Bad E-Commerce Systems Lose Customers
Ok, I love Christmas and with it, I love going ice skating up in Dublin at one of the seasonal ice rinks: either Smithfield on Ice or 7up Christmas on Ice. I’m in no way good at it and I’m quite proud of myself when I make it around the rink without falling!!! Anyway, this year I took it upon myself to organise a group of us to go up especially for it. So, I got 20 friends together and went online today to book the tickets. For the past 3 years, I’ve always gone to Smithfield on Ice. I actually did their website back in 2003 and had made it my rink of choice since then. However, this year… I’m going to change and give the business (around 320 euro for this trip but maybe more before the event finishes) to the 7up rink over in the RDS. Why? Well, here it is…
Smithfield on Ice
The Smithfield on Ice website is crap… worse still… their booking system is absolutely terrible. First off, last week, I tried to do the booking but the booking system was down so I didn’t bother and came back to it today to do the booking. Once I got into it, I wish I hadn’t. It has a terrible layout, is not user friendly and I couldn’t find the time that I wanted to book for. Also, the bookings only go up to 12 people at a time. They say you get a discount for 20 people but I couldn’t book that amount of people. It annoyed me so much!!! I decided to give them another chance and rang their booking line, only to be welcomed by a very fast speaking individual telling me about a couple of events and then saying that I could book tickets for Smithfield on Ice on their “advanced booking system” and gave me the address (yes, you guessed it back to the website above). Here’s what their booking system looks like:
After all that, I decided to check out the 7up website and possibly book there.
7up Christmas on Ice
To tell you the truth, it wasn’t much better over there either. Although, it was a better experience. Their booking system has also got a number of flaws (one notable one is the use of nbsp; spacing - the developer keeps leaving out the trailing ; and it is appearing as   in the actual text all over the place) but in comparison to Smithfield’s: it is laid out better, easier to select dates/time/tickets required, and make payment. I didn’t feel compelled to ring them, I felt satisfied that their site could handle my booking… but I am in no way impressed with it. Here’s what their booking system looks like:
Conclusion
So, to conclude, Smithfield on Ice would have gotten my business this year if they had a decent booking system in place and 7up on Ice only got it because there was no other alternative that I know of. I really would like to go back to Smithfield but if they can’t put a decent ticketing system in place, what’s the point? Ticket Master is out there ya know!!! The company that provides the bookings must be doing it at extremely low costs to Dublin City Council because who in their right mind would put the Central Ticket Bureau in charge of it. How much money are these businesses/projects making that they can’t install a decent system for bookings??? You never know… I might get contacted to do their booking system for next year!!! 
So, if you are going to have a big marketing campaign and spend loads on a great idea and event (actually… if you’re going to put up any kind of booking or e-commerce system)… please, please, please employ a company/developer that will be able to build a user friendly and working booking system so that you can accept orders/payments and not drive customers away (even loyal ones like me). Otherwise, what’s the point!!! This actually reminds me of a similar blog entry by Red Cardinal about when you get exposure, leverage it. What is it about big Irish businesses (or entities if you like) that they can’t get the basics right?!?!?
