Over the weekend, I did a couple of things with big enterprisey companies which have big enterprisey applications for consumers to, er, use. I purchased a computer from the online Dell outlet, sought support from Microsoft, slogged through insurance forms on State Farm’s site, and, oh right–paid my iPhone bill. Warning: I rarely sound so whiny as when I’m criticizing the interfaces of companies who should know better.

First off was Dell. I was helping someone purchase a cheap laptop–the only requirement was a dual core processor, a gig of ram, and XP (not Vista). Incidentally, I found one for $529. Thanks Dell!

But seriously, Dell’s outlet interface is positively abysmal. Searching through their inventory requires patience and expertise. Here’s why it’s so bad:

1. The layout of the outlet is stupid. They’ve broken it into “showrooms” rather than simple categories, so you have to know what you’re looking for, more specifically than “laptop” or “desktop”. There doesn’t seem to be a way, for instance, to compare Latitudes and Inspirons–they belong to two different showrooms! Argh!
2. The search page itself is badly designed. As you’re using the filter screen, you want to hit the big green button to execute your seach–wrong! There are two very small links, one that says “clear filter” and the other that says “filter results.” I hit the green button (Add to cart) several times, and “clear filter” several times. And since the outlet has lots of inventory, it seems that you’d have to use the filter, or suffer 29 pages of results.
3. The shopping cart functionality seems to be integrated from the main Dell.com store, and very badly so. Clicking the big green “add to cart” button with an option selected didn’t actually seem to add the item to my cart. Then I had to wade through all sorts of other offers and click the *real* add to cart button, which often added two or three to my cart. Then, when I went to check out, it said I had nothing at all in my cart, and the item I selected disappeared from inventory. It seemed to me like their transaction system isn’t working right, which is big trouble for them. I had definitely stayed within my 15 minute window to purchase the laptop, but their system canceled the item in my cart. The only reason I can think of is that someone else bought it. Oh well, I got a better deal in the end, but it was still a bit obnoxious.
4. The actual purchase process is inconvenient and annoying too. They make buying a refurb laptop more like buying a car–I got two emails describing my order status–they have to build the machine! How do they need time to put it together when it’s supposed to be a factory return, already built? An up-front explanation of that would’ve been very helpful.

After my Dell excursion, I went to pay my iPhone bill, since I wanted to use a different card this month. Also, I wanted to upgrade to the middle plan with more daytime minutes since I used too many this past month. AT&T’s interface for this was pretty grim, though. Though the glaring usability issues that I suffered at the hands of Dell were thankfully absent, they looped me through the login screen about seven times before I gave up and called AT&T.

AT&T’s computer picked up the phone, and I had to navigate their system by keypad–a precarious task with the iPhone since the screen goes black if you come to close to it with something while on the phone (to prevent you from pushing buttons with your face). The proper technique is with a pointed finger and all your other fingers curled up to make a fist. Nothing on the iPhone, it’s a necessary compensation, but still obnoxious in this case. Further to my point, I wanted to upgrade my plan, not just pay my bill. So I entered my card number, and expiration date, and then the system said “please wait while we transfer you to an associate.” I hadn’t really been given any options. So it transfered me, and presented me with another voice menu. None of the options were “press X if you’ve been transfered here by our system” so I just stayed on the line, which thankfully worked.

The associate knew what I was there for, and she processed my payment. BUT when I told her that I wished to upgrade my rate plan, she said, “Oh, we can’t do that, you have to use the automated system.” I asked her how to do that, and she confessed that she didn’t really know and I should just dial them back and go through the menu again, or go online. I didn’t bother explaining to her that I had wanted to do this all online, and was only speaking to her because their system made me.

Next up was Microsoft, where I needed to know what exactly Works 8.5 is (that’s what Dell ships with Windows). Simply no luck. I googled, I searched on their site… maybe their system was just having a bad day, but all the links I found led me to a part of their documentation which threw a bloody error.

Finally, I went to Apple to process my iPhone rebate. Couldn’t have been easier. Phone number, serial number, text message to confirm, and done. I bought gear on their site right away with absolutely no hassle. Thanks Apple!

Alright, so what? Well, all these usability problems started me thinking about the general decline of usability on large corporate web sites. Granted, I could give many more examples, and maybe it’d be an interesting project for a Wiki, but I hardly have the time. I think that Dell, Microsoft, and AT&T are large enough examples by themselves, anyways.

The clearest reason for this growing usability problem, I think, is that the Internet is growing up and there’s lots more legacy code hanging around; and more by the day. These companies need for their processes to flow together, for their five year old reporting system to jive with their three year old web application framework, last year’s design, and today’s product configurations (plus offshore call centers, text localization, browser compliance, and much, much more). I understand the complexity behind this; it’s this complexity that I relish in web application development. I just wish that these so-called stalwarts of information technology would take a cue from Apple and invest much more heavily in the online customer experience.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 17th, 2007 at 5:29 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.