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River Island
Published: August 30, 2006
River Island is a high street retailer of casual wear in the UK. As of early 2006, River Island created a brand new website for the new age of high street retail and to quote the developing company of the site, "Our design for the River Island website demonstrates the full potential of Flash technology. When used well, Flash is a fantastic platform for developing clean, efficient and intuitive websites. It allows you to create a really simple, easy-to-use site, and there's no jumping around from page to page, which seems to hinder so many e-commerce sites".
"This website raises the bar for fashion retailers"
- Barrie O'Neil about www.riverisland.com
I was prompted to write this post after receiving an email from a shopper having difficulty using River Island and then reading articles about River Island from DesignBulletin and Termite Mound. Both seem completely oblivious to the fundamentals of what a website is, or more importantly, should be.
The rest of the article isn't going to be a blast at River Island, tempting as it is, as I'm sure they've had plenty of feedback from the web development and disability rights community, not to mention a word in the ear of Bumblee Designs for their services and I will assume it was complete unconsciousness of the subject of Web standards which is completely understandable and forgivable. It's what they outsource for.
The problem
The problem is a familiar one. The websites technology was driven by the marketing department alone.
The idea is that the marketing department profile and target the market and the Web contractors deliver the products and/or services to this market using the Web and the best tools for the job. Cool is cool but it's useless when absolute fundamental accessibility is affected. I can see the logic behind it. Usability and 'cool' were the driving factors but usability is a subset of accessibility because if you can't access it, you can't use it.
There needs to be a complete overhaul of the way the website project is managed. I know how it works, believe me. Big retail company barks, small web company rolls over. This just isn't the way good websites are made. Between both the marketing department and any Internet contractor there has to be enough knowledge of the medium to follow the rules and balls are needed on both sides to address issues and progress the project.
Turning a negative into a positive
I see an opportunity here for River Island to gain respect, publicity and ultimately customers. If they can be transparent about their experience online it could turn out to be the best thing they ever did.
Answer these:
- What was the first inclination things weren't right with the website?
- When did you get a technical audit of the site which highlighted the problems?
- Which company/organisation did you use to highlight these problems?
- Have you formed an action plan and if so, what are the primary steps you are taking?
- What in-house skills are you learning to better understand the medium with which you operate?
- Has a planner laid out a timeframe for the project and if so what is the roadmap of this timeframe?
- How are you going to better allow feedback for customers on the methods you use?
- What have you learnt from this?
I'm sure I won't receive any feedback about this as River Island probably see it as an embarrassing cock-up when really it's just a very public education. Rights from wrongs are the best cure in these circumstances and knowing the mistakes, more importantly, having the means to identify future mistakes is the best way forward.
How not to get it wrong next time
The biggest mistake to make is to over-compensate and solely employ an accessibility company to deliver the website. Accessibility is a fundamental part of any service but a website must first and foremost serve its market.
What this means is that the marketing department take the lead, but they work from the framework outlined by the Web contractor and do what they can with that framework in terms of design. The framework will naturally need to be devised with the expertise of accessibility and usability consultants and constructed by the programmers.
A lot of work went into the Flash site and it's all too easy to salvage something from this, perhaps use the same database and just create a seperate HTML website and just label it 'low bandwidth version'. This will not do.
Websites can be accessible, usable, search engine friendly, beautiful and cool using Web standards and recommended best practices and there's no shortage of examples on the Web too.
Best of luck
I wish you every success in the future of your online arm of the business. It's what I research and advise businesses about and I'm the biggest advocate of embracing by far the biggest commercial medium the world has ever seen.
Quick note
On your apology page there are two very big problems:
- First of all, accessibility isn't about being disabled. My other computer is a Linux machine using a browser which doesn't support Flash. I'm not disabled. Where's my apology? Maybe I'll buy elsewhere.
- Who is the 'back to home page' link aimed at? If it's the 'disabled' people that you address in your apology then it's of no use.
Useful?
Assistance?
Comments
Clive Walker says:
I am attending the dConstruct 2006 conference in Brighton where one of the speakers (Aral Balkan) will be talking about the use of Flash and (apparently) debunking some accessibility myths about Flash. I am not a Flash fan myself but it should be an interesting talk.
Interestingly, I've just read this post from Joanna Tidball which highlights public feedback about how the Newsnight website should be developed.
A good example of bringing valuable, constructive and impartial information from the public into the mix as ultimately, it's they who are served so does make a lot of sense.
Perhaps something for River Island to keep tabs on?