24 September 2009

How Not To Have A Transaction Site

So the winner of this week's really bad website award goes to: SNCF.

I have not had the pleasure of using SNCF for a few years. So I thought it would be streamlined and efficient as France's top travel site.

Boy was I surprised.

FLASH GONE MAD is the result.

One of the longest page sources I have ever seen. It is a dog's dinner of images conflicting elements and the end result... ALMOST completely unusable.

Their management of the different country versions showed me that I could access some content at some times through the different countries but not at other times.

Different results from different country versions too was somewhat disconcerting.

If ever there was a camel - the SNCF site is it.

French gone mad.... Flash gone mad... Web people gone mad. I really hope that people who are regular users rebel and flood the phone lines. Oh but wait - that generates money for SNCF... so perhaps this is a fiendish plot to get people to use toll lines that the Railway company gets money for... talk about ancillary revenue. This coming from the company that operates at a loss. Indeed one of the most heavy loss making entities in the global travel market.

Take heart Netizens - there is always a site worse than yours. Here is an example.

Cheers

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You refer to sncf group site, the top french travel site is here.