Comments on: Cotswold new website disaster

By: Geoff C

Geoff C — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 18:13:47 +0000

Yes, Silverlight - that’s yet another application to cause difficulty. I never use the Cotswold site now, fortunately they have a branch in my nearest city Manchester.

By: Greme Vetterlein

Greme Vetterlein — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:26:30 +0000

My experience was nowhere near as positive.

1: I could not access anything on the flash site
2: My wife however stumbled across the ‘flash site’ and posted me a URL … turned out to be total junk..the URLs of the flash site are not portable / usable.
3: I wanted to look at one of the videos (which turn out to be simple .mpg) … but hidden/buggered out with by a flash axtivex applet (surely nobody would allow these to run?) … anyhow it turned out the actual .mpg was missing …just could see that as the flash stuff didn’t seem to spot the error

…mind you it could be worse (and probably will be) what are the odds they’s do it in MS silverlight!
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2009/07/30/silverlight-not-so-flash-for-microsoft/

By: Geoff C

Geoff C — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 09:33:57 +0000

As well as alienating potential customers, they must be suffering a lot from a lack of Google results because it can’t search the site properly. I often use Google to look for outdoor kit at UK retailers and Cotswold never comes up in the results.

By: Dan D

Dan D — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 21:17:03 +0000

I know this is an old post but just wanted to say I couldn’t agree more with the conclusions you came to about their website, it is a complete disaster. I had so many problems with it that I eventually just gave up and went elsewhere. I even sent them an email, stating my complete frustration with it. I did not get a reply. Since the website is still up, I am guessing it is working enough for them, but I’m pretty sure they have lost a hell of a lot of potential revenue by employing such poor user usability.

By: Geoff C

Geoff C — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 07:18:29 +0000

It’s even worse than I thought then!. Add-to-basket seems to work but no Checkout… people will really be brassed off. Fortunately I don’t use the website to buy anything, I go to the Manchester shop and use my 10% discount card.

By: Dave M

Dave M — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 21:45:07 +0000

I’d love to understand the financial impact of this disastrous website on Costwold’s recent sales. I totally give up ( and I’m far from non-technical ). One day it works with Firefox (slow and so clunky though) and the next day it doesn’t. For some reason ( and I don’t care cos I rarely use IE) it only brings up the non-flash version and - I just discovered - although you can browse and “add to basket”, the order process just is NOT there are you are told to go to the Flash versions !

By: Jane C

Jane C — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 09:17:26 +0000

I agree… i thik its hopeless. I even struggle loading it in IE and so cant even get the the html version.

If it wasnt for the link above to the HTML version, my only option would be to shop online elswhere and save my discount for when im near to a store..

By: BG!

BG! — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 17:31:50 +0000

Cheers, Geoff, that’s a lot better.

By: Geoff C

Geoff C — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 14:43:07 +0000

Hi BG.
There is a link to their ‘Accessible Site’ once the Flash thing has loaded, which obviously doesn’t help anybody having trouble with loading it!. After digging around in their code I worked out a URL, try this link.

By: BG!

BG! — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 13:21:21 +0000

Chalk me up as another of the unimpressed.
It doesn’t like my Firefox/W2K/coal-fired-laptop combination, it won’t load fully, it causes a 4-minute system-hang.
I’ve not managed to load enough to see if there’s an option to skip directly to a HTML version. Have any of you lot found such an option?
Maybe I’ll just phone ‘em up and ask for an old-fashioned paper catalogue - it might be a quicker option.