Bad Websites
I wrote some time
ago about the stupidity of websites using the UK postcode system
unthinkingly, particularly those which would claim to be part of the
global market. My annual trip round websites where I look for
possible Christmas presents, cards, etc, has shown up more
stupidities.
Looking for
Christmas cards, which I prefer to buy from charities rather than
commercial firms where possible, I went to the Oxfam website. Thee
was a reasonable selection of cards from which I chose various packs
and I then went on to choose other items. Right at the end of the
purchase sequence, when it came to confirming items in my basket, the
packs of cards I had chosen were marked as unavailable outside the
UK. This meant paging back through the site to delete them, the site
was very slow and I ended up aborting the transaction. The problem
could have been avoided had Oxfam marked cards as being available
only within the UK up front. It was a good demonstration of how to
piss off customers and encourage them to shop elsewhere.
Another
demonstration of stupidity occurs on the SNCF website. The site
demands the age of would-be passengers. If I put in my correct age
(over 60) the site automatically assumes I want a reduced fare for
pensioners, which is restricted in availability both in numbers of
seats and times of trains. The result is a very short list of
choices of trains, usually at inconvenient times. To get the full
list of trains available I have to falsify my age. It took me a
while to discover this since nowhere on the site is it stated. In
the case of SNCF, there is no train alternative so maybe they don't
care about the difficulty in using their website. Also, many airline
sites refuse to give you a general flight schedule; you have to
propose to book a flight and then manoeuvre around alternatives when
a general schedule would be much more helpful. In this respect,
travel agency sites are often easier to use than airline sites; I
wonder if the airlines realise that.
All this leads me to
wonder about the testing websites are put through. In any IT
development there is a whole battery of tests that should be applied,
one set of which should be user testing: how easily, efficiently and
effectively the software can be used by Jo Public. Testing was
always the poor relation in IT development and that seems still to be
the case; it would be easy to assume little or no user testing had
been carried out on many websites. One glorious exception is Amazon,
which has probably been a significant factor in the company's
success. Not only do I find that I can do everything I want on their
website, I find I can do it quickly and easily. I've been looking
for a site that exposes website stupidities but can't find one; it's
badly needed and overdue.
Metrics
I went to the Post
Office to send off Christmas cards en masse and was duly given strips
of stamps in multiples of a dozen. It didn't strike me as odd at the
time but friend Steve pointed out you'd really expect them to be in
multiples of ten in a metric country. He had an experience a few
years ago when he went into a local hardware shop to get some
chipboard and he had measured out what he wanted in yards. The shop
assistant huffed and puffed and said we sell it in metres (obviously)
and so did the conversion. When Steve asked how much it was per
square metre he was told that they charged for it in yards.
Confusion reigns!
There are other
anomalies, such as the “demi” you ask for in a cafe when you want
a beer being a half-pint rather than a half litre. Apparently in
Napoleonic times there was an attempt to metricate the calendar,
which obviously didn't have much success. Beautifully simple as the
metric system is, there are some things that just aren't suited to it
and now, anyway, a lot of things have gone binary or octal.
Wine
WE Brits are
apparently drinking much more wine than 30 years ago, according to
all accounts, which makes me wonder about the future of various
staple dishes in the English diet. Baked beans on toast, for
instance, particularly with brown sauce, wouldn't go with any wine I
can think of. Neither would kippers or grilled herring. I can't see
wine enhancing fish and chips or sausage and mash either. My point
is this: almost any French dish I can think of seems made to go with
one sort of wine or another. As the Brits drink more wine, will that
start to shape the composition of dishes in the typical diet?
