Comments on: Captain Obvious works for Dell’s Internet Team

By: Sami Khan

Sami Khan — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 07:06:13 +0000

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!

By: dnorman

dnorman — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 22:36:01 +0000

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…

By: davidicus

davidicus — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 18:46:40 +0000

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.

By: Vivian

Vivian — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 02:16:02 +0000

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.

By: dnorman

dnorman — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 22:04:41 +0000

well, yeah, but a good old fashioned kitten stomp is just plain fun. no. wait. did I say that?

By: Tyler

Tyler — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 22:00:33 +0000

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.

By: dnorman

dnorman — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 21:10:45 +0000

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…

By: Tyler

Tyler — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:59:33 +0000

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.

By: dnorman

dnorman — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:39:42 +0000

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…)

By: Tyler

Tyler — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:36:16 +0000

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.