
Why Do Laptop Makers Have Such Terrible Websites - amaccuish
https://gizmodo.com/why-do-laptop-makers-have-such-terrible-websites-1830499398
======
crazygringo
I think there's a real reason here which the article doesn't mention: the more
confused you are about what you're purchasing, the more likely you are to pay
more and get less.

If the site can guide you to last year's model without you realizing, then
they profit. If it isn't easy to discover there's a similar laptop for the
same price but a faster processor, then they profit.

A lot of consumers will give up trying to understand, and simply pick a more
(overly) expensive one because it'll "have to" be good if it's that expensive.

This effectively allows manufacturers to achieve price discrimination: those
who don't have time to research for hours will pay more, those who really
don't have money will take the time and figure out the best deal in the end.
(It's the same way grocery store coupons allow those who really need to save
costs pay less, as long as they'll go to the effort of clipping.)

So why doesn't Apple do this?

Because Apple is by-definition high end. They're not going after bargain
hunters, so they can afford a simple, cleaner site where everything is clear
and comparable. They don't need to do price discrimination as much. (Obviously
they still do though, it's just by charging way more for upgrades, like
maximum-sized-storage iPhones and MacBooks.)

~~~
jseliger
_I think there 's a real reason here which the article doesn't mention: the
more confused you are about what you're purchasing, the more likely you are to
pay more and get less._

That could be true, but I also wonder how many people look at the weird bazaar
that is the average website and then throw up their hands and buy Apple
instead. Less hassle, etc.

~~~
clintonb
If you have Apple money, you buy Apple (either for the performance/value or as
a status symbol). It doesn't make sense to me that someone confused by a
manufacturer's site would jump to Apple in disgust.

Anecdotally, most of my family doesn't have Apple money, so they send me
Amazon and Best Buy links asking if a low-end Windows machine is worth the
$250.

~~~
wolfgke
> If you have Apple money, you buy Apple (either for the performance/value or
> as a status symbol).

Rather: If you have Apple money, you buy a ThinkPad (either for the
performance/value or as a status symbol). :-)

~~~
twblalock
Lenovo has one of the worst laptop websites. They have 10 "series" currently
on the site: the X, T, P, Yoga, A, E, L, 13, 11E, and V.

Given the number of configurable options across the product line for
processors, memory, hard drives, screens, etc., there must be thousands of
possible combinations.

I assume many laptops across all of the series are available with 13-inch
screens, so the name of the "13 series" is particularly confusing.

~~~
snaky
Thinkpad buyers use the _other_ Lenovo site -
[http://psref.lenovo.com/](http://psref.lenovo.com/)

~~~
mcny
Thank you for this link. So if I wanted to ask someone to get something
specific for me if link them to

[http://psref.lenovo.com/Detail/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_A485?M=20MU...](http://psref.lenovo.com/Detail/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_A485?M=20MU000KUS)

And they'd go somewhere and get quotes? What's the process?

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smacktoward
The terrible websites are just an inevitable consequence of their terrible
product strategies. They make too many models, with extremely narrow
differences from one model to another, and with all these products’ names just
being long, easily confused alphanumeric strings. You can’t easily find the
one model that’s best for you in all the noise of all the models that aren’t.

These companies desperately need someone to do to their product lines what
Steve Jobs did to Apple’s back in the ‘90s — take a fire axe to them and chop
away all the deadwood.

~~~
eigenvector
Their strategies certainly are terrible for the educated consumer. But might
there be a method to their madness? For instance, if you believe customers:

1\. primary buy based on price

2\. buy from retail outlets based on that outlet's marketing

Then it might be reasonable to have a swamp of very similar models
specifically so that customers can't easily comparison shop between different
retail outlets. A deliberate 'dark pattern' if you will.

