent South by Southwest festival, which ostensibly promotes "convergence" -- the buzzword that usually boasts all sorts of improbable high-bandwidth online entertainment. But at the conference, reality kept peeking in around the hype, with investors and designers alike talking about simple, clear, fast customer experiences.
On the investors, James Fallows reports that "they were looking for technically plausible ideas that real consumers would willingly pay money for over the long run -- that is, classic, sound business... If a deal was tied to the hottest fad of the moment, or it depended on an IPO or a takeover for profitability, the angels didn't want to hear about it."
The designers, Fallows says, "might have been expected to ooh and ahh over sound and graphics, but they did quite the reverse. The designers were impatient with anything that took needless time to download or left the user in the slightest doubt about where to click next."
This is good news; imagine how it might improve the Web. Instead of investing in the flashiest or best-hyped idea, more investors may realize that real value comes from a simple, clear, good customer experience. And more designers might realize that simple sites are usually just what the customers want.
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Friday, March 24, 2000
Web Economy BS Generator: Our new dotcom will embrace global supply-chains. Or maybe it will transform innovative e-markets. Actually, we want to monetize revolutionary convergence.
Know the buzzwords, then avoid them.
Another goodie from the same site is Flash is Evil: "Incorporating Flash into an HTML page or splash screen is bad, but entire sites built with Flash are positively evil because they make the Web much less usable."
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Thursday, March 23, 2000
Salon: Thomas Scoville weighs in with "Howl.com," his takeoff on Allen Ginsberg's famous poem, "Howl":
I saw the best minds of my occupation destroyed by venture capital, burned-out, paranoid, postal,...
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Wednesday, March 22, 2000
The Laughing Computer: Leave it to a computer science professor to tell you to hug your computer. As described in this PCWorld article, a recent Intel symposium (the "Computing Continuum") featured professors offering tidbits like this -- as paraphrased in the article:
People want to communicate with PCs the way we communicate with each other. Such communication is more gratifying, but today's PCs are totally blind to it. Interaction will improve if computers can understand human nuances.
Communicating with a computer like a human is "more gratifying"? Last I checked, most users want to spend their time communicating with other people, not communicating with the computer.
I wasn't at the symposium, so I may be misunderstanding what happened there. But I have to laugh when I think of a roomful of computer science profs and Intel researchers, all discussing the coolest ways to create even more technology for us to deal with every day. How much are the interests of the average user -- who is already overwhelmed by bits -- really being served here?
If I had spoken at the symposium, here's what I would have told Intel: let's get more effectiveness from less technology. Not a bunch of buzzwords or futuristic laughing computers. Just get the bits to do what the user wants them to do, and then make the bits go away.
The Web has brought together some awesome technology that allows us to improve our lives in some ways. But increasingly, the user's problem is that there is too much technology getting in the way of a good experience. We should work on improving technology so that we deal with it less and get more benefit from it.
But new technology just for the sake of new technology is the wrong solution. It might make the industry lots of money, but that tends to obscure the industry's only real measure of success: a benefit to the end user.
Rather than building the laughing computer, I have a better idea for Intel and the professors: let's create simpler technology that primarily serves the user, and that lets users get the most benefit from it.
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Barnes & Noble Bug Report: Shopping yesterday at bn.com, on the final checkout page, I encountered a bug that surely costs Barnes & Noble many thousands of dollars per week. As shown in my graphic documenting the error, the final checkout page hides the "submit" button out of sight of the customer.
I'm sure this is a programming mistake, not an intentional design decision. On a PC running Explorer, the page correctly showed the Submit button in the middle of the page. But on a Mac running Netscape Navigator 4, the button hidden away a full screen width to the right, making it all but impossible for non-savvy customers to submit their orders.
Lots of sites have little glitches; I mention this one because (a) bn.com is a leading e-commerce site with (b) an error that could prevent a majority of Mac Netscape customers from submitting an order.
