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Sites like WalMart and Zappos are mentioned in the article for doing things that are non-ideal, according to Smashing's testing. It seems pretty inconceivable f

by ssharp 16y ago

Sites like WalMart and Zappos are mentioned in the article for doing things that are non-ideal, according to Smashing's testing. It seems pretty inconceivable for sites with such large revenues to not have done their own internal usability testing. I wonder what led these sites to their current usability/design decisions.

danssig 16y ago
Online is a different world. Don't assume those who "get" brick and mortar can also "get" online. When walmart first chose to go online they realized this might be a problem and hired a group out of California (this was during the dot com bubble) to come in and do it. Those guys didn't do a very good job and there was a bunch of noise being made by internal people about "we're good enough to do this! We don't need some fancy California people!" so it came back in house. Well they weren't good enough (to be fair, the "walmart online" people weren't either). Though, for me I always figured Walmart.com's biggest problem would be that they couldn't take advantage of the internet tax rules: they have a presence in every state afaik.
- mgkimsal 16y ago
  Being 'able' to do something is far more than technical chops. I'd think for a company the size of Walmart there's so much internal political stuff that has to be dealt with - competing departments, etc - that regardless of what people are implementing the tech, what is directed to be implemented is a poor compromise.
- jkeel 16y ago
  You seem to have a bit of understanding of what happened internally at walmart with walmart.com in the early days. Walmart.com is still based out of California (Menlo Park I believe) even though the company was brought back into the Walmart Inc. many years ago. The original "walmart online" folks weren't web developers (Visual Basic coders) and really had a tough time understanding the request/response nature of the web (although they had no UX or QA people either, which led to other issues). The Arkansas/California issues you talked about also stemmed from jealousy. There were stories of the associates in CA having pool tables, foosball tables, catered food, etc. Meanwhile, in AR the associates had extremely old PCs, old software, required to work long hours, etc.
- ssharp 16y ago
  I understand your premise. I'd expect on online-only retailer to have better intelligence on revenue optimization than a B&M giant like Wal-Mart. However, this seems like it's becoming less and less of a norm. I know of several large B&M companies who also do business online, and they have their own online units, which certainly includes UX people. I couldn't imagine Wal-Mart neglecting WalMart.com. The UX issues of walmart.com brought forth in this article weren't that big of a deal. If they weren't paying closer attention, I'd expect them to have much more substantial problems.

by ssharp 16y ago

danssig 16y ago

Online is a different world. Don't assume those who "get" brick and mortar can also "get" online. When walmart first chose to go online they realized this might be a problem and hired a group out of California (this was during the dot com bubble) to come in and do it. Those guys didn't do a very good job and there was a bunch of noise being made by internal people about "we're good enough to do this! We don't need some fancy California people!" so it came back in house. Well they weren't good enough (to be fair, the "walmart online" people weren't either). Though, for me I always figured Walmart.com's biggest problem would be that they couldn't take advantage of the internet tax rules: they have a presence in every state afaik.

mgkimsal 16y ago
Being 'able' to do something is far more than technical chops. I'd think for a company the size of Walmart there's so much internal political stuff that has to be dealt with - competing departments, etc - that regardless of what people are implementing the tech, what is directed to be implemented is a poor compromise.
jkeel 16y ago
You seem to have a bit of understanding of what happened internally at walmart with walmart.com in the early days. Walmart.com is still based out of California (Menlo Park I believe) even though the company was brought back into the Walmart Inc. many years ago. The original "walmart online" folks weren't web developers (Visual Basic coders) and really had a tough time understanding the request/response nature of the web (although they had no UX or QA people either, which led to other issues). The Arkansas/California issues you talked about also stemmed from jealousy. There were stories of the associates in CA having pool tables, foosball tables, catered food, etc. Meanwhile, in AR the associates had extremely old PCs, old software, required to work long hours, etc.
ssharp 16y ago
I understand your premise. I'd expect on online-only retailer to have better intelligence on revenue optimization than a B&M giant like Wal-Mart. However, this seems like it's becoming less and less of a norm. I know of several large B&M companies who also do business online, and they have their own online units, which certainly includes UX people. I couldn't imagine Wal-Mart neglecting WalMart.com. The UX issues of walmart.com brought forth in this article weren't that big of a deal. If they weren't paying closer attention, I'd expect them to have much more substantial problems.