Dell’s context insensitive help
By any measure, Dell has to be one of the UK’s most accomplished online retailers. Their website provides both home and business users with a diverse range of PCs that will cover most buyers’ needs.
Typically, when buying a new PC online from Dell, you start with a base configuration. You’re then given the option of either keeping or upgrading / downgrading various components within the overall build in order to better suit your requirements and budget.
For some people (myself included), this can understandably be quite daunting. What, for instance, are the relative technical merits of this graphics card vs that one?
Recognising this issue, Dell’s customisation process features content-sensitive help buttons, usually denoted by a big question mark in a blue circle with clickable text: “Help me choose”.
In principle, this is great, but the practice - in my experience at least - is disappointingly inconsistent.
It’s part of my job to try and keep on top of the latest products, so that I can relay particularly good deals to you. So I often respond to emails from Dell by clicking through to have a look at new PCs and play around with specs and pricing.
Take the new Studio range. Dell’s new Studio notebooks now come with a choice of fancy cover designs. And the Studio desktop PCs range from compact, coloured models to more traditional desktop designs.
But as a case in point, when playing around with the spec for a Studio desktop (D105403), I reached the stage of being asked to choose a graphics card from a choice of two. I didn’t know what either model offered in the way of features, so I clicked the help link. On clicking the “Compare side-by-side” option within the help window, I was then presented with specs for no less than six different graphics cards. Yet none of them corresponded to either of the two models I was being asked to choose between.
That’s really not very helpful at all. As I was only window shopping, I called it a day right there. But in doing so I was conscious that this isn’t the first time I’ve encountered the problem.
Dell is so close to getting it right that it sticks out all the more badly when the customer journey leads to a dead end. I’d suggest that Dell could do with paying a little more attention to the parts of its website that customers are likely to be relying on the most.
> See the Studio range at Dell’s online shop
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Tags: dell