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Tuesday, March 21, 2000
Suck.com: Good Experience is mentioned today on Suck.com, which has offered biting commentary on the Web for the past few years.
Today's column, Use and Abuse, contains this gem: "There's no reining in a website designer gone mad, especially when he can justify the insanity by uttering the invocation 'brand identity.'" The column goes on to reference the "revolutionary concept" of Reflect.com we talked about here on March 13:
To paraphrase the good folks at Procter and Gamble, whose new site Reflect.com requires first-time users to fill out a couple dozen screens' worth of forms before even permitting them to partake of overpriced bath goods, it's all about a "revolutionary concept," not the actual implementation. So long as users are convinced of the merit of a brand-name revolution in bubble bath, they won't bother to question why the revolution can't be streamlined.
(The actual link to Good Experience comes in the third paragraph from the bottom of the Suck column.)
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Monday, March 20, 2000
Rubik's Cubes Don't Work Online: Game designer Scott Kim wrote a recent column called From Physical Game to Computer Game. In the column, Kim explains that the Rubik's Cube doesn't work as an online game because it's not suited to the medium of the Web: "It is awkward at best to rotate a three-dimensional cube with a two-dimensional mouse. All the tactile pleasure of Rubik's Cube is lost."
Developers throughout the Net industry could learn this simple lesson: the Web is appropriate for some experiences and not for others. Simply translating an offline experience into a website often creates a poor experience for customers.
Game design, by the way, is one of the best disciplines to learn customer experience. (In my case, my first job out of college was as an online game designer.) To learn more about game design, a good place to start is the Games Cafe.
For-pay plug: If you're interested in the actual online game industry, Creative Good sells a $500 industry report on online games, written by the venerable Greg Costikyan.
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Friday, March 17, 2000
Readers on Reflect.com: I received several responses to my Monday article, "Reflect Takes It Personally." All were in agreement with the piece. Here are a few of the notes:
thanks for the Reflect.com story in your latest
newsletter. it's great to see people who are
recognized as experts in their area take a stand, and
not give in to the feeble defenses of misguided site
creators.
(btw, if i was a house, i'd be a log cabin. that way,
i'd hopefully be far away from all the marketing bs
that forms such a large part of the Net industry.)
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Couldn't agree with your Reflect.Com assessment more. As a woman (& a web
strategist) I found the personalization process cumbersome and forced. I
think that they've missed a major point here - women are unbelievably busy
balancing careers, family, etc. The value of convenience and time-saving via
the Web far outweighs the value of a customized bottle of shampoo... the positioning of much of the content really "dumbs-down" the
whole site experience.
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I thought it was so ridiculous that
Reflect.com was "unhappy" with the column, esp. since as you said,
TWENTY-FIVE PAGES. That is just silly, pulleez, I can barely take the time
to fill out a form with my name, address AND e-mail address, pulleez,
twenty-five pages.
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I laughed out loud when I read the piece about Reflect--your reviewer was
much more kind than I would have been, had I gone through twenty five pages
in order to customize my screen--
It used to be, when a corporate giant rolled out a poorly conceived product
promotion, the only reaction that they got would be a few jokes on the
Tonite Show (if the promotion had been big enough), simply because there
was no easy way for consumers to let the world know that they didn't like
it--
Now with the internet, the consumer's voice can be even louder than the
marketer--regular internet surfers learn, at least after a while, how to
handle flames and static, but for corporate marketers, who play by the
rules of conference room etiquette, the 24-7 exposure to criticism, rants,
and even ridicule is too much too take--
Some people thought that the commercialization of the Web would ring in a
whole raft of corporate types who would clean up the shoot-from-hip
atmosphere the pervades the web--but nowadays, they seem to be the worst
offenders--
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Thursday, March 16, 2000
More on Patents: Two more useful articles have appeared recently, both of which force me to conclude again that the Amazon one-click patent does not serve the common good for the e-commerce customer -- and that the U.S. Patent Office is in need of radical restructuring.
