Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

An email I just sent to Marks and Sparks via their online enquiries form:

(A warning to FF users - the second of these two links *will* crash your browser immediately. The first one just doesn't display properly)


Says it all, really. When will these people learn? :afire:

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

Second link worked fine for me (FF 1.5 b2)

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

Note to self: If someone informs you that a link will crash your browser, don't click on it just to see if he was right. :)

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

Still using 1.0.4 here, haven't got round to updating yet. :)

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

Site looks great for me (IE6 whore)

You could try getting a proper browser? :erm: :p:

Seriously I design my sites purley for IE as thats what most people have, can't be chuffed with any of this old hat netscape reworked rubbish.

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

Yep, it worked for me when I reverted to IE. The point is, I don't like IE as a browser. How would you like it if you were suddenly told you had to have a Phillips TV as several TV shows won't display properly on other models of telly?

I think the most important aspect of this is the financial one - I will not now order our daughter's Dedication Day cake from M&S because their website didn't work for me. That's one slice of profit gone. How many more people will do the same? A small but significant number, I think. And how much money do you think M&S saved by employing a web designer who was cheaper because he took less time, because he only bothered to check his work against one browser?

Lazy web design is, I believe, going to become a financial issue for companies like M&S who want to sell online. If upstarts like Amazon can manage to make it work, then old companies like M&S have no excuse.

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

My 1.0.7 crashed......

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

My firefox did indeed crash - and has been mentioned - why the hell did I click on it AFTER I'd been warned :confused::dunce::D

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

Don't think about an elephant standing on his hind legs. :p:

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

Assuming lets say the site gets 1 million pages hits a week

If 1% of people buy and 5% of those buy a cake then M&S would lose out £75 per week assuming £1 profit per cake :)

Thats also working on IE having 85% market share amongst those purchasers

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

GIT:D

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

OK - so what's your daily rate for web design, and how many days would you quote for the M&S Food site, which is the bit they're redesigned (starts with a www2 address)?

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

Works in Opera 8.5..

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

£1 profit per cake, more like 50-100% at a gross level. i.e. sell a cake for £40 and they have paid at most £20 for it, the other £20 goes to the cost of running the company and whats left is profit for shareholders, so you can up your estimate significantly.

Also is it just this page that does not display? Or much of the site, resulting in those on browsers other than IE not shopping there. That would mean descriminating against about 15% of the web population.

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

It is almost certainly not just that page, but we were looking for a particular cake so I didn't stray very far around the site. Besides, it was late last night and I was getting fed up having to ctrl+alt+del all the time to force quit Firefox.

It does only seem to affect http://www2.marksandspencer.com/foodmagazine/ though - that part of the site has a couple of subtle design differences that suggest it's been subcontracted for someone else to produce for them and then fit back into the overall M&S online presence. I don't think they did a very thorough job.

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

Rate would be £150 per day if it was that large a project (i'm cheap) The hardest part is gettig the content right the actual design does not take too long, so 4 days depending on how much they redid. £600 bargain:D

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

And the fact that the order PDF has not even been bothered to be edited from the print version, it still has the cut lines etc on it.

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

ditto, same build.

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

You are indeed cheap ... even our own IT dept is more expensive than that when they re-charge other departments internally. :D

OK, so if you had to spend extra time ensuring browser compatibility, how much more would you quote?

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

To paraphrase

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

Its not too hard to make sites that are cross browser compatible. Even I can manage that.

As for cheap we hire our guys out at £500 per day plus expenses etc. I do web design for fun and in my spare time (geek).

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

Fair enough. What I'm trying to arrive at of course is an estimate of how much M&S might have saved by corner-cutting on their browser compatibility, and how much they are going to lose as a result of non-PC/IE users getting no joy from the site.

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

8oz Self raising flour
8oz Butter
8oz Castor sugar.........

;) ;) :rofl:

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

Why would I wish to put small furniture wheels in my daughter's cake? :p: :D

Actually we would happily bake a cake ourselves, we just want it professionally decorated. I have no confidence in my sugarcraft abilities.