~~~
soared
Terrible for the uneducated consumer. If you are heavily invested in buying a
new laptop (spending $1,000 and enjoy researching laptops) then you stand to
significantly benefit. Every uneducated consumer who buys an overpriced laptop
subsidizes the cost for an educated buyer who heavily researchers and finds a
good deal. Not fair to 90% of consumers, but most industries work this way.

~~~
pessimizer
> Every uneducated consumer who buys an overpriced laptop subsidizes the cost
> for an educated buyer who heavily researchers and finds a good deal.

What economic motivation do laptop manufacturers have to compensate for
uneducated consumers making particularly bad deals by offering models that are
particularly good deals? It isn't a zero-sum game. What educated buyers are
getting in this case are _less-bad_ deals, especially because the retailer
knows that if they hold the laptops long enough they can eventually sell them
to an uneducated consumer. _All_ buyers would benefit from easier quality
comparison, although educated buyers would benefit _less._

The law of averages isn't a law and there can be a market for lemons.

~~~
dizzystar
The fact that it's not a zero sum game is exactly why it would work. Laptop
manufacturers are far from the only ones who use this and similar strategies.
This permeates nearly every buying decision we make.

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viewtransform
I suspect the answer is in the org structure of these large companies.

There are PM/s for the Spectre line of products, another for Pavilion, another
for Zbook, Envy, Workstation etc. The PMs report to separate corporate silos
with individual directors who have to show annual growth for their group
otherwise 'no bonus for you'. So each group ends up segmenting their
respective market in every way possible to try to maximize profit. That how
you end up with every possible combination of (display x cpu x memory x SSD x
GPU x form factor) at every possible price point to be sold this quarter. Not
to mention old inventory that needs to clear out.

The corporate website is run by yet another internal web group that collects
product info from the various silos and outsources the actual web design in a
waterfall software development model to an outsourcing company in India.

Meanwhile the top VP just cannot cut through the process and complexity of
what he is managing and limits himself to pounding his fist on the table when
quarterly profits are in danger while plotting his next move up the corporate
ladder by jumping ship at the right opportunity.

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soared
I have spent tens of hours maintaining a spreadsheet for black friday deals on
chromebooks, so I'm intimately familiar with this. Similar to the author, I
would usually find the laptop I wanted, google "laptop name spec sheet" and
skip the marketing page and go right to the technical page. The worst offendor
is HP - their black friday deals page is brutal:

* Can't open links in new tabs

* No filter/sort options

* No copying and pasting of text

* Manually ajax button click to load more products

* Clicking through to a product then pressing back resets the previous page, so you have to scroll all the way down then click to load more results, two times

I almost excluded hp from my spreadsheet because it was so time consuming
compared to other brands!

~~~
ken
These are excellent examples of problems which aren't explained by their
claims that "All of it’s based off of user interactions data and information".

Which target market, exactly, do they think benefits from a product website
which stops you from opening a product link in a new tab? I'd love to see some
data which supports that.

~~~
soared
I can imagine some twisted data-driven logic. Bad ux -> difficult to compare
-> users more often purchase the first few devices they look at -> design site
with bad ux and expensive products at the top of the page

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caymanjim
I just bought a laptop on Wednesday via Lenovo's site. It was a disaster all
around. Plenty of others have already mentioned how bad the UX and search are,
but I had a bunch of technical problems as well.

* Zip Code field didn't work unless I disabled my browser plugins (which don't cause problems elsewhere).

* Terms & Conditions links went to the 404 page.

* You can't sign up for an account until _after_ you complete a purchase, and the cart doesn't persist between browser sessions (which wouldn't have helped anyway, since it only worked in incognito mode).

* The post-purchase signup form was broken, so now the only way I can track my order is from the Order Status link in the receipt email, and that page is a static information page, not connected to an account, with no interactive tracking.

I'll also second what others have said about how they have way too many models
and it's hard to figure out what to buy in the first place.

I still bought one, though, because they make solid machines and everything
was 30-40% off.

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dpcan
It's interesting because we were just discussing this around the Thanksgiving
table yesterday. My mother says she has been thinking of buying a laptop for a
year and spent time online but has no idea. My mother-in-law said that she is
fed up with trying to figure out what to buy. My son, who is tech-savvy, says
that he couldn't decide between like 10 different ones because they were all
just a tiny bit lacking to decrease the price of their individual models, but
put all the good stuff together and it costs a thousand bucks more.

So, yes, navigating the websites is not making this any easier.

And myself, I had literally no advice to give them. How would I know either?

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FlyingAvatar
Since most laptop makers have terrible product design in general, should it be
surprising that their websites are any different?

