The Shady Milkman

I’ve had plenty of experience with websites that are beyond useable comprehension. Usually, these sites are filled with eye-piercing color contrast, animated GIFs, un-navigable navigation and/or videos that play automatically. There are also those that are built completely in Flash so that every page takes three and a half hours to load. Though they are of a different breed, they are equally as useless to me (and to Steve Jobs, apparently).

Normally, the extent to which I complain about these websites goes no further than my personal space, meaning that I merely mumble some expletives to myself, hit the “Back” button and continue my surfing of the Internets. However, the experience I had when attempting to search for a product on Sears.com—the website of one of the most well respected department store chains in America—was an experience that I just had to share with the world.

The back-story.

Over Easter weekend, I spotted my grandma’s (roughly) one-year-old Aerogarden packed away in her basement. Always wanting one for myself, I asked her about it. Apparently, it didn’t grow the luscious veggies as seen on TV (shocking, I know). This, coupled with the fact that my other grandma had the same problem with her Aerogarden, created an opportunity for me to 1) appease my man instincts by fixing a problem and 2) get a free Aerogarden. Grandma #1 willingly handed her Aerogarden to me and wished me luck on my kitchen counter-top gardening endeavors.

When I assembled the Aerogarden, I discovered that one of the light bulbs was already burned out. My plan from that point was to search the Internets to find the best deal and/or nearest location to purchase a new one. It wasn’t that easy.

The confrontation.

I went through Amazon, Google, AeroGrow (the manufacturer), Meijer, Target, and Walmart in my battery of searches, before finally landing at Sears’ home on the web, Sears.com. At first glance, this website appeared well-organized. However, a closer look revealed that this website actually suffered from navigation overload.

Though it may have been a clusterfuck, my problem with Sears.com wasn’t with the navigation. It was with the search function. You know, a simple function that any respectable website featuring a large database of items should provide? The issue isn’t that Sears.com doesn’t offer a search function, but how it is utilized. The following feedback statement I left on the site re-tells the tale:

Your website search function is an absolute atrocity.

First, you handcuff your visitors by requiring their registration to the site. This is an immediate insult to usability.

You then try to appease the masses by allowing them to log-in through a third-party (Google, in this case), but it’s just a clever ruse to kick open a new door so you can pummel their faces with direct e-mail blasts.

Your developers’ incompetency couldn’t stop from infecting this feature either, however, as once users try to log-in with a third-party profile, they are greeted to an ERROR page, which then forces them back to the dreaded log-in screen.

It now appears that this broken system is actually all part of your diabolical scheme to force visitors to sign up for new Sears.com accounts, so you can show off just how MIND-BLOWINGLY AWESOME your new “My Profile” features are!

Out of pure frustration, some users still wishing to make the vain attempt of utilizing the search function on your site, will create a Sears.com account.

Once completed, these exhausted users make their last-ditch attempt at searching the site. And what happens? A registered, logged-in Sears.com user is reverted BACK TO THE LOG-IN SCREEN when attempting to search. The incompetent developers strike again!

I don’t know what kind of bizarre, psychological warfare you are trying to administer onto your customers, but this website should be found guilty of enacting tactics that represent “cruel and unusual punishment.”

The result.

I received a robotic response from @MySears, after venting my frustrations on Twitter, which said:

“Doesn’t sound good. Can I help? Want to DM me your contact info & Deets? I can put you in touch w/Sears Cares.”

I call it robotic because I reviewed other tweets sent by @MySears, only to reveal that they had sent nearly the exact same message to anyone who has complained about the organization it represented. I also received a semi-automated response from the Sears Webcenter, stating that they appreciate my feedback and that it will be “forwarded to the appropriate management team.”

When I checked the search function again a few days later, it was fixed. And today, it no longer requires you to log-in or register to use it. Victory.

The underlying issue.

Sears.com’s search function was clearly broken on multiple levels. A retail department store with an illustrious history spanning nearly 125 years shouldn’t have to stoop to a level such as forcing its customers to register/log-in so they can gather the information necessary to flood our inboxes with e-mails titles that will get them automatically sent to the trash. I would love to have been a fly on the wall at the meeting in which this decision was made:

Underpaid dev: …and that’s our new search function, empowering users to seamlessly search across all our brands.

Overpaid suit: Really impressive. But we’re not on the same page. We need to drive more people to register on our site so we can collect more e-mail addresses to push our product directly with e-mail blasts. How can we do that?

Dev: We already have opportunities to register all over the site and we ask customers to register whenever they want to purchase an item…

Suit: It’s not synergistic enough for me. What if…we made it so that Sears.com wasn’t searchable unless users registered!

Dev: But sir, I think that might just annoy visitors and drive them away…

Suit: Not if we disguise it as a necessity for the power to search across all our brands. It’s genius! Let’s make it happen! [insert more terrible office buzzwords here]

Countless decisions are made by the company brass that affect an entire organization from top to bottom: Some good; some bad; some downright ridiculous; but all made with one thing in mind—the bottom line. Just watch Undercover Boss to see how clueless decisions made by upper management can have negative effects on the everyday operations.

But when a company employs an executive who is so kick-ass, you’d think he had a second career as a rock star, the results are obvious. Just look at Ford. Their superstar President and CEO, Alan Mulally, can seem to do no wrong. The once-struggling automaker is now forging ahead as the industry leader it once, posting billion-dollar profits that are much higher than were ever projected just a couple years ago. There are a lot of companies out there that need to take a page out of this golden playbook.

The bottom line.

Did I spark a change in Sears.com’s search function/registration policy? Maybe. Did Sears’ executives make the call to require a registration to use the website’s search? Maybe not. But it reeks of clueless decision making that is being made all-too-often throughout Fortune 500 companies. And with the power of the Internets, it only takes one of these decisions to set off a firestorm of criticism, ridicule and rebellion, right Pepsi?