It’s popular with online retail shops to offer their buyers a review section, written by real customers so that I can decide if the product is a good fit for me or not before the purchase. Today I received an email from Performance Bicycle, and they requested that I review a recent purchase of cycling gloves.
OK, that sounded reasonable, so I clicked the Green Button and went through an entire page of questions to get my review all ready to publish, but then, uh oh. The dreaded error message from their web site that wouldn’t accept my review:
So here we have the classic Catch-22. A company wants my review, I comply, but their system isn’t even working, so they get no review.
I would expect that a large, public company like Performance Bicycle would have a web development team that does not only development, but they also test their own system, but not in this case. The frustration on my part is large enough that I will now avoid their store all-together, and just shop at Western Bike Works, River City Bicycles , Lakeside Bikes or Bike Tires Direct.
So the moral of the story is, build a web site, then test your own web site before your customers do. That way your customers are happy and return.