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

Blimey I never looked at the prices, those are dear cakes :shocked:

Is there nowhere local you can go?

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

It wasn't funny the first time, but I'll try again.
(to Mr Blue Sky - Electric Light Orchestra)
These aren't just Birthday Cakes, these are Marks and Spencer Birthday Cakes.

It's also good to see they are not capable of building the ordering into their checkout functionality!

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

Yes, we found a humble little baker shop in Dumbarton Road, in Glasgow's West End. His website worked just fine. :D

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

They also spelled Christmas wrong, 'Chistmas' :D

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

You could buy it from Waitrose (they are nicer than M&S):
http://www.waitrosedeliver.com/wdeli...sp?siteCode=BI

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

At a guess I would say they spent about 10k on the wbsite, design programming and putting it all together is a time consuming job. But they have obviously been shaftered as any good web design house has proof readers and combatability/usability test...

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

all links work for me on IE 6.

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

Don't be silly, practically every computer has IE installed and not many people don't use it.

I use Firefox for 99.9% of my web browsing, and if a site doesn't work properly, I just open IE and use that. Hardly apocalyptic, is it? Though I do prefer Firefox.

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

How's it silly? I prefer to do business with companies that I know can do a thorough, professional job. The proof of the pudding's in the eating ... I went elsewhere as a result of this, do you think I'm the only one? There are some real Firefox obsessives out there. :D

Anyway, I had a reply from them:



Should I write back and ask them to correct 'Chistmas' as well? :D

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

ha ha ha, your going to order your cake from someone else because M&S cant follow the W3C standards or spell.

I'm sure that when they manage to achieve both of these actions the cake will taste better as well. :rolleyes:

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

My, you're sore this evening Gary. Got bitten on the bum by a passing troll did we?

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

:confused:

my point was, if they supply the cake you want, why let a web site cause you to change your order?.

Nose Face Spite Cut?

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

Not really, my point really is, you have more than one browser on your PC, there is more than one browser out there. Firefox pwns most browsers especially IE6, so what? It still works properly in other browsers, TBH, I think whilst it's annoying the site doesn't work in one browser, you could easily just use another without causing a fuss out of seemingly nothing. Not many people use firefox anyway and how many of them would a) want to buy a cake from M+S, b) find it doesn't work in Fx and c) care enough to boycott them and send a moaning email about it... To be honest, IMHO I think you're over-reacting slightly.

And in any case, it all works on my version.

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

my thoughts entirely.

Seems like its you Chris thats being the troll bitting people on the bum ;)

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

Confirmed .. Opera 8.5 navigated all of the site. Spelling was still bad though !! :p:

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

I think it has more to do with the unprofessional image M&S gives to its web customers than the loss of any particular sales. What they are saying to FF users is "our web site has been poorly constructed", so you draw your own conclusions about the company.

(BTW I can recommend FF's open page in IE extension)

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

And so do I (although I use Netscape 7.2).

However when I run IE I immediately run Adaware after it and clear out all the crap that turns up on my system which *doesn't* appear when I use Netscape.

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

I actually sort of agree with Chris. M&S (as with ALL companies who trade on the web) should ensure that their website is either fully compliant with standards, or at least works with multiple browsers.

I realise that if all browsers were standards compliant, then making the site standards compliant should ensure the site works correctly on all browsers.

However, I don't think any browser is 100% standards compliant (IIRC, Opera gets closest, but it's far from perfect). That's why people should test their websites on multiple browsers.

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

I think the same thing.

I don't have a problem with people wanting to use different os's (linux/unix) or different browsers like FF. What really get's me wound up is that its thier choice to use it in the first place and then they wimp and whine that it does not work with everything. I'm sure thier software does the job for them just fine but no need to throw wobbler when it does not.

Don't get me startd on the apple people:mad: :p: :D

No one has any justification to winge about a what a company does because its your choice what you spend your money on so simply go elsewhere. If its too expensive don't log onto a web site and whine just find somewhere else.

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

I completely agree with Chris on this one.

Marks and Spencers is a huge national company, so why shouldn't they have a website that works with every browser?

