Nespresso nightmare

I have owned an espresso machine for close to 10 years now, and until recently did not find the ordering process for capsules that tedious. However this has now changed, in part due sto a site redesign (gone wrong, in my opinion) to the point where when my machine finally clonks out, I will be getting a Lavazza.

The other day, when landing on the nespresso.com website, I was greeted by a large “welcome to your new website” banner. Well, to start with it’s not my website, it’s Nespresso’s. And although the photos are extremely high quality (the coffee cup here for example  the back-lit look and fade out when mousing over the selection at the bottom is not great – the whole site is quite dark too. But, let’s get over it and try to order some capsules, the reason I was there in the first place.

I signed in (as a “club” member, which basically just means I have ordered before), knowing from experience I would have to later anyway. Then I clicked on quick order – and almost immediately the glitches began. First, the site is very slow to react: if you click on a size of cup – “Ristretto”, say – at first it looks as if nothing happens other than highlighting that box in black. There is a seconds-long lag before the list of capsules updates to that selection. If I click on “Lungo”, it looks as if nothing happened also – except when you scroll down, these capsules have appeared in the list, albeit with a time lag too. On a capsules page for quick ordering, I think it is an inefficient use of screen real estate: the list could have all appeared above fold and made it clear for users. As is, it doesn’t work well at all.

This lag problem is recurrent throughout the site, and happened both on my home computer and my work machine using different browsers (IE8 under Win2010 and Firefox under WinXP) and connection speeds. I looked at other sections (Club benefits) and again, it looked as if the click had not worked, so that one clicks again, only to see that it was just slow to load. In fact I also had this happen with the ordering process at home, to the extent that I ended up clicking twice thinking it had not put the capsules in the cart, only to then find out it had actually done it first time. When it does put things in the cart, it does so with a jerky motion that is also slightly odd. In today’s environment, I find this lack of flow in the user experience for what is a relatively straight forward (or should be!) e-commerce site a major issue. They have clearly gone for form over function…

For some reason my credit card was declined: the error message said to call CRC or some such acronym. I tried to go back to simply use a different card, but was unable to – the site seemed to be stuck in a loop. Sighing I picked up the phone, dialled the 0800 number, and was greeted by music. Then a disembodied voice giving me options – I chose web orders – then click, then more music, then “your call is in a queue”…no information on estimated length of wait, how many people in the queue…I waited 5 minutes, got tired and hung up. Harrumph.

As customer experiences go, while I do like the way Nespresso has invented a whole universe, using high profile people in its ads, is really striving to create “an exclusive experience” in its stores, through the use of limited edition capsules and accessories and the “Club”, it just won’t wash – the site is awful, I was unable to order my capsules, I am not traipsing to their London store which is miles from either work or home, and as I said – as soon as my current, ageing machine dies on me, I am switching…