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When a federal judge in California agreed that a lawsuit from the National Federation for the Blind can proceed against Target, E-Commerce executives should have breathed a collective sigh of relief. The lawsuit essentially argues that Target’s online operation violated the American with Disabilities Act because it is not designed to easily accessible to blind users. Target’s defense has been that the ADA does not explicitly talk about Web sites so, Target reasons, it’s not covered. That argument is wrong for so many reasons. For the moment, let’s set aside that the argument is wrong legally (the California judge already dealt with that one). From Target’s perspective, it’s more relevant that the answer is wrong from a marketing, customer service and an IT and design perspective. To read the full column, please click here.
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Over the last month, I've been struck by an unusually large number of reader E-mails that fundamentally question whether E-Commerce will ever truly work: Whether it will consistently make money, be profitable and be, well, worth all of the effort.
If the slip of a lip can sink a ship, perhaps a retailer's flick of the click can kill a prestigious campaign mighty quick. The best way for a retail chain to make a customer happy is to offer him/her a program that few others can get. And the best way to undermine that—as Best Buy discovered on Wed. (Sept. 3)—is to then accidentally make that offer to every single reward customer you have.
It looks like Amazon is no longer backing up its pricing, putting an end to its Post-Order Price Guarantee — a policy that allowed customers to recover the difference from an Amazon price drop within 30 days of a purchase. As of Monday (Sept. 1), customers who place orders on Amazon.com are not offered the 30-day guarantee, a customer service representative confirmed.
Security is nothing if not filled with seeming contradictions, and the latest version of PCI—slated to be officially unveiled next month (October)—is highlighting a beauty: To most effectively protect payment-card-related systems, protection must be focused on anything that is not related to payment card data.
Quite a few retailers have been involved in site changes to make the Web more accessible to those with vision difficulties, but Target has been the most aggressive in fighting such efforts. As such, Target's settlement has an especially strong chance of pressuring retailers to aggressively embrace such changes.
Wal-Mart on Wednesday (Sept. 3) launched what it dubbed the Walmart Smart Network—a series of next-generation digital-ad systems—to 2,700 stores. The funky aspect of this rollout is that all 27,000 screens will be centrally controlled via an Internet Protocol Television connection.
Site navigation problems and unpleasant booking engines are driving customers away from online travel sites and pushing them through the doors of traditional, more personable travel agencies. Even though sales for online travel sites are growing, fewer travelers are actually booking their trips online.
A TJX senior executive is apparently trying to push chip-and-PIN, arguing that cyberthieves are focused on the United States partly because we haven't adopted it. "Criminals, I believe, are focusing on the countries that haven't added that higher level of security," TJX Vice Chairman Donald G. Campbell said.
Calvin Klein finally gave its HTML blessing to E-Commerce, offering its first for-sale items on its Web site, although the E-Commerce launch is U.S.-only. Anyone visiting from outside the United States will be routed to the existing corporate brochure site.
It seems clear that most retailers are adopting one of two distinctly different strategies when it comes to data security and compliance. Let's label them Cost-Effective Compliance (CEC) and Compliance-Driven Security (CDS). Both approaches are based on best practices and solid risk management principles. But, GuestView Columnist David Taylor argues, they lead to quite different spending patterns, technology decisions and business cultures.
A retail IT lesson from the world of politics? Maybe. Web tracking firm Keynote was studied the text message blast sent by the U.S. presidential campaign of Barack Obama, the one in which his campaign promised to tell supporters his VP selection before it was broadly announced.
Has Amazon decided what it wants to be when it grows up? More to the point, are there indications that it has now decided that one thing it does not want to be is yet another thin-margined retailer?
The IT chief at Netflix has pointed the finger of blame for its site problems last month at "a database corruption event in our shipping system." The problem prevented customers from receiving their DVDs for about three days.
Almost a year after TJX settled with banks and bank associations impacted by the worst data breach in credit card history, another bank has come forward with its own lawsuit against the retailer, claiming the incident compromised some 4,000 of its customer accounts.
The number of data breaches reported as of Aug. 22 of this year has already surpassed the total number in all of 2007, including a new one from Macy's impacting some 4,100 customers.
On the best-paid list of CIOs at publicly held companies, Best Buy's Bob Willett ($4.7 million), Home Depot's Bob DeRodes ($4.3 million) and Kohl's Thomas Kingsbury ($2.5 million) stand at the top, doing the pocket-protector crowd proud.
With the frequent product changes executed by any large e-tailer's site, the tech hurdles of launching a mirror site in another language can be daunting. But this challenge has created a small industry of companies that are trying to facilitate rapid globalization for e-tailers.
JCPenney is testing the Australian waters a bit with an online push. The retailer has