

Poorly Designed, Broken Websites Are Costing Canadian Corporations Millions - adriand
http://factore.ca/on-the-floor/116-poorly-designed-canadian-corporate-websites-are-costing-them-millions

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algoshift
The problem is widespread. Lots of businesses have horrible sites. It's what I
call the "cousin web-developer syndrome".

What's worst is that if you bring it up, more often than not, you get a
response like: "We don't get much business from the web anyway".

Duh!

~~~
acangiano
I notified Pizza Pizza many times over the years. The few times they bothered
replying they were nice about it and provided me with coupons. But they never
really fixed the problems.

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shinratdr
Let me guess, he used a WebKit based browser?

I always get that session expired issue when ordering from Pizza Pizza online
during busy times using a WebKit browser. If I use something besides Safari or
Chrome, I don't have any issues.

Also, the number one reason I get when I ask others why they use the phone
over the Pizza Pizza site? The site sucks. Not "it's inconvenient" or "I love
explaining to an uninterested rep the exact specs of my order" but, "It
sucks". Keep that in mind when insisting that nobody wants to use it with no
evidence.

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nekojima
One of the OP comments is on how conservative Canadian companies can be. Ten
years ago I worked for a major financial services firm in Toronto and was
involved with the launching of their web services, which at the time was
already five years late. They had a "five-year plan" for internet development,
all of which then was years behind the then leading competition in the country
and could have been done in three months, with no overtime, with the current
staff in place and not neglecting our normal roles.

Despite the entire team supporting an accelerated timeframe of three months,
the SVP decided our customers weren't "ready" for the changes. Within six
weeks almost the entire team had left, including myself. That company is still
going and they ended up doing that plan in a little over two years. They have
had several new web designs in the last decade, but all seem rather dated,
broken and basic.

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mattadams
I'm willing to bet that Pizza Pizza isn't missing out on much money over their
website. It is far more common for someone to place an order for pizza by
dropping by the establishment or making a two minute phone call.

What is more likely is that the majority of their customers really don't care
about the website and so Pizza Pizza has little incentive to improve it. Why
spend time and money on something that virtually no-one uses?

You're an exception to the rule. Businesses aren't as stupid as you think:
they're simply putting their resources elsewhere. Online accessibility is not
a priority for many businesses and the poor execution that follows should not
be mistaken for anything else.

~~~
quanticle
IBM made a similar argument about microcomputers. "Our customers aren't
interested in microcomputers. They want mainframes. We'd be better off
optimizing our mainframes than investing in microcomputers."

That's the nature of the innovator's dilemma. If you listen to your existing
customers, you lose out on the ability to win a nascent, but growing market
that ends up being bigger than the market you're in right now.

I wouldn't be surprised if in the next decade or so another pizza chain came
along with a better website and ended up with a more dominant marketshare than
Pizza Pizza. As more and more people get ubiquitous internet access, the
competitive advantage of having a web-based order form will grow.

~~~
comatose_kid
Does IBM really apply here? They seemed to do alright with the PC.

'web interface' is not the first or second thing I think about when ordering
pizza. Here is what I care about:

1) Taste 2) Time to door 3) Price

Everything else has little or no impact. Now if I could say 'Siri, order me my
usual' and siri ordered my usual from the closest Pizza Pizza and had it
delivered to my determined location? Gold!

~~~
quinndupont
In the end, the PC market almost killed IBM. Remember, they ditched the PC
during their restructuring, and have been doing much better ever since.

I don't think the point is "web interface", it's basic points about access and
usability. I agree that the taste of the pizza is paramount, but as companies
like Amazon have discovered, even a slow website, or a challenging ecommerce
transaction will turn off many potential customers.

~~~
HilbertSpace
What nearly killed IBM was (1) their devotion to their 'mainframes' and (2)
Intel, AMD, Microsoft, Sun, HP, Oracle, Gateway, Dell, Cisco, Juniper, Micron,
Seagate, Western Digital, EMC, AOL, etc.

In particular in three years near 1994 they went from just over 400,000
employees down to just over 200,000 and lost $16 billion. Their Research
Division went from 4500 full time employees down to 1000 plus about 500
'contract' employees. They thoroughly cleaned out rush hour traffic in NY
counties Westchester, Putnam, and Dutchess. There were suicides.

Why? One of their deepest analyses was "God ceased to smile on IBM". The truth
was that IBM had their head in the sand, and Andy Grove, Bill Gates, Mike
Dell, etc. ate IBM's breakfast, lunch, dinner, and bedtime snack and took
their house, car, shoes, suits, ties, and shirts.

In 1984, IBM had everything in computing -- X-ray lithography,
microelectronics, circuit design, microcode, computer architecture, virtual
machines, mass storage, various operating systems, middleware, programming
languages, productivity software, system management software, packet switched
networks, marketing, and customer support, in the US and around the world.
Nine years later they were nearly bust. One of the biggest extractions of
defeat from the jaws of victory in all of business history. Main reason: Head
in the sand. Actually, internally from various sources, both internal and
external, they were always just awash in accurate and deep analyses of just
what was going on. It's just that the top management had their heads in the
sand. Dumb.

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devs1010
I work for a software company that is owned by a parent company from Canada
(but the company I work for is in the US), I can say this doesn't surprise me,
management from Canada seems to place a low priority on spending to keep
things modern

