All projects: Gel, Jobs, Good Todo, Games, Uncle Mark, Blog, Bit Literacy
PC manufacturers engage the customer experience
I had some dejavu reading in the Times that PC makers are finally beginning to "get it" (emphasis mine):
PC makers [have] finally reached a realization that many other industries discovered ages ago: the consumer is truly king.... Over the last couple of years, the industry has made a slow lurch away from its engineering roots toward a more shopper-friendly strategy that recognizes that if you make your product simpler to understand, more people will buy it.
... The old tradition of flogging 220 different combinations of A.M.D. chips has been traded in and replaced with three categories of PCs: See, Share and Create systems (the designations roughly line up with "good," better" and "best").
This is almost exactly the strategy we provided to Gateway, the PC manufacturer, back in 1999 as they hired us to create a new customer experience strategy.
As you can see in the case study of the project, that simple change increased the online sales by several million dollars per month. And this was back in 1999 when relatively few people were buying computers online.
As you can't see in the case study, Gateway chose to revert to a complex, customer-hostile design for the site just a few months later. I think a Web design firm must have come in after us - wearing more expensive clothes, or green hair, or whatever was considered hot in 1999 - and convinced Gateway that it would be a good idea to pay the design firm a million dollars to build an incredibly complex experience for their customers. (Not hammering on Gateway; a LOT of companies did that back then and plenty still do today.)
Ten years after the Gateway project, it's nice to see that other manufacturers are finally learning the lesson we found out with some low-tech customer research and common-sense strategy work.
Meanwhile, the Gateway site - while sporting slick graphics - still touts series called LX, MC, NV, and so on. (Time again to rally to a customer-centered strategy? I'm ready when they are.)
I have no problem with this in theory, but this tends to allow manufacturers to undercut consumers on hardware.
For example, go to Dell and choose a random machine. then look at the details, and find the specific graphics card model. Take that to newegg.com, and without fail, it will be 5 or 10 dollars less than equivalent graphics cards, but have terrible reviews.
So any reasonable person would spend 5 dollars more for a more reliable part. the problem arises because with the exception of the case (made by Dell) and the processor (Intel or AMD) this will happen with every part.
So if you do this comparison for the 10 or so parts that you need Dell has built a 500 dollar machine that should cost 600 dollars and have a much longer life.
But then you take a site like ibuypower.com and you see the opposite problem. the basically did the thing we just talked about, buying better parts, but because they are smaller, the don't get the bulk discounts Dell does. so the 500 dollar Dell machine costs 650 at ibuypower.
Also the whole model name thing is a problem. what's the difference between an Insperon 1200 and a 1300? I'm a techie, and if you put them in front of me with a screwdriver and tell me to have at it, chances are i couldn't tell you.
Instead of having a customize button next to 3 base models, Dell needs to have one custom pc button. Then it asks you what kind of case you want, then processor, and so on.
I think xkcd said it best. http://xkcd.com/309/
P.S. Apart from the name thing, Gateway (now owned by Acer, a Taiwanese company) actually does a good job. each model is a different case, and can be customized from there.
With any luck it'll catch on with pc companies. Be funny if Gateway came back to you.. a great "told you so" moment :)
While I desperately want to believe you're right, I've read article after article about how customers will pay extra for laundry lists of features and tech specs that have no value for them and will never be used. Is this actually changing?