9 ms·
Why Do Laptop Makers Have Such Terrible Websites
- smacktoward 8y agoThe 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 8y agoTheir 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 8y agoTerrible 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 8y ago> 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 8y agoThe 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.
- chiefalchemist 8y agoResearching takes time. Nothing is free, especially not time. Time is money. Unless the savings is significant, it's likely all factors of economics considered, that both are paying about the same; getting the same value / bang for buck. True, the higher end models might be more profitable to the manufacturer, but that's likely due to less competition at that end of tbe market. That doesn't make the higher end buyer more educated.
- mmirate 8y agoSimple solution: be educated. I suspect this is fairly easy for most HN readers.
- pdimitar 8y agoIt doesn't help the brands much though. I have plenty of non-technical acquaintances and they gradually become more and more jaded as years pass. Most have settled for "everybody is producing garbage so just buy what's pretty and cheap" but some started to buy refurbished MacBook Airs and are very happy. I also knew a guy 2-3 years ago who adored his Asus EEE netbook. So I feel that with these dark pattern sales techniques the companies are inflicting a death by a million paper cuts to themselves. But since the difference isn't visible quarter to quarter they are oblivious to it. ...Or they don't care.
- tedunangst 8y agoThis is definitely true if you sell through Best Buy, HSN, QVC, etc. but there's no reason why every model needs to be on your own web store.
- morkfromork 8y agoWhy is gizmodo such a terrible website?
- ovao 8y agoThe 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 8y agoPro-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 8y agoPedantry: that’s not a ‘Pro-tip”, that’s pedantry.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dieterrams 8y agoPSA: one man's pedantry is another man's pro-tip.
- jandrese 8y agoOn the contrary they seem to be the experts at "terrible".
- Finnucane 8y agoThey don’t mean for the sentence to be hard to navigate, it just has to provide different levels of meaning to a wide variety of language consumers.
- crazygringo 8y agoI 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.)
- snegu 8y agoI highly doubt this is the strategy. There is somebody in charge of experience design in these organizations who is doing their very best to make the site easy to use. However, they are hampered by a confusing product selection (as mentioned in the article), marketing people who want to make sure their preferred items are prominently placed, tight timelines that don't allow for user testing, or legacy tech that restricts design options.
- jseliger 8y agoI 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.
- kylecordes 8y ago
- objektif 8y agoSaying Lenovo’s website is terrible is the biggest understatement. Its probably one of the worst ever made.
- ceejayoz 8y agoWait, the "the laptop for people who watch things on their laptop" screenshot isn't a parody?
- romed 8y agoI buy all of my laptops here and the UX seems adequate. https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sss?query=thinkpad&sort=rel https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sss?query=thinkpad&sort=...
- soared 8y agoI 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!
- hyperman1 8y agoI know of a small branch office which has to buy HP laptops approved by the corporate HQ. So HQ decides on a small number of approved HP configurations for the next few months(I think normal, developer, mgmt). Then the branch offices goes to the HP site and selects how many of each it wants to have. In a recent redesign of the HP site, they can't even see what they are going to get: Has the 'normal' specification of this month 4 or 8 GB RAM? Who knows? If you phone your HP representative, they say they don't know, go ask HQ. Then again, the laptops HP delivers are all shoddy quality. Every week, some key or whatever breaks off one of them. Getting a replacement part takes 2 or 3 months and sometimes the replacement part itself turns out to be damaged. Also, if you order a new laptop today, HP can't deliver them until next year. End users trying to get work done desperately cling to the old DELLs of 5 years ago, so HQ actually decided to forbid upgrading these DELLs to windows 10 in order to finally get rid of them and get some sales for HP.
- ken 8y agoThese 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.
- 8y ago
- FlyingAvatar 8y agoSince 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 8y ago> 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 8y agoEveryone wants to follow Apple here it feels like :(
- nkkollaw 8y agoNot 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 8y agoFor home is code for able to run Netflix, Facebook, amazon, and Ebay.
- nkkollaw 8y agoI know many people that spend more time browsing Facebook at the office than at home. Perhaps office is Facebook + optimized for solitaire, then. :-D
- cygned 8y agoLenovo‘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 8y agoI’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 8y agoI 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.
- iwiririwo 8y agoT480s with WQHD display is only available online, or though campus programmes. Retailers only offer less bright FHD display.
- snaky 8y agoThose who need the laptop configured as they want. The best option used to be 'no touchpad', that's sad Lenovo removed it.
- dsego 8y agoI love how when you go to the checkout page on Lenovo's website, you can see a list of what is included. But if you look closely enough, you can notice that the check-marks are actually square root symbols. Such attention to detail XD Like this > Included: > √ Basic phone support > √ Free parts & labor
- gregmac 8y agoCar 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 8y agoCar 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 8y agoAnd 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.
- dpcan 8y agoIt'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?
- caymanjim 8y agoI 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.
- postit 8y agoBecause 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.
- viewtransform 8y agoI 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.
- danhdungads 8y agoI have issue to find right driver for my thinkpad
- bonestamp2 8y agoCostco'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 8y agoCostco's website also logs me out after every session. Extremely annoying since they don't show all prices without being logged in.
- kh_hk 8y agoMy 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.
- maddyboo 8y agoWow, 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.
- rocky1138 8y agohttps://system76.com https://system76.com is good.
- watersb 8y agoActually 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
- O_H_E 8y agoSystem76's site is great. Simple configuration. Think it is because this is their only sales channel. https://System76.com https://System76.com
- carlospwk 8y agoThis 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.