Why is it so hard for companies to make websites that work?
Two examples:
Jen and I have Air Miles cards. I wanted to go online to see how many air miles we’ve managed to collect (my guess is about 7, but you never know, it could be more). So I went to the Air Miles website. It asked me for a PIN (oh yeah, and asking for a PIN number is redundant). I didn’t have a PIN. There was a handy link to get a PIN, so I went there, filled in all my details, and it gave me a PIN. Perfect. I tried to sign in with my PIN and it took me straight to the get a new PIN page. Out of desperation I filled in all my details again and it gave me a new PIN. I tried to sign in again and exactly the same thing happened. Time to send in a complaint. I headed straight for the Contact Us link, and discovered there was no email address, just a comment form. I entered my details and a long and politely insistent complaint, then pressed the submit button. We’re sorry, an error has occurred and your email could not be sent.
Over at Videotron, I wanted to change our channels to get rid of a few we never watch. Now first of all I have to say that Videotron’s website has some neat stuff on it which has been very useful in the past. This time it was too frustrating though. After hunting through various menus I finally found the list of the channels we currently subscribe to. After more searching I found an option to change our subscribed channels. After going through several pages of options, unclicking the channels we no longer want, I finally got to the last submit button and gleefully hit it. We’re sorry your request could not be completed, please contact a customer service representative.
If you’re going to put fancy features on your website, make sure they work. If there’s a chance that your email form might break, publish an email address so people can use their fully functional email clients. If it’s not possible for me to do something online, tell me before I jump through hoops trying. If you have a content-rich website, make it easy to navigate! Why are these things so hard to understand?
