Apple Store

Full review
Apple. They’re the guys with the sleek iPods and cool music store, right? The one led by Saint Jobs who started out competing with Commodores, repelled IBM with one of the most celebrated Super Bowl commercials of all time and then built Pixar into Disney’s must-have Christmas present.

Like Richard Branson, Mr. Jobs is larger than life, and everything surrounding their product and service offerings has an elegant, sophisticated look and feel.

But, boy, is that Apple.com store confusing to navigate, expensive and prone to diarrhea of email.

Navigating

The first thing visitors see (which is subject to change at any time) is the uber-cool white interface at Apple.com. Interestingly enough, the visitor has to look to find a way to purchase a Mac. That’s okay. I was here for iPod accessories.

After clicking that top navigation button, I was greeted with…a huge tile prompting me to download iTunes. The accessories and iPods themselves are relegated to second status. Like any web site, I suspect these items frequently move and shift based on what type of response rate the marketers see.

But for now, I drill through multiple menus looking for a simple solution. I want to charge my iPod directly from a wall socket, bypassing iTunes and a computer. This is especially important if I’m not carrying a laptop or carrying an office laptop.

I finally find what I’m looking for by backtracking and going to the store tab. Silly me. I wanted an iPod accessory so I clicked on the big tab that read iPod.

Now I’m really lost. I am staring at Macs, MacBooks, software and everything here has a “mac” or “I” prefix. Yes, there is a search engine. Typing “iPod charger” and clicking enter produces more than 400 clicks.

After clicking around, I find what I think is the correct item for $29. It appears to be for the shuffle, but then a bunch of those cool line drawings tell me that it might work on my 60 gig model too. But I’m a little concerned because it mentions the dock. I don’t want to carry the dock. I order anyway and pray.

Keeping You In The Loop

Shipping is reasonable, and checkout is relatively easy. The first email confirming the order hits a few minutes later. That is industry standard, and I’ve ordered on a Saturday, so no problems.

An hour later, the second email arrives. This email confirms the confirmation and repeats what will be shipped. The only difference now is that my order is being processed. This email is longer with some order status links and a few upsell messages.

Email #3 arrives Monday night. Remember this was ordered on a Saturday. There has been an unexpected delay, and Apple intends to ship on or before…tomorrow’s date. I still haven’t quite figured out why writing me at 10:58 p.m. to tell me an order would ship tomorrow is helpful, but I’m all for customer communications and let it slide. The good news is that I have now been promoted to “Valued Apple Customer”. One suspects the promotion occurs if the company doesn’t ship your product.

Hold still…it’s coming.

The fourth email arrives 21 minutes after #3. I have been demoted to “Apple Customer”, but am told that my item has shipped. The email helpfully supplies a tracking number and undoubtedly denies knowing anything about email #3.

So the item ordered Saturday was shipped Monday and arrived in a couple of days.

The packaging was more of that ultra cool stuff for a silly little charger that promptly got dropped to the bottom of my laptop bag with the tangle of cables down there. None are Apple-white, though, so I’m hopeful I can dig out the proper cord at the proper time.

Everything else from packing slip to packaging was fine.

The Bottom Line, Clicks and All

Finding my accessory was too difficult. Apple could have solved this problem with a wizard (no, not Steve Jobs, but a dialogue session) and directed me to the proper area. The multiple emails are just a symptom of bad coding. Email #2 was unnecessary and email #3 needed a better time buffer before being sent. That’s the problem with email. Being free to send and containing upsell messages, they remain a potent weapon for most companies’ arsenals.

Would I do it again? Not if someone else carried the product. I thought about retail, but the Apple store is 30 minutes away in a huge mall. I didn’t need the charger that badly.

I would give this Apple experience an overall grade in the middle, which seems strange to do for product and usability innovators, but they just didn’t deliver this time.

Five Things To Remember From This Review

1. Head straight for the Store tab. Anywhere else leads to distraction.
2. Know what you want to buy. Have specs handy if at all possible.
3. Be prepared to pay sales tax, but shipping prices are reasonable.
4. Don’t stress at the first email saying you missed a shipment. Chances are the system will tell you it really did ship your product an hour later.
5. Good packaging and delivery round out the experience with a minimum of sp@m afterwards.