The source of this problem on their sites for me has been the sheer number of
different models that many of these manufacturers are putting out. I get that
they're chasing different markets, but even then it is still somewhat
baffling.

Microsoft has the right idea in not just copying some of Apple's product
design, but also the simplicity of their product line up. (Which I admin
certainly would be easier for Microsoft, since they were starting from
nothing.) But has any major laptop manufacturer simplified their lines in this
way?

~~~
_trampeltier
> Since most laptop makers have terrible product design in general, should it
> be surprising that their websites are any different?

So true. I mean even on HPs ZBooks (ok, on most Notebooks today) you get just
useless small cursor keys and no PgUp / PgDn key at all.

~~~
Macha
Everyone wants to follow Apple here it feels like :(

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nkkollaw
Not at all a reason to keeping being an Apple customer after their failures in
the last few years, but one thing that I miss from using Apple is their
minimalist, easy-to-understand product line.

Right after selling my Late-2016 MBP in a hurry I went shopping for a new
laptop, had to pick between XFT-799 and LL-3A. I have no idea why they do it.

Besides idiotic names, I really dislike browsing by use. What does it mean for
a laptop to be "for the office" vs. "for programming" vs. "for home"!!? Still
a mistery to me.

~~~
felix_nagaand
For home is code for able to run Netflix, Facebook, amazon, and Ebay.

~~~
nkkollaw
I know many people that spend more time browsing Facebook at the office than
at home. Perhaps office is Facebook + optimized for solitaire, then. :-D

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postit
Because Lenovo, Dell, Hp, and Dell(it's changing since the XPS era) look down
into direct to customer sales. The corporate divisions are the one paying the
bills, and they will likely continue to be paying. They are used to offload
entire production batches directly into big consumer retailers, and any new
self-lead sale is more a problem than anything else.

I once made a corporate purchase with Dell, and it was an Amazing experience.
They replaced any defective laptop in hours, now try your luck with their
online customer support.

If someone from Dell is reading this, please help yourself setting up a decent
store for the Precision and XPS brands.

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cygned
Lenovo‘s website was very frustrating when trying to buy a T480s; weird
navigation and a configuration wizard that crashed sometimes. Mostly, though,
they give you a model ID and if you put it in the “Model ID” search box, it
yields nothing and additionally empties the shopping basket, so that you have
to start over.

I eventually bought it from a local store, but if I didn’t know that I wanted
a Lenovo, I would have given up and bought something else.

~~~
rikkus
I’m not sure who actually buys from their website. I’ve tried to use it in its
various incarnations over the years and it’s been terrible every single time.
I think perhaps they mainly sell direct to corporates and to retail channels
so the site isn’t something they care about getting sales from.

~~~
lawn
I recently bought a A485 from their site. It was only available in stock
configuration from other sites which I didn't care for. The experience wasn't
too bad, but maybe I was lucky.

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carlospwk
This is a huge reason why I now have a 100% Apple device stack. The older I
get, the less time I want to spend researching what to buy (phones, laptops
etc.). Apple gives me enough choice, but not too much. Also, when whatever I
have gets obsolete, it’s almost (looking at you MBP team :P) guaranteed there
will a good upgrade available.

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objektif
Saying Lenovo’s website is terrible is the biggest understatement. Its
probably one of the worst ever made.

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rocky1138
[https://system76.com](https://system76.com) is good.

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bonestamp2
Costco's website is terrible too. I think they could sell a lot more product
if they had high resolution images. Ya, images (plural). They only have one
image for each product! They're very low resolution. There is very limited
information for each product. They're doing themselves a disservice since they
have good prices.

~~~
pokstad
Costco's website also logs me out after every session. Extremely annoying
since they don't show all prices without being logged in.

------
gregmac
Car manufacturers are the same. Trying to answer a question like "what's the
cheapest trim that has features x,y,z" is very difficult on most. The
brochures you can get at the dealership are sometimes helpful with that
(though options packages make it hard again), but online is a different story.

~~~
jandrese
Car manufacturers typically don't have that much flexibility in options
really. If you're asking the question "what's the cheapest with features
x,y,z" the answer is very likely the most expensive version, because one of
your features happens to only be found in the most expensive version.

