Web Applications

Network World's Web Applications Newsletter, 09/26/07

What you can learn from Verizon’s Web snafus

By Mark Gibbs

In this issue I want to take Verizon to task for one of the worst pieces of Web design I’ve seen for some time. This faux pas is not a matter of aesthetics but one that comes from a combination of poor conceptualization and poor functionality.

I speak of nothing less than a Verizon flagship product: Their high-speed FiOS Internet service.

The fiber optic-based FiOS service starts at 2Mbps uploads, and up to 5Mbps downloads for around $40 per month for the first year. To anyone who has a clue, this is a very tempting offer.

The problem is, can you get the service in your area? If you are an existing Verizon residential customer then you can just enter your telephone number on the “Check Availability” page. I’m not a Verizon customer and there’s a link for those like myself that takes us to an address validation page.

This page asks for address data in a rather odd way: It has separate fields for “Street #” (I think they mean “house number”), a “N, S, E, W” field (for directionally labeled streets such as North Brent St. and South Brent St.) and a “Street” field (the help data that is offered when a lookup fails, oddly suggests that a directionally labeled street should have its direction appended in this field, so “North Brent Street” would presumably become “Brent Street North”).

The rest of the form asks for the more normal fields of “Apt/Suite”, “Unit”, “City”, “State”, and “ZIP”.

I was using a Mac under OS X at the time and curious to see if I could get FiOS service I filled in my address. The site responded with what amounted to “we don’t understand where that is.” I’d love to tell you exactly what the message was, but in the last few minutes the Verizon site seems to have died.

I tried the same thing on my PC and after several attempts to get the address format right was told that “Verizon FiOS Internet Service is not currently available for your address.”

Here was a particularly naive detail: I was invited to sign up for future notification by entering my address data all over again but in a less detailed format than the previous form asked for. I’m sure there’s some kind of very good reason for this, such as the different forms are on different servers, but that excuse is only very good if you are completely new to Web applications development.

So from all of this I can conclude three things: First, Verizon wants nothing to do with Macintosh users. Second, quality assurance is not a core competency of Verizon’s Web development group. Third, Verizon’s sales and marketing groups aren’t paying attention.

Just consider the geo-location problem. Converting user entered data into a known location is far from being something that is hard to do. Indeed, how many services do you know of that require such complex breakdowns of address data? And to then fail so pathetically when a Mac is used is ridiculous.

So let me ask all of you CxOs and Web development people who may be chuckling over the fact that these things should be mighty embarrassing to Verizon; have you actually tested your Web applications? Do you know whether PCs and Macs work on your sites and with your services and do so as expected? Have you made it easy for users to enter data or do you too expect them to jump through hoops before they have the privilege of spending money with you?

I wish that Verizon was an exception in this area but alas, they are not. So before you can say that your company is ahead of, or at least on) the curve, look at your site and check that it does what it is supposed to do. And don’t be surprised if it doesn’t – you won’t be alone.

Mark Gibbs is a consultant, author, journalist, and columnist and now blogger: Check out Gibbsblog.

Gibbs not only pens (well, keyboards) this newsletter he also writes the weekly Backspin and Gearhead columns in Network World. We’ll spare you the rest of the bio but if you want to know more, go here

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