I just went to the Dell website to look something up, and was rewarded by this incredible bit of sleuthery on the part of Dell’s crack team of internet designers:
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
The web designers didn’t indicate if my being in Canada somehow altered the behaviour of the website, or if the selections were somehow tuned to my location. Just to brag that they were clever enough to detect where I’m located. It might have been more useful to have the message read something like “You are currently viewing the Canadian Dell Store.” It’s a little less braggish, as opposed to “Dude! We TOTALLY located your IP address! We are teh kool! You’re in CANADA. Dude…”
Maybe Dell assumed you’d know the selection, pricing, and especially shipping would be different being from Canada. In fact, if you poke around different Dell international sites, you’ll see they are all quite different. I’m not sure I get what you think is wrong here.
I should probably qualify that I actually work for Dell indirectly (on their web stuff including the site in question). While the site is far from perfect, identifying a person’s location seems like more of a plus than a minus to me.
Tyler, it’s the wording of the message. It’s pretty obvious that I’m in Canada. I haven’t been through customs in awhile. I don’t need a website to tell me that. If it’s that clear that the website is customized because I’m in Canada, why have the “You are here: Canada” message at all? Clicking on the location doesn’t let me change stores (to compare with the USA store, etc… sure, I can go to dell.com to do that, but this message becomes a bit redundant if it just echoes the dell.ca vs. dell.com domain names…)
A lot of people don’t type in Dell.ca, though. They go straight to Dell.com, despite being in Canada. I think it’s reassuring, if redundant. But, from what I gather, you’d prefer it just to say “Canada” without the “You are here” part? Again, of all the problems on that site, this one seems hardly worth the effort of a blog entry. Try PAYING for something from Dell.ca. Now that’s a chore worthy of scrutiny.
Ah, OK. It’s not just repeating the country-level domain. Then, yeah. It could be worded a bit better. The plain “You are here: (COUNTRY_NAME)” template just looks lazy.
I’ve ranted about how awkward the rest of the website is before 🙂 This just seemed like a nice and easy fix that would add some polish to the site without requiring a complete rebuild… But, yeah, I agree – the website is a complete mess, and it feels like the interaction was designed by the sales and marketing department, and not by anyone that actually thinks about how the website is used (it’s not primarily a resource for Dell salesfolk, it’s primarily a resource for existing and potential customers). Hopefully without sounding like a fanboy, the Apple website kinda nails this… The store works great, and I can actually use the website…
Meh. I’m not a huge fan of the Apple site at all. And I’m a guy who owns a MacBook Pro, PowerBook, iPhone and four different iPods. Shopping on the Apple site makes me want to stomp on kittens.
well, yeah, but a good old fashioned kitten stomp is just plain fun. no. wait. did I say that?
heh D’Arcy – you are indeed in Canada, and the fact that it bugs you that Dell has reminded you of this suggests you are verging into SAD season. So leave your bike at home one day, C-train down and meet for a beer at FATS and then I will get you home.
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i tried to buy my mother a WestJet ticket, but the site wouldn’t let me unless i was located INSIDE Canada while doing it. it wouldn’t even let me view prices. she is computerless, and they made me helpless. no site makes me want to stomp kittens, but i was close to an open-handed slap.
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yeah. I don’t get why they’d block access by IP address. It’s not like the price is a trade secret, and you’re simply not allowed to know if you’re outside Canada. It can’t even be a security concern – they could require a valid Canadian address for payment if that’s the case – to outright ban access in the first place…
D, you can most likely blame Calgarians, because, guess what, the website is likely to have been designed by Critical Mass, of, you guessed it, Calgary. Is it obvious, yes, but it was A-OK with management… So yeah, we’re to blame for the bad Canadian (likely) designed site that reminds us we’re in Canada. But I think it has more to do with the dynamics of the portal which may run off a single code base. If Dell did their thing in house it may be a better site. BTW I got a domain, just like my hero, that ends with a .net… Yay!