Most other companies manage it okay, so why not them? Especially with the increasing number of people moving over to Firefox now.

If i wanted a certain cake from a certain store, and was having problems getting it- i too would inform the comapny to give them the chance to rectify it. After all, how can they fix something they seemingly don't know about?

If you went to the store in person, but the only automatic door was broken at the main entrance, so you had to walk round the backway, would you be happy?
Most of all, how would you know that there was another way in (round the back) if nobody told you?

I bet a lot of people have tried ordering on there, but are not as techie as some people so automatically gave up thinking there was no other way round it.

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

Because there are more browsers than the big 4 (Safari, all the Linux ones, the minor ones) and to test the site on all of them would be neither economical nor anything otherwise described as frivolous.

There IS a choice of browser, they are catering for the vast majority by writing a site most of the people who load it, will use IE, and the rest will have the knowhow to use IE if FX doesn't work.

Yes, it is a pain, but some people need to get an idea of the perspective involved. :)

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

Well if they want our money then that's what they should do.

Like i said, most other companies manage this without a problem.
Why shouldn't M&S?
__________________

How do you know that? And why should they have to?

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

We seem to have overlooked that the op was using a older version of ff and that the newer version worked fine with the site. Ergo the designers could have tried it with ff and found it to work fine. Just the op working with a duff version of ff.

Moral of the storey if he had used ie he would have been fine :P

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

I don't believe that, a lot of people clicked on the links and had the same problem. Me included.

And i am running the latest version of Firefox, as available for download on the main Mozilla site. version 1.0.7.
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And moral of the story- he shouldn't have to use IE for it to be fine. A lot of the web users are using other browsers these days. It's getting to be well known that IE isn't the be all and end all, and companies need to keep up with the times if they want our dosh.

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

Version 1.5 it seems would have worked.
My argument is just that why should it bother him as much. I dont like the shape of porsche cars. I think I would like a car that fast etc but I dont like the shape. Do a buy one and complain no, do I not buy one and complain that they dared make a product that I did not like no. Can I complain that they are too expensive, no because they have taken the time and trouble to design and manufacture something and if i want it I can buy it. Its very simple, companies should not 'have' to make thier products anything hey should be allowed to do what they do and as cusumers we should buy what we want.

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

How does this even tally with this thread? Chris wanted to buy a cake.
If you want to compare with a porsche, then say you did like the cars, and wanted to buy one, but it was more convenient for you to buy the car online.

Say for arguments sake you aren't very computer literate, and..... "
oops the computer has frozen.... what do i do? There must be a fault, i'll look somewhere else..."
Therefore, the original Porsche dealer loses your money because they couldn't be botheed to make their site accessible to all.
Not the end of the world, but if 10 people all with the same thinking did this, they'd lose a fortune.

However, you still get your Porsche, but it's the dealer (ie M&S) that lose out.

Still, if they (M&S) want to run their business with that sort of thinking then they will lose money.

Then again, no-one said that they do think like you, becasue they have now been informed of the error and have said they are doing something about it.

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

Pia- one thing you've overlooked, is that n00bs won't know what a browser is, let alone want to know about firefox. So, the people using forefox will have the expertise to realise that the site's not been tested in firefox and to test IE... the firefox users in general are the ones aware that IE's easy to pwn and do know a bit about PCs, enough to realise what's going off.

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

But why would someone thats computer illiterate by pass the already installed internet explorer in favour of searching online using internet explorer to find a different browser. What prevents them from using ie in the event that ff could not render a page correctly.

If a browser version crash's yet other versions of the same browser do not, and opera does not crash and ie does not crash either is it the fault of the web designer or the user of the crashing web browser for sticking with it?

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

What makes you think everyone who uses firefox has expretise? What about those who use it on a works computer/ friends computer or someone else installed it/recommended it to them so it's all they know.

I imagine this is a lot more than you make out. Last time i checked, you didn't have to be clever to use firefox, or know that it's best to use it.
There are *some* sites where it is best to use IE, but i don't believe that one of these should be a company with the status and size that M&S has.

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

So pia how did you come across ff?

