Insufficient Information:
CatEye
reviewed Dec. 29, 2006
Many business websites fail to provide enough
information about their products. This is especially
true when the visitor is trying to compare the various
products to learn what the differences are between them.
I was interested in selling bicycle lights from one of my
websites, so I went to CatEye.com
to get information about their products and see if it were
possible for me to become a dealer.
I got to the product page for the HL-EL530 and saw that
it's designed for use with alkaline batteries, which means
that it would be considerably dimmer when used with
NiMH
rechargeable batteries. Since I preferred to sell lights
that were designed with rechargeables in mind, I tried to
see if any of their other products met that description.
So I clicked "Comparison Chart" to look for models that
are designed for use with rechargeables, but that
information didn't appear in the chart.
So I thought I would painstakingly go through each of the
models to read the description, but I was thwarted again
because the individual product pages aren't linked from the
chart.
So I closed the chart window and from the HL-EL530 page I
clicked the link for the HL-EL520. But that page doesn't
even make any mention about what kind of batteries/voltage
it's designed for.
Okay, clearly CatEye didn't care to give me that
information, so I'll decided to look for something else. I
saw from the EL520 page that it provides 1200 candlepower of
light. I naturally wanted to compare the candlepower off all
the other lights, so I clicked the Comparison Chart link
again. And of course I find that the Comparison Chart is
completely devoid of any information about candlepower. Not
really a surprise at this point.
So I resigned myself to painstakingly going through each
page and manually writing down the candlepower for each
model. It didn't take long for me to be stymied again. The
page about the HL-EL220 doesn't bother to mention its
candlepower rating.
There are a number of other minor problems and
annoyances. The page that lists all the models doesn't have
a link to the comparison chart. (You're forced to go to an
individual product page first to get there, though of course
you have no clue that a comparison chart even exists when
you first arrive at the page that lists all the models.) The
comparison chart itself is inconsistent, listing one model
as "White LED x 3" and another as "LED x 3 (white)", even
though they're apparently the same thing, making it hard to
scan the table to see which items are the same and which are
different. And the table lists models that don't even appear
on the page that's supposed to list all the models. And
finally, the table itself is titled "COMPARISTION
[sic] CHART". More importantly, the comparison table
gives no clue about which models replace what other models,
and what (if anything) is better about the newer models. And
the individual product pages omit crucial information, such
as whether the "120-hour runtime" is for steady or blinking
mode. One page mentions the runtime for the low beam mode,
but inexplicably provides no clue as to the runtime with the
high beam. Finally, the <title> of the comparison
chart is tersely worded "CatEye", making it hard to find
that window from the Window menu in a browser when there are
several windows open.
So it looks like I'll have to write to CatEye since their
website is less than helpful. But when I get to the Contact
page, it's not clear which, if any, of the contacts listed
are appropriate for my inquiry. There's zero there about
becoming a dealer, or whom to contact for that kind of
inquiry, or where prospective dealers can get answers for
product questions.
Even if the visitor were an end-user customer and not a
prospective dealer, they'd still be stuck. CatEye brushes
off customers by referring them to their local dealer for
technical questions about their products. But how are
dealers going to be able to easily answer those questions
when CatEye doesn't provide sufficient info about its
products on its website in the first place?
I did write to the generic service address for North
America, but as of this writing I haven't heard back from
them.
How CatEye can fix these
problems
- Provide complete information about each product on
the product page (including, for example, candlepower,
battery type, runtime for both steady and flashing modes,
and if no flashing mode is available, list that too)
- Add battery type information to the comparison
table
- Add candlepower rating to the comparison table
- Link to the individual product pages from the
comparison table
- Use consistent descriptions in the comparison
table
- Spell "comparison" correctly
- Add a link to the comparison table from the page that
lists all the models
- Add missing models to the models page, or if some
models in the comparison table have been discontinued,
note that in the table
- Indicate in the comparison table which models have
replaced which other models, and what, if anything, is
better about the newer models
- Provide information on the Contact Us page about
requirements/instructions/contacts for becoming a
dealer
Update, Nov.
2007
I checked back at CatEye nearly a year later,
and not only are the above problems not fixed, they're
even worse. Now when I click "Comparison Chart" from the
HL-EL530 page, I get a page not found error!
|