The next most likely response is that there is no model that fits your
critera, because you're mixing high end features with low end features. If you
want mag wheels but cloth seats from the manufacturer you are SOL. You want
the high performance engine and the manual gearbox that isn't an option
either, the manual gearbox is only for the poverty model with the 1970s engine
that we still make but stopped improving 20 years ago. Also it has manual
windows.

~~~
lotyrin
And the CarPlay/Android auto head unit (so you don't have to deal with their
junk navigation) only comes in the "old money" (new money) model with wood
details, analog clock... they may as well add wing back chairs and a
fireplace.

------
watersb
Actually took a screen shot [0] of Lenovo's site yesterday [1].

I really need to replace this 4th-gen iPad. Hence my looking for other
portable devices. On the ipad.

20 years ago, I worked for a company that was rolling out this new e-Commerce
technology for a Pets.com competitor. The site looked fantastic on the design
group's $10,000 Macintoshes. We even had a testing lab with a couple of low-
end PCs running Windows 95, 640x480, 64-color (IIRC) Windows palette. That
literally looked like vomit, or random noise. Slow random noise. For our
target customer computers.

Seriously, 1998. Sigh.

[0]:
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/2eu47ma2sdjqqpk/IMG_0535.PNG?dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/s/2eu47ma2sdjqqpk/IMG_0535.PNG?dl=0)

[1]: [http://lenovo.com](http://lenovo.com)

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kh_hk
My other explanation is that they are used to sell their products on stores
and the OEM market and not so much online, so their strategies may be
unaligned.

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romed
I buy all of my laptops here and the UX seems adequate.

[https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sss?query=thinkpad&sort=...](https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sss?query=thinkpad&sort=rel)

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O_H_E
System76's site is great. Simple configuration. Think it is because this is
their only sales channel.

[https://System76.com](https://System76.com)

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maddyboo
Wow, what a terrible article. The tl;dr comes down to this -

> Why are these websites bad? Well, I'm a journalist, so I

> asked the companies themselves! This is what they told me:

>

> > We provide our customers with lots of confusing choices,

> > and because of this our websites have to take into account

> > every possible customer with every possible need, so we

> > have to provide a mediocre experience to all of them, and

> > we can't possibly be 'pretty'.

>

> Well, folks! There you have it, straight from the horse's mouth.

> Can't argue with that. Here's something an expert in the field

> said that vaguely confirms what the companies told us [...]

>

> So, really, it's not your fault as a user when you can't

> navigate labyrinthine these sites. It's just a problem with

> humanity. Well, actually it is your fault, if you are a

> member of said humanity. But really, the websites just suck.

> [End of story]

This simply concedes that designing solutions to complex problems is limited
to mediocre solutions, 'cuz it's hard!

Have you ever been to the McMaster-Carr website? Every time I visit, I am
absolutely amazed by the quality of the user experience.

They have thousands, possibly tens or hundreds of thousands if you count
variations, of unique products. Yet I can find exactly what I'm looking for
with 3 clicks.

There are solutions to these problems. It's doing everyone a disservice to
disregard that and let companies with lazy (or bad) design off the hook. As
others have said, perhaps the goal of the design is actually to keep customers
confused. We make it too easy to write it off as 'bad design' when it may in
fact be underhanded design.

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ceejayoz
Wait, the "the laptop for people who watch things on their laptop" screenshot
isn't a parody?

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morkfromork
Why is gizmodo such a terrible website?

~~~
ovao
The first sentence of the article is a run-on, contains an inappropriate
“and”, and omits a necessary word. I’m not convinced that Gizmodo should be
judging anyone for being “terrible”.

~~~
torstenvl
Pro-tip: a "run-on sentence" is _not_ one that contains multiple clauses that
_could_ be edited to be different sentences; it's one that _is_ multiple
sentences, strung together with no punctuation and no transition. A sentence
is not a run-on sentence just because the reader lacks the attention span to
read more than a line or two at a time.

~~~
djrogers
Pedantry: that’s not a ‘Pro-tip”, that’s pedantry.

~~~
dieterrams
PSA: one man's pedantry is another man's pro-tip.