James Gleick, in the New York Times Magazine, weighs in with the best article to date on the Amazon patent discussion. The article includes the history of U.S. patents, describes how most patents these days are wielded by large corporations against smaller competitors, and concludes that patents such as Amazon's "could kill e-commerce."
Dan Gillmor wrote an excellent column last Friday, making the good point that companies like Priceline.com, IBM, and Microsoft are "Internet poster child[s] for bad patents" -- though he doesn't let Amazon off the hook.
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Wednesday, March 15, 2000
Fire the Nerds: Richard Brandt's column from January 19 is both accurate and entertaining. Technology, Brandt says, is still too hard to use: "Designers today often think they are creating programs with intuitive commands, but these commands are only intuitive to other nerds. For all Microsoft's focus group studies, there has really been very little improvement."
Which reminds me of my piece on February 22 called Decentralized Interfaces, in which I commented on the proliferation of technology into all sorts of places where it doesn't need to be: "Call me old-fashioned, but why does the telephone need to talk to the television? I can't imagine that the TV would make for interesting conversation. I doubt if the fridge has much on its mind, either."
Several readers wrote in with comments. This one listed some ways that appliances might talk to each other:
You ask why your telephone would want to talk to your TV, let me give
some examples:
* Webcasts on my TV
* Watching TV on my computer in my bedroom, which does not have a TV
* Calling my answering machine at home to put a virtual post-it note
on the fridge for my just-learning-to-read son.
* Fridge having default level for some groceries (beer, champagne,
chutney, salsa etc.) and calling webvan to get a refill when the level
goes down
* Using home alarm system together with the fridge to turn the lights
dimly on in the kitchen when I open the fridge
* Doing video-conferencing with the computer, TV and the camera
attached to my some entertainment system
* Having the fridge clearly show me when the commercial break is over
The possibilities are endless, but require something far superior to
the 12:00 -showing VCR and the dumb fridge we currently have.
Jonathan wrote:
[If it had a technical problem,] the fridge could communicate to
the television that it has a message for the houseowner, whereupon the owner
would see the instructions on how to rectify the situation.
My only fear in this scenario would be to have to mess around with the BIOS
to change my freezer temperature. At that point, the "usability" of my
fridge goes downhill. I'm sure you agree... ;-)
Paul wrote:
While I might have agreed with you once upon a time, my experience with home
networking has brought me
around to the other side. The metaphor of various appliances "talking" to
each other is false; what is actually planned is having a variety of
appliances networked together. Instead of the telephone talking to the
television, you might call home and turn your VCR using the phone's buttons.
The example I love is the ability to turn on your oven for pre-heating from
your office -- I would use that all the time!
Finally, I actually saw a Net-connected refrigerator. It's not as silly as
it sounds. What it actually consists of is a device about 18" x 12" which
is about 1/4" thick. It goes on the front of the fridge; I believe it has a
magnetic back. It's an Internet device -- a flat screen monitor. In the
set-up I saw, it had a calendar on it. For a particular date, there would
be a linked entry. For example, March 7 is a class. Touch your finger to
click the link and it pulls up further info on the class. It's a nifty
thing.
And:
I'm usually right up there with you on the skepticism meter. A lot of the
"convergence" people talk about strikes me as odd usage of technology that
meets no perceptible user needs. But this time, I actually believe it
might live up to at least some of the hype. It's a VERY simple (trite?) example, but if the phone rings, it might be
nice for the TV to lower it's volume so I can talk.
And finally, the only reader note that agreed with me: (!)
I think we need to consider at what point pervasive becomes invasive. I
am sure their are plenty of noble and honest reasons for xyz corp. wanting
your fridge wired to the net, but if you take any web page as an example, I
think I'll take my fridge with out the advertising. (Imagine having to buy
premium "Fridge services" to avoid advertising?)
I appreciate everyone writing in with their perspectives... I'm still on the side of less technology, however. No matter how "nifty" a new feature might be, new technology always comes with a cost. Consider the possible costs of a networked refrigerator:
- error messages (on the fridge!)
- upgrades of fridge software, each costing $50 to the company controlling all refrigerator software
- constantly-rotating ad banners on the fridge door (targeted, of course, to your personal consumption preferences!)
For me, I'll stay with my offline fridge. It works fine.
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Tuesday, March 14, 2000
CNET: What's the difference between usability and customer experience? They're not the same thing, though they're related. In this interview of me in CNET, I describe the perspective that Creative Good and I take.
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Monday, March 13, 2000
Reflect Takes It Personally: Last week Creative Good published a column about Reflect.com, the new beauty site from Procter & Gamble. (The column appeared on our E-business Best Practices site, which is co-produced and hosted by ZDNet.)
In the column, we describe the poor customer experience in Reflect's survey of first-time customers. Reflect's senior management, via phone and e-mail, has made it clear that they are unhappy with the column, saying they "are convinced [that Reflect] is a revolutionary concept."
I don't disagree. Reflect's one-to-one marketing is a "revolutionary concept" that the Net has been promising for some time. Yes, one-to-one will come to fruition -- but slowly, and not in the form that industry hypesters originally promised. (Most buzzwords either follow that arc or fail outright.) Until then, here's my own revolutionary concept: let's stop promising revolutions. Reality is so much more interesting than hype.
At any rate, our column on Reflect is only concerned with the survey for first-time users -- not the overall concept. With this and other surveys, Reflect.com requires first-time visitors to trudge through 25 pages, twenty-five pages, before they're privileged to see the first product on the site. Perhaps if the customized product made it to the customer's door, Reflect's concept would be more attractive. But the point is that many customers will leave the site before they get to the final page in the process.
With a long, slow, overdesigned, complicated customer experience, Reflect must either change radically or become a memory (like slow, overdesigned Levis.com).
Below is our Best Practices column on Reflect:
Reflect.com
Date of Evaluation: 11 Feb 2000
How to Get There:
1. Go to www.reflect.com
2. Click on "begin your experience" in the center of the page
Summary: Reflect.com takes personalization too far with its forced
customer survey.
Reflect.com, a beauty e-commerce website, focuses on creating a total
beauty experience for customers. The Procter and Gamble spinoff proposes
to create a website and products suited to each individual customer.
However, Reflect takes customization too far by forcing customers to to
personalize the website in order to shop.
Reflect does not allow customers to opt out of the survey and to begin
shopping from the home page. Instead, all new customers must follow the
*new visitors* link that takes them to a registration form and survey.
Customers coming to the site for the first time may become frustrated and
leave the site because they can't shop immediately.
Those customers who do continue with the survey face questions such as
"If I were a house, I would be" with answer choices ranging from "A
beautiful mansion filled with art and the hottest artists" to "A
maintenance-free townhouse with an exercise room." Other questions
include "The person closest to me would say I am most likely to dream
about."
Reflect's survey might even be tolerable if it actually led shoppers to
customized products. Unfortunately, the only purpose of the survey is to
customize the site's colors and images. Some customers, for example, will
view the site with purple flowers while others will see it with yellow
ones. To actually customize *products*, shoppers must go through yet
another survey when they finally access the site.
Reflect claims to create the ultimate experience for customers with a
personalized website and beauty products. In fact, it creates a bad
customer experience. Reflect is more concerned with the design and feel
of the site than with providing a simple shopping process for customers.
Here's the same column on our best practices site.
Thanks to Creative Good analyst Christine Yu for writing such a good column.
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Friday, March 10, 2000
More Amazon Activity: Several more stories have broken about the Amazon one-click patent debate (see March 2 for context).
- Jeff Bezos had the good sense to write an open letter to respond to the furor. To Bezos's credit, he has offered some help in improving the patent system. But he hasn't addressed the issue of whether he'll prevent other sites from offering this benefit to their customers.