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

I read somewhere that Firefox is the 2nd most popular browser with about 8-10% of the market, and Opera only has about 1-3%. So why would you make sure Opera works before Firefox?
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It was recommended on a forum to me, so i thought i'd have a look, and i've stuck with it ever since. As many people do.

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

You miss the point completely.

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

They have made sure ff works, as posted version 1.5 rendered the page fine.
There must be loads of different version of these 'new' browsers. There will be bugs with them. Its possible that you would not want to test on every single one of them.

That aside its definatly a fault of the code as its not complient. But it does only crash some versions of ff and not others. ie and opera work fine.

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

I don't think so, MY point is that M&S should design a site that is accessible to everyone, whether they chose to use IE or FF.

But you are saying they shouldn't have to, and that if we want to buy then we should go their way about it. At least that what i've read.

Stores like this are providing US a service, not the other way around.

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

Why should they?

yes, they paid for the product , its up to you wether or not your software works correctly, 85% of people will not have a problem.

Wrong, stores are offering a service, nothing in the law states that m and s 'have' to provide you access to thier site to buy cake.

And if 8% of the people cant then tough really, They chose to use the different browser in the first place. You cannot blame m and s for enabling access to thier product to the majority.
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Or to put it another way. When I had my own shop a idiot came in drunk and started giving me hassle so I refused to serve him. He started giving me all the 'I have to serve him rubbish', lol.

I did not have to serve him as the sign clearly stated above the counter'

'This is not burger king, you get it my way or you don't get the damned thing'

I'm all about helping people, I've spent many a wee hour on this very forum assisting people (even you). But I'll defend any organisations right to sell products on thier terms. Customers should have control over what they buy. Its not really the organisations fault not to educate them on browser interoprability (sp).

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

You can't have your cake and eat IT

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

:rofl: worthy of the nug himself.

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

Thanks.

In fairness, you seem to be a bit of a Joker yourself.

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

Considering how bad (financially speaking) M&S were doing not so long ago, you'd think they'd be looking to get as many customers as possible :shrug:

Also, can anyone tell me how I can use IE on my Linux boxes? :shrug:

Finally, Chris, after your success with M&S, I'd recommend you NOT read this article :D

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

Me I'd never pay M&S prices anyway because at the end of the day they aren't really that special.

There is specialist cake shop in my town that does make cakes to order and I go there for special occasions where I can get a unique design for similar prices.They will attempt just about anything.

I dunno if they are online though and whether they have browser issues either. ;)

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

ha ha
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would this help?

http://www.winehq.com/

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

Been floating round this thread for a while and its interesting reading the different views, here is my view

Q) Anyone who uses another browser should realise that IE should be used in any eventuality of something going wrong.

A) Do Apple, Linux, Embedded users need to head this.

Q) FF latest version renders the page correctly.

A) It does not, Although legible and quite usable, objects are not aligned correctly.

Q) There are so many browsers out there it is impossible to make it work on every one available.

A) Go for the closest denominator, If you design a site properly it will render on any browser you want without to much problem, especially as the M&S site is pretty straight forward.

Q) People who use other browsers realise that there are problems unless you use IE.

A) The only problems are caused by developing solely for IE, if you stick to standards it will render in any browser, and some people can not use IE!

Q) If a store decides to be accessible in only one browser it is there choice its up to them if they want to lose business.

A) No it is not! It is a legal requirement that a website is accessible by people with disabilities, if your site is designed to allow this then it will work in any browser. Check the following link:

http://www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups..._legaldda.hcsp

I know this may annoy some people but I have a hard struggle weekly persuading my customers to leave behind Flash intros etc and going for accessibility, the good thing is once they listen, they always get better traffic.. google et al treat you better...

Re: Marks and Spencer - incompetent web design muppets
 

Seems to be a recurrent theme here:

• Works with IE
• Works with Opera
• Works with FF 1.5
• Doesn't work with FF 1.0.4
• Doesn't work with FF 1.0.7

Suggest avoid FF 1.0.4 and 1.0.7 (or at least until they get them to work). :erm:

i.e. it seems FF is at fault not M&S site.