London bike hire schemes website doesnt work – Sorry, we are having a problem
The London bike hire scheme looks promising, and certainly offers a new way to move around London at a little more speed. If nothing else, it offers a considerably better alternative to the tube.
I’ve seen the bike hire scheme advertised for a while now, with TFL investing in PR, frantically handing out leaflets and pumping the UK media for attention. I have to be honest and say that I didn’t have any interest in taking the scheme up until I started seeing the bikes and thought “I want a try on one of those…” especially before they are missing wheels and the seat is covered in… well you can imagine.
Today I thought I would sign up for the scheme so I can ‘gain access’, and I am a pretty adapt guy at using websites, I mean, it’s my job! Well it’s the day of launch, I’m using the site, and it will not accept my application. I fill out the form, I press submit, everything seems OK, then… errors. It won’t accept my application past stage 2 and I’m suddenly going from interested to annoyed. I try it a further 3 times, then enter all details again in Firefox… nothing but errors.
The site is hosted on TFL so we know it can handle the traffic, the system is painfully simple and uses no advanced technology, its form and server technology, it’s been around for years, so why isn’t it working? And how does this reflect on the cycle scheme as a whole.
And now the point, if you are going to invest so heavily in projects and PR, by launch date ensure that you have the simple stuff organised. A website that can handle and accept customer details is easy these days and there is no excuse for it not working. The fact it doesn’t means all money spent on the schemes PR is lost, I now think it’s a badly organised mess, and I’m writing about it on my blog… bad PR. How many others are too?
Make sure your organisational strategy of delivering the goods on time, to schedule match your online strategy. It today’s marketplace it just isn’t plausible to deliver value through management, operations and PR, but not web.
A week later and it’s still not working. Have they done this deliberately to prevent more users while it’s in its teething stages? If so they should at least have a sign up on the site saying so.
[...] Tfl Commissioner Peter Hendy was himself a victim of the continuing operational problems. An IT professional made the following observation: And now the point, if you are going to invest so heavily in projects and PR, by launch date ensure [...]