Russell Davies

the web, the web, the web

Well, people love a complainy post don't they? That one about the Sony web fail was popular.

But I want to make a point, lest I'm misunderstood.

I'm Not Saying: the website is broken therefore the company must have stupid web people.

I Am Saying: the website is broken therefore the company must have stupid leadership.

I Am Further Saying: I bet the web people are brilliant and are struggling to cope with an organisation that thinks the web is for marketing and aftersales rather then realising that the web is the platform on which they should build their whole business.

I Am Further Acknowledging Again That This Is Hard: It's hard because you have thousands of skus and legacy systems tied into horrible service contracts in competing regions, divisions and cultures. Fair enough. That's what you have to solve. That's why it's not a technology problem.

If you have so many products that you can't build a website that can easily surface them - then you have too many products.

If you have a corporate structure that means customers can't find the stuff they want - then you have the wrong corporate structure.

 

favourite shop

Christine's has been around for a while. Since 1954 according to the sign. This is how they reacted to the arrival of a Tesco express across the road.

death to innovation

I bought a new Sony thing yesterday. We don't need to talk about that right now, we'll get to it later.

It came with one of those very thick booklets with very few instructions in many languages:

So, as soon as I wanted to know more than how to turn it on and safely dispose of the battery I realised I needed the help guide, available at this handy URL (and QR code?):

That URL takes you here:

Fair enough, you think, it's a big company, global site, hard to be specific for every single product. You click on Europe and end up here:

You're getting closer, you click on UK and end up here:

You're back in Europe! But with flags! Never mind, you click on UK again:

Right, good, now we're getting somewhere. You type in the number of your thing:

 

You hunt around a bit and click on one of the identically named  Instruction/Operation Manual links. It's a 2-page PDF that tells you how to fit the strap. You click on the other one. It's this:

It's a PDF copy of the very same thick booklet that gave you the URL that started this whole journey.

There is no Help Guide.

Googling only gets you to the same place via various international portals and one of those long marketing pages that looks like you care about tablets.

There is no Help Guide.

My point

Agencies and marketing departments are still banging on about innovation. Sony are probably demanding innovative and compelling digital communications solutions from their staff, partners and agencies.

They should stop all that and fix their broken website.

I know it's hard, I know they have many products and regional overlaps and national feifdoms and complicated CMSs and whatnot. They'll need to reorganise and reskill and reprioritise. They could call that innovation if they want, but it's not, it's competence. It's the basics.

Take the money from marketing and spend it on that.

feels like the summer's finally over