Dear Tiffany and Co.:
I know time travels fast but, just in case you are wondering, the year is 2009. In fact, we’re nearing the 4th quarter of 2009 — almost 2010.
NOT 2001.
You may wonder why I am telling you this…
Your “Choose Your Country” entry page?
Very 2001.
Actually VERY 1998.
I know you are a big retailer and all so maybe you’re just not paying attention to what’s been going on in the web-world but there are software packages — even free ones — that will automatically “choose the country” so the user doesn’t have to. Shocking, I know. What will they think of next? Little phones that can access the internet or something?
I guess if you prefer you can just stay like Burger King. They employ the same lame-ass strategy you do except instead of choosing from seven countries, they have a honking big map broken down into four sections. It’s been proven over and over that people just LOVE world maps.
According to my buddy, Dave Cleveland, Obama was on Letterman last night explaining that he was black before he won the election so maybe you just want to be the same way you were before Al Gore invented the internet? If that’s indeed the case, I think you’ve got it covered with your Shopping “Bag” as opposed to that crass things customers know as a “cart.”
Love,
Amy
P.S. Oh, and while you’re having your customers do all the work, you might want to come up with some more esoteric categories in your navigation — I mean really, EVERYONE KNOWS the difference between Tiffany Jazz, Tiffany Legacy and Tiffany Swing. If you really want to be mysterious, you are going to have to try much harder. Like I said, it’s almost 2010. We be smart.
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Amy, I love reading your QLOG. Your posts are always right on the money — perceptive and you verbalize what I “sense” and do not realize bugs me about sites — especially the world maps and or country drop downs! I enjoy your snarky way with words! You be smart — and smart aleck — a good combination.
Hi Deb. A smart aleck? Who me? I had no idea. Seriously… It amazes (and infuriates) me how difficult companies make it for their users when there are so many inexpensive/free tools they can use. In any case, thanks for writing. Very few ever dare to comment on this blog!
Hah!
Not being in Tiffany-buying mode, I wasn’t arsed to check out the choose-your-country menu the company uses. But this is something that I’ve noticed in the past – you’ve given good voice to the issue.
Amy, you’re right: There are software packages that automatically tell which country one is logging on from. Want hard evidence of this? Try playing Facebook Scrabble while in Canada. Can’t be done. For us junkies, this is a denial of service even several hot cups of Tim Horton’s coffee can’t assuage.
The choose-your-country requirement on any merchant page violates a principal principle of Amydom: Do nothing that distracts your surfer from the sale. (We’ve had our differences over another application of this in the past: Am still happy to wrestle with you over that point.)
But what you’re noting now is avoidable – and in some cases the country choice option can engender a negative reaction in the surfer. Case one: The countries are in alphabetic order, which means those of us from the United States have to scroll and scroll and scroll until we find our option. This takes time, which should be better used perusing fish forks and other essential trinkets. Not wonderful.
Case two involves injecting controversy into the shopping process. The first option in an alphabetic list of countries is… Afghanistan. As in, the country with which we are at war in an effort to curtail terrorism. It’s unsettling – and not even the tranquility of a robin’s egg blue box with a silver ribbon can soothe that shudder.
World maps? Haven’t seen those, but have seen an array of click-here-for-your-language country flags which are roughly the size of match heads. At 40 pixels wide, the British flag is easily mistaken for that of Burundi. I can see a great Pearle Vision campaign stemming from this (“Can’t recognize your flag? Come in for a free consultation!”) but for general merchandise retailers, it’s a non-starter.
–Richard H. Levey
Hmmm. I wonder if very few dare to comment on this blog…should I take a chance?
Sure, what the heck.
While we’re discussing the country selection at Tiffany’s …I’m always curious as to why people will pay top dollar for their “same” jewelry year after year. Down the street from them is 47th Street, the jewelry capital of the world.
It is there that you can find new and innovative designs, you can haggle joyously with the kiosk owners…make great deals, have them appraised…at half the cost of what you’ll pay at Tiffany’s.
On the other hand, you’re paying for the blue box, the BRAND.
Their Brand used to stand for something..customer care. Now, I received a necklace from them last Christmas, and it broke because I have a fat neck and their jewelry is made for petite women. I brought it back to the store and they said there was a $250. charge. My friend George was with me, and almost decked the woman. She said they no longer pay for repairs on “low-end items”.
Maybe they should realize that their brand won’t last for another hundred years…unless they stand by their old reputation of actually being nice to customers.
END of my rant.
Another reason to avoid these select-a-country pages, according to SEO guru Stephan Spencer: They screw up your optimisation, as the spiders seem to think the site is more about Afghanistan, Andorra, et al, than it is about whatever it is you sell.
(Hey, I just like being able to name-drop people like Stephan once in a while. You should see how often I name-drop you, Amy!)
A great example of how people in the web world could benefit from a basic discipline in successful direct mail and direct marketing – make it as effortless for the customer as possible. Use the data at your fingertips to pre-populate whether it’s a direct mail order form or a landing page/home page.
OK, here’s my rant: I’ve kind of ‘had it’ with these whiners who say they can’t do this or that because they don’t have the data. They do – they just don’t want to invest in the technology to access it. Granted, I give them some smaller companies and startups some leeway. But ironically, many smaller startups do a better job at this than the biggies!
As a customer I’m insulted when the company I just spent $200 with can’t even acknowledge me with a ‘thank you’ email… why they’d make me choose my country… why they then email me suggestions for products that are so, SO not appropriate for me. Where’s the intelligence?
I wish you would leave poor Tiffany alone. We love what they’re doing with their website. Very “brand forward…….”
Haha! Nice one, Larry! Great site! You must have worked with Amy.
Tiffany needs to move into the new century. Their heyday was during the “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” era; an interesting movie, but, come on, get with it.
Consumers are, by and large, quite savvy today. The smoke screens don’t work any more. People want a good product, a good value, and no BS.
‘Nuff said.