The Marketing Observer

COS has finally got round to launching an ecommerce site, except that it hasn't, as it has gone down and isn't responding!
How did COS manage to mess that up after H&M had such public failure last year?
#fail

The hunt for a better cup of coffee in Covent Garden

The people in my office all know that I am a bit of a coffee snob. I don't really like any of the big chains and I certainly don't like the service and care most of them take over their coffee creations.The best coffee in London is undoubtedly the Monmouth Coffee Company in Monmouth Street (www.monmouthcoffee.co.uk). Although it is on my way to work, it is often too busy for me to stop there everyday and it is not within a 5 minute walk of the office.

I always think that you can tell how decent a coffee shop is by its double macchiato. Until recently I used to go to my local branch of EAT which rather surprisingly did pretty good coffee. As a result I used to go there 2 or 3 times a day. Sadly, that all changed recently when they installed the dreaded automated coffee machine. The staff all knew I was going to be unhappy as they had commented on it!

When it arrived I tried it once (I had tried the cofee in other branches of EAT where they had the machines) and the coffee - using the same beans alledgedly - tasted bitter and slightly burnt. As a result I have been elsewhere for my coffee and buy my lunch form EAT far less often too. Unusually I did complain to EAT and got a nice personal response about how they would recalibrate the machine. Sadly to no avail as they have lost me as a coffee customer.

So, given the number of comments in the office I thought I would blog about my hunt for the best local cup of coffee - I have lots of choice as I am based just to the south of Covent Garden in central London.

So I will now try every coffee shop within a 5 minute walk and work out which is the best taste / value combination. I hope you enjoy the adventure!

GAP - they still don't get it...

This morning I received a nice looking email from GAP.

It was not personalised at all and features their new "lookbook". Great - except that it is all women's fashion! Not really the best for creating engagement with your average male...

The latest effort to improve our broadband speed is underway - well not quite - they've missed central London!

The latest effort to improve our broadband speed is underway.

BT has an overly branded programme called BT Infinity. However when you review which exchanges will get Infinity all of the central London exchanges are curiously absent.

You can vote on http://www.racetoinfinity.bt.com/ (suggest you use the HTML version as it appears not to like Firefox, Opera or Safari on my old iMac). - The ad agency responsible should be shot for this basic failure.

This nice piece of PR spin for BT will get people to vote for their area to get the much faster Infinity 50Mb lines thanks to a fibre optic 'final mile". Vote for King's Cross now!

New Times website - a usability disaster?

Out of mere interest, as I really doubt I will become a subscriber, I signed up for the new Times website trial. Remember, this is the site that people will be forced to pay for in a month or so.

The instantaneous reaction to the new site is that it is a substantial retrograde step, although there is a clear attempt to bring the online branding and "look n feel" closer together. Using serif fonts for the page text as well as the titles flies in the face of received web wisdom. The wrapping and the line spacing is also unhelpful for readability.

Furthermore, the colours are far less attractive and monochrome which will make usability poor.

The navigation is changed too. The structure is radically different and presumably replicates the paper version. Breadcrumbs have been removed which makes locating your position in the site harder.

Pages on the current free website accommodate the full length of an article - the new site makes users click through to subsequent pages just to finish reading the same article.

All-in-all it will be fascinating to discover how the Times justifies all of these changes. They make the website far harder to use, particularly for someone who isn't intimately familiar with the paper version - ie the vast majority!

#fail

What is amazing is that the content is substantially different on the homepage and that the text sub-headings are being re-edited and different images are being used. The sheer workload increase that this entails is extraordinary if replicated across the entire site.

Barclays have almost annoyed me enough to overcome interia

Generally I think that Barclays have a very good online banking system.It features real time updates and you can normally carry out pretty much any action you need in order to service one's account.However, they seem to have been sucked in by the web security brigade and as a result, yesterday, it was easier for me to walk to my local branch and talk to someone than to try and "self-service".

I tried to send some money to another account and I am now no longer able to do this without PINsentry. This odious device will not fit into any pocket easily and certainly not into my wallet.I already have a membership number, a PIN and a password check to get into the account so this does seem rather over the top to me.

Furthermore the bank has completely failed to communicate this change in policy to its account holders as far as I am aware.When I eventually got through to someone on the phone I could barely understand them as they could not speak English coherently and was told that they could not talk to me because I did not know the exact date of a standing order (end of the month wasn't accurate enough). It was suggested I ring back when I had a statement in front of me! So no online banking with Barclays from me anymore then. A 5 minute walk to the branch producer a result quickly.

What my investigations did reveal was a complete lack of analysis of the usability or user experience of online banking in the UK - there appear to be no studies paid or otherwise that I could find on Google. Does anyone know of a study? I do know for example that the First Direct system works well but doesn't give you the ability to name your accounts.

Thoughts?

As a long term customer of Streetcar I hope that their wonderful web interface won't get demolished as part of the acquisition of Streetcar by Zipcar.
Streetcar has been very innovative and their user interface design and thoughtfulness has not gone un-noticed by many including myself.

I do hope that Zipcar realise there are some benefits from absorbing Streetcar's leading best practice in this area.

COS

I like COS as a brand, I really do.

Coolish clothes, nice materials and not too outrageous prices.

They really messed up on the email front yesterday though.

I was due to attend an invite only mens clothing evening with 20% off last night but couldn't make it.

Glad I didn't as at about the time I should have been attending that evening event I received an email saying the mid-season sale was starting today (the following day) with discounts of 30-50%. How annoying would that have been?!!!!

Internet Retailing event

I attended this event yesterday.

Surprised by the non-appearance by certain ecommerce platform providers.

For example where was Venda?

I saw guys from Portaltech, CSI, E-in-B, Snow Valley to name but a few but no sign of the "market leaders".

Are they too busy?

email anomalies

I recieved yesterday an email that was a tad demeaning.

It came from BA - who have a patchy record of emailing me in the past.  Previous highlights have included offers that couldn't be linked through to (when I actually wanted to take up the offer) and the need to complain in writing about email issues.  Yes that one was true and they only guarantee a response in 28 days.

And it isn't as if I am an unknown person to them. I ahve been an exec card member of the most basic kind for many years. And so this brings me back to yesterday's email.

The title of the email was:
"Mr Sample, boost your BA Miles with British Airways and Avis".

Put simply, they forgot my name!

Since my colleague got an identical email a little earlier in the day it clearly wasn't that they got my name wrong - someone didn't spot that the data merge had gone wrong.
BA obviously are not the only organisation with email issues.

With this in mind I suggest you read this article by Evan Schulman which sums up a lack of attention to detail with some emailers or possibly a lack of testing in the budget. - This is one of the classics:

"The ROI That You Can’t Afford”.

A click revealed what they had intended to say

“The ROI That You Can’t Afford To Miss"