Charles on… anything that comes along

Went shopping with the wife in Cambridge the other day. Among the things she wanted to get were a skirt, a jacket and some plain black high-heeled boots for everyday wear. This, you’ll note, is not a huge shopping challenge. Or shouldn’t be. (Side note: Cambridge has stacks of shoe shops, and they are stuffed with black high-heeled boots that are anything *but* plain. With diamante, with a zillion buckles, with weird patterns.. yes. But plain - ah, no, sorry. Don’t stock them - it’s too difficult, people keep buying them, and that leads to stock shortages..)

We couldn’t get what she wanted, but she figured that these days, with this interweb thing, it shouldn’t be too hard to go online and buy from some of the big chains or department stores. Wife even has some vouchers for Selfridge’s - that should be easy, right?

Wrong. The Selfridge’s site is a Flash disaster zone. Want to search for high-heeled boots? Or just boots? Sorry, you can’t. Unless, that is, you know the brand name. Otherwise you have choices like “Must have of the Month”, “Christmas Gifts” and “What’s Happening In Store”. Like anyone cares??? what’s “happening in store”? And you have to then “choose an article from the numbered circles above…”. If you do, in desperation, choose from the list of “services”, you’re told that there are (for example) Gucci shoes… in the shops. No pictures, no prices. But do visit!

Sorry, but whoever’s in charge of Selfridge’s website has clearly never shopped at Amazon, and deserves to be demoted to tea boy, or girl. No search box? No actual possibility of ordering anything online? What is this, 1994? Sod that.

On then to Next, which at least has the merit of a search box, good organisation and some nice graphics. Don’t worry, though - they’ve found a way to screw it up.

The screwup though is not obvious until you’ve chosen (as wife did) the perfect combination of top, skirt and boots, and have headed to the checkout. Here’s the page where you enter your credit card and address and they send the items…

Hang on, though, what’s this? You have to open a “Next Directory account”. Huh? And it comes with two conditions that you must agree to:

• I would like to open a NEXT Directory Flexible Account and reserve a copy of the new Autumn Winter Next Directory (due shortly). I understand there will be a £3.50 charge which I will be invoiced later.
• I have read and agree to the Next Terms and Conditions and I understand that they include important information relating to how Next will use my details including searches with credit reference agencies.

(Try it yourself - for fun, start at the home page, choose any single item and head for the “checkout”, noting too that it gives you a button saying “Abandon Order”. Right - I need to be shown how to throw my shopping trolley in the virtual river.)

But what if you don’t want to get a NEXT storecard (which is what the “Flexible Account” really is, with the sky-high interest rates that implies)? Answer: you can’t. And let’s just see what the “flexible” account offers:

The NEXT Directory Flexible Account gives you instant credit so you can start ordering immediately. You will have a 14 day approval period after you receive your goods and a further one calendar month Interest Free period before you need to settle your account. You will receive a monthly statement giving full details of your transactions. There will be no service charge if you settle the account in full. There is a maximum monthly service charge of 1.91% variable (APR 24.99%) added to your account when a balance is carried forward to the next month. We accept all major credit and debit cards (excluding Switch) including Visa, MasterCard, Next Gold card or Timecard. Alternatively you can pay by cheque (payable to Next).

Gee, thanks - another credit account to have to pay. Remind me what was wrong with the credit card I had?

Result: scrub Next. They don’t want the £200-odd that we were going to spend there. The irony was complete when wife bought a very fetching outfit, including boots, from a local shop that isn’t part of a chain - so preserving local identity and control, rather than just helping pay the wages of someone working for a big conglomerate that doesn’t know how to run a website.

So the next time you hear or read one of these store chain executives whingeing about how they’re not getting enough people coming into their shops, bear in mind that those people might be trying to get through the online doors - and are being turned away by rubbish design. It matters online just as much, if not more, as on the high street because online, leaving takes just a finger push. And there’s no cafe to tempt you back.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• A recipe for lots of comments: annoy a lot of people via a blog (21 March 2005; score: 27.41%)
• Let online poker die. Please. Then we can get back to some other trivial pursuit (9 September 2005; score: 25.18%)
• Online at the Guardian: make me the internet tsar! And educate our children (4 December 2007; score: 24.68%)