- Tim O'Reilly writes a response to Bezos's letter.
- Steven Levy wrote a column in Newsweek about the overall issue.
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Thursday, March 9, 2000
Customer Experience is the Brand: A well-written Clickz article deflates the hype of the "branding" buzzword: Lots of people "think that branding means putting your logo on everything, repeating your company's name every time you exhale, and doing television ads. Baloney! Those are just a few of the tactical ways to express brand. A brand's a lot more than a logo."
The article goes on to describe what true branding is online:
Everywhere your company touches your customers - the look of the site, the way your customer service people answer the phone, the speed at which packages are delivered, the ease of returns, the navigability of the site, its lack of technical glitches, the value-added services, the user-friendliness... all of these are expressions of the brand.
As I said, a well-written article. The only gap concerns the word "brand" itself. Everything the customer touches (ease-of-use, navigation, customer service, etc.) combines to form a holistic something that is the most important thing a company can focus on. The article calls this something "brand," but I think the term is a little abstract and a lot over-used. Instead, I'd suggest that the something is the "customer experience." Which makes sense; what else do you call everything that a customer experiences?
But regardless of the term we choose, whether it's brand or customer experience or Belgian waffles, that "something" is the most important determinant of success or failure in e-business. Pay attention to it! (For more discussion on this, see our customer experience white paper.)
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Wednesday, March 8, 2000
PlanetIT: Quotes from Fernando Espuelas, the head of Latin American portal StarMedia. You'd think that for one of the biggest, most funded content sites on the Web, Espuelas would be talking a lot about a focus on content.
Content is not king, [Espuelas] told the conference... "The experience is king," said Fernando Espuelas of StarMedia... "A great user experience is the driver [of success]."
Those are strong words from someone in the content business! Focusing on content for content's sake is the same as focusing on slow-loading graphics or irrelevant features. Instead, focusing primarily on the customer experience shows the way toward providing the right content in the right ways. But content must be viewed through the lens of the customer experience.
Financial Times: A brief, good piece on the customer experience in online retail, featuring a quote from our holiday e-commerce report:
If e-commerce is still producing only modest results, this is due less to a lack of internet traffic than to the deplorable quality of retail sites. "Online retailers have invested a lot of money in attracting consumers to their sites," explains Mark Hurst... "But by contrast, they have neglected to invest as much in turning visitors into consumers."
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Tuesday, March 7, 2000
PC World: Good article on what drives success online. Priceline calls it "wow," and Creative Good calls it the customer experience. The article paraphrases Jay Walker, Priceline CEO, from a recent speech:
The "wow" factor is the "central experience" of any successful Web site, and the key litmus test of any site,because when a customer experiences that "wow" feeling, then he or she goes and tells friends, business associates, and the word of mouth expands, fueling the customer base.
Call it "wow," call it a good customer experience. Whatever you call it, it's the key driver of success online.
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Monday, March 6, 2000
Super Tuesday Tomorrow: Quick reminder for our U.S. readers that several states are holding primaries or caucuses tomorrow: Calif., Conn., Ga., Hawaii (Democratic), Idaho, Maine, Md., Mass., Minn., Mo., N.Y., N. Dak., Ohio, R.I., Vt., Wash. If you're eligible, get out there and vote! Here are some resources:
CNN article on candidates' activity today.
Major candidates' sites (alphabetically): billbradley.com, georgewbush.com, algore2000.com, mccain2000.com.
(By the way, why is it that three of those four sites load the home page with a popup window asking for compaign donations? Do they all have the same Web designer?)
Reality Check for E-tailers: Pity the online retailers that squandered their money. Spent the last gazillion on the Times Square billboard, the Super Bowl ad, and the flashy launch party... and now, after proving their talents in spending money willy-nilly, they want to know how to actually make money. With a dozen competitors in every e-tail market, a Reuters article reports, " 'e-tailing' has become something of a dirty word among even the most enthusiastic Internet investors, with many venture capitalists saying they will back anything but an Internet store."
What's an e-tailer to do? Accept the fact that the biggest differentiator in a crowded net space is the customer experience. Not flashy ads, not great press. How you treat your online customer is most important. As e-tailers become less the "flavor of the month," abandoned by their VCs and their hypeful journalists, they'll be left with the people who matter the most: the customers. Time to start investing resources wisely.
Remember: The key to e-business success is the customer experience.
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Saturday, March 4, 2000
Amazon Update: Here's an update on O'Reilly's conversation with Jeff Bezos about Amazon's recent patents. (See Thursday's entry for more info.)
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Friday, March 3, 2000
The 5k Contest: An especially innovative contest awarding "excellence in Web design and production" is now underway. The twist is that all entries -- HTML pages, images, etc. -- must weigh in at under five kilobytes. I think the contest is a great idea, since it challenges people to be creative within the constraints of the medium. (Take that, Boo.com :) The deadline for entries is April 2.
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Thursday, March 2, 2000
Furor Over Amazon's Patents: Amazon.com recently received a U.S. patent for its affiliates program. This follows close behind Amazon's patent for its one-click order process, immediately after which Amazon sued Barnes & Noble for patent infringement.
Like many others in the industry, I'm astonished at the shortsightedness of the PTO (U.S. Patent & Trademark Office) in awarding these patents. And I'll be disappointed if Amazon chooses to pursue litigation. Lawsuits over misconceived patents do not help the customer, and they don't promote the growth of an open, networked Web.
Several other websites are monitoring the Amazon situation:
Tim O'Reilly, the well-known publisher of computer books, writes an open letter to Jeff Bezos. He also invites the public to sign the letter here.
ZDNet covers O'Reilly's letter.
Dylan Tweney gives his take on the whole situation.
nowebpatents.org is organizing a boycott against Amazon, and noamazon.com lists alternate websites from which to buy Amazon's products.
The Industry Standard covers the boycott.
For the record, I think that it's more effective to put pressure on the Patent & Trademark Office than on Amazon. Even if the boycott succeeds and Amazon backs down (and I hope it does), what happens when the PTO awards a patent to another e-commerce site for an obvious feature? Amazon is just a symptom; we should treat the disease, which is the PTO's incompetence about the Web.
Finally, if you're interested in learning the basics of patents, I found two good pages on the MIT website: what is patentable and the three kinds of patents. Also, IBM's patent site allows you to search for specific patents, such as this one.
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Wednesday, March 1, 2000
Industry Standard: A good interview with the managers of HPShopping.com, Hewlett-Packard's online store for consumer electronics. Michael Bridge, the technology director, describes what his team does: "We design and manage the customer experience." Good answer. Notice that Mr. Bridge *didn't* say that his job was (primarily) to get the best features, build out server capacity, or even optimize the technology. He said his job was the customer experience.
Other parts of the article note how HPShopping evolved its strategy *away* from tactics that would improve short-term financial gain but would tick off the customer. For example, the site doesn't force customers to give up personal data if it's not necessary. Bridge gives another great quote rooted firmly in the principles of good experience: "[T]he typical consumer is less technically experienced, and they're looking for convenience. My grandmother isn't looking for an adventure."
What's ironic is that HPShopping.com makes one of the most basic customer experience mistakes: it's difficult to check out. As shown in this screenshot, customers who want to check out must first read four sentences of instructional text, including this gem: "Please click View Shopping Basket below to proceed to checkout."
Instructional text in the shopping cart page, of all places, obscuring the path to the checkout! What a mistake. Every single customer on HPShopping has to experience this error. But fixing it is easy: replacing this text with a simple Checkout button would most likely raise the conversion rate. HP has done a good job with the rest of the site, though, so I expect they'll respond to this pretty quickly.
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