December 4, 2010
Website Accuracy
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The other day someone tweeted a snapshot from a TV weather report that showed the temperature in Cornwall was -99 degrees. It was snowy but not that cold and the assumption is that it was either a techie glitch or human error that allowed it to be visible.
Today I saw similar while keeping an eye on the football score for my team, Norwich. At half time we were winning 2-1 against Derby but then after half time the score changed to 1-0, but showed the 2-1 half time score, along with goal scorers, as you can see in the screenshot below …
What’s happened is either a techie glitch or human error.
Such glitches when discovered in the mainstream media become subjects of a bit of blogging and tweeting but ultimately aren’t the end of the world. If the glitches were human related, or perhaps also IT related, someone may get a tap on the wrist to encourage no such embarassing glitches in the future. Such glitches will also generally come to the attention of the ‘glitcher’ fairly easily and so awareness creates the opportunity to fix things.
But what about websites that have relatively minor glitches but are websites where the glitches aren’t picked up on soon enough? I mean the majority of small to medium sized companies who may have such glitches but they’re not picked up for a stupid amount of time. For example, an extra digit added to a price, making a product hugely expensive, or something new input to the website that’s thrown something else out of line (but hasn’t been noticed). Or perhaps a link that goes to a wrong page (or dead page). There are many types of glitch that can happen, and they can be human or gremlins in the system. Whatever the cause, if they go unnoticed then website owners run the danger that their product/service level quality may become in doubt if the company can’t even ensure its own website is accurate.
The answers to this are two simple processes that apply to any website owner:
1. Any time website changes are made, get someone else to double-check their accuracy.
2. Have a process whereby website pages that haven’t been checked for a set period of time (this will vary depending on the company) are manually checked for accuracy.
Human error does happen, and so do IT glitches. By putting systems into place that help to identify such problems within websites, the impact of such glitches can be minimised.
November 26, 2010
Website Accuracy
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Yesterday I had reason to highlight to a company that their website was letting them down. They had come to me with the challenge that their website wasn’t generating them enough business. Within a few minutes of looking at their website there were two glaring problems that jumped out:
- The site wasn’t properly compatible with the major browsers so displayed poorly in some.
- A key part of the website had links to sub pages (describing the company’s services) but the links went to pages that had no content.
I asked them when they’d last looked through their website and the answer was “when it was completed”. What probably happened was that the website was ok at launch stage but then something fell apart in the several months afterwards. So, the company is sitting there wondering why they’re not getting much business, investing in SEO/PPC, but not getting anywhere. At no point did either the company or the SEO company go through the website to see if anything was sending out the wrong message or was broken.
In theory, every company should have a process whereby they regularly review parts of the website to see what could be enhanced. That would identify such problems.
In the case of this company they felt that it was enough to be hands-off and leave ‘website success’ to the SEO company. Big mistake. People in business are busy – no-one can deny that, but there needs to be some common sense and that involves going through a website periodically to check everything is working as it should be (while also considering how things could be strengthened). If nothing else, use some cheap labour (children, students) to run through the website finding errors – offer them a small incentive to find problems and you can guarantee they’ll find anything if it’s there.
Better still, do a review swap with someone else – you look through their website and get them to look through yours. You may not get the in-depth strategic advice that Custwin provides but it’s a fast and cheap way to identify whether there are any glaring problems, while also possibly flagging up enhancements that could be made.
November 9, 2010
Website Accuracy
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A lesson in website load management was hopefully learnt by Tesco yesterday. They sent out their usual Clubcard updates by post, which included reference to the return of their popular Clubcard Voucher Exchange promotion. On the same day they emailed numerous customers similar information.
The maths would appear to be simple …
Economic downturn + expense of Xmas coming up = high demand for anything that brings financial benefits.
But the bods at Tesco apparently didn’t work that one out as the screenshot below shows:
With all the money that Tesco have, plus all the techies, you’d think someone would have worked out one of the following:
1. Ensure the website can handle the high load that such publicity would drive towards it.
2. Send out the promotional material/emails in batches to avoid overloading the systems.
If you look closely at the screenshot you’ll also see another glitch – two sentences with an * and ** appended, but nothing for those asterisks to connect with on the page. Almost (most likely) as if the text was copied from somewhere else but part of it was missed out.
Most of us would kill to have the pleasure of our websites overloaded with visitors but for 99.9% of us that’s never going to happen. But it’s still strangely satisfying that even the big boys, with all the resources at their disposal, can sometimes get it wrong.
July 9, 2010
Google Adwords, Uncategorized, Website Accuracy, Website Strategy
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Walking past a branch of a sports store chain last week there was a huge stall outside selling large England flags for 10p each. Clearly, the store had overstocked, hoping for a better England performance and hadn’t negotiated a sale or return deal. At 10p each they’d still have been making a fair loss on each transaction. That got me thinking about incompetence both offline and online when it comes to event-sensitive sales of products.
I had a search online under the phrase ‘England flags’ and although many PPC adverts were still relevant (i.e. they weren’t focusing purely on the World Cup market), two adverts stood out as demonstrating PPC campaign management incompetence – nearly 2 weeks since England dropped out of the World Cup …
Looking at the Woolworths advert first, the high street store died not too long ago and out of the ashes came an online incarnation. Woolworths died because it didn’t move with the times and it would appear that some of that spirit has translated to this website. Would it have been simple to make a diary note to take down the PPC advert when England were knocked out of the World Cup, instead of, nearly 2 weeks later, having an advert asking us to ‘Support the England team with flags from Woolworths’, which looks just plain stupid? Of course it would have been simple but instead, they could be wasting clicks (although it’s hard to conceive who would be buying England flags to support the team right now) by being visible. They also make the woolworths.co.uk online presence look out of touch.
Onto the other PPC advert. In this case, they’re not offering flags but a World Cup Poster. Clicking on that advert takes you to a page that has a poster that’s totally geared around the World Cup, so has limited interest now that everything is all but over. What’s really interesting about that page though is the number of those A3 posters they have in stock:
Yes, 5,000 A3 posters in stock. Highly unlikely to be used and destined for recycling. So who has paid for those posters? The people who fund Keep Britain Tidy of course. Who was responsible for thinking there’d be a high demand for such a poster? Probably someone who is funded by those who put money into the charity. And then there’s the person responsible for keeping the PPC advert live, possibly attracting clicks, when there’s no point at all. As with the Woolworths example, it’s just lazy PPC management.
So I’ve covered the stock control and stupidity, now onto the opportunity …
Going back to the sports store with all the 10p England flags for sale. A week later those flags still haven’t been sold and are still there for 10p. Where’s the innovation in this country? Why doesn’t someone buy them all up (and more if they’re available), store them, and then sell them at the appropriate time? White background with red cross – it’s an England flag – it’s not going to change between now and the next big England event. At 10p a time it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that they could create an ebay page, offer them for sale at prices much lower than typically sold elsewhere, and just let the orders trickle in. If there are still flags left a couple of years down the line (for the European games) then demand may be higher. If unlucky, they’ll still be in stock for the next World Cup, but what’s been lost by making those purchases at bargain prices and just waiting til they sell, undercutting the competition?
Barely a day goes by when I don’t hear someone moaning about how much things cost, or how hard it is to get business. This is especially true with teenagers. Perhaps it’s easier to moan than to innovate. Perhaps the concept of buying up a stock of England flags isn’t the biggest short-term profitable activity to undertake and we’re living in a world where everyone wants quick wins and big bucks now. But from small opportunities generally come bigger ideals about what’s possible to achieve and when sites like ebay make it so simple to start from those small beginnings, the opportunities open to people are limited only by how blinkered they are.
June 17, 2010
Website Accuracy, Website Strategy
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Readers of Martin Lewis’ MoneySavingExpert may have seen this week that there was an offer to win a free £400 fridge. The offer was perfectly genuine (http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/deals/free-energy-efficient-fridges) and the added attraction is that nPower wouldn’t use your details to cross-sell to you.
However, when trying to go to that website, even a couple of days after the offer was first announced, I was greeted with the page shown below …
While it’s a tick in the box for having a decent looking error page, you do have to wonder why such a huge company are still having technical difficulties with their website two days after the offer was in the public domain. It makes you wonder how many people they have working on the technical side of things and how such incompetence can be allowed to happen. It also makes you wonder whether such incompetence may be replicated in other parts of the business.
Although this particular promotion has no intentions of cross-selling to other services that nPower provide, what impression are they sending out by having a website that can’t cope with traffic levels and has clearly had problems for a couple of days? If nPower try to sell me something in the near future, I’m likely to associate their name with inefficiency and so would be less likely to respond to them positively.
In this case, nPower are the unlucky ones to be highlighted but it can equally apply to any other business that doesn’t put processes in place to cope with demand, or that doesn’t have a plan in place to fix problems (such as a website page or site being inaccessible). The same rules as ever apply – don’t make yourself highly visible online if it’s going to come back and bite you.
August 11, 2009
Website Accuracy
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It’s not easy to get it perfect on websites and mistakes sometimes slip through. But is there really any excuse when you’re a big company who should have some sort of quality checking in place?
Searching for a present recently (a digital camera), I had one particular need in mind – that the camera had a cost of about £100 and it had dimensions small enough to fit in the pocket. I certainly found that but it appeared that the cameras were a bit TOO small. In fact, probably record-beating.
I was on the Comet website and I’d narrowed down to the £50-100 price range and started looking through the cameras. First to look at was the Samsung L301 Black. I clicked on the specification tab to see the dimensions of the camera, which took me to the page (which will probably be a dead page in no time) of http://www.comet.co.uk/shopcomet/product/530085/SAMSUNG-L301-BLACK/tab/specification. The dimensions were certainly small, coming in at 1.0×1.0×1.0(H/W/D)cm, as you can see from the screenshot below:
That’s quite an impressive camera to have 1×1x1 cm dimensions but have a 2.7 inch LCD screen. It’s also worth noting that it didn’t appear to have an Megapixels, which would be kind of worrying in a digital camera.
So I kept looking and guess what? Comet had more the same camera in pink – with the same dimensions.
Looking at another model (the Samsung ES57 Silver and also Pink) there was the same 1×1x1 dimensions. I dug deeper and discovered that all the Samsung cameras had the same dimensions displaying.
For awhile I thought that Comet had perhaps got wind of an impending influx of pygmies to the UK and had stocked cameras perfect for their tiny pockets. But then I realised it was just poor attention to detail, further emphasised by the Megapixels box in the specifications screen of every single camera on the site, which displayed as:
So what does this all mean? It certainly means that whoever was responsible for uploading the details of the Samsung cameras should be shot. It also means that Comet probably don’t analyse their website statistics in much detail because if they did then they may have found that for at least the past 5 days the problems have been there, which will be having a negative impact on the potential of people to buy the cameras?
What’s of most importance though, is that my interest was in looking at the camera dimensions before anything else and because I couldn’t find what I wanted, I went and bought elsewhere, via a website that actually had the correct information. That site also had descriptions next to the Megapixels box instead of that X, which makes me automatically think of them next time I want to make a purchase and leaves me wondering how long it will be before Comet realise their oversights and make the necessary changes.
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