I was recently gifted a fancy coffee machine by my parents — a Nestle Nespresso machine. It’s a razor – razor blade business model (though they definitely don’t send you a free “razor” when you turn 18, this razor is expensive!). You buy a Nespresso machine and then you buy coffee capsules for it from them for $0.49 / piece. I don’t know how this compares pricewise to the more traditional, less-yuppee coffee grounds approach to making coffee, but the nespresso system is clean and fast and the coffee is good and on price, it sure beats daily $4.00 cups of cappuccino / espresso at Starbucks. So I’m generally happy with the machine.
But I had to make a quick posting about their website. It’s really, really bad. I’ve used it twice. Both times I’ve been completely bewildered when trying to buy the coffee capsules. First, they make it so you can’t buy the things anywhere else (to quote from a 3rd party website, “To make sure Nespresso capsules are the freshest they can be, Nespresso handles all coffee orders through their web site”) and then their site is terribly unusable. Lot of money spent on fancy graphics and animations, cryptic navigation, and who knows what else. Somebody at Nespresso, please, please, please spend some money and hire someone with an eye for usability to redesign your site!!
The coffee machine
$0.49 apiece!
If you just call the toll-free number or pay a visit to a boutique, you don’t have to order via the site…which in my opinion is not *THAT* bad…
I have a Magimix M100 for 50 euros after rebate, consume at least 2 cups a day, and very very verrry happy about it (I have a Nespresso boutique like in 30 minutes by public transport from my place, and I can get free coffee as much as I want there… no complaining for me)
I’m in the Netherlands btw…
I misspelled Nespresso and google came up with several options. Your site was one of them. I wonder how a founder-president/ceo of a software company can’t order capsules from one of the easiest sites I ever ordered from? First you sign in, then click (order) then choose (capsules) and you are there. 10 seconds at the most, and if you make a mistake you don’t have to enter the info all over again and don’t have to click on the (back) button), since a small screen tells you what you are missing or what needs to be corrected. I have orderd capsules for over 2 years and have never experienced any problems. Just my opinion and experience
David, Maybe you’ve been desensitized to how poorly designed the site is since you’ve been using it for two years. Or maybe my experience was unique to me. I just shared my initial impressions of the site. Given enough training and enough of an incentive, a user can overcome any usability-challenged product or service. But that doesn’t mean it’s not usability-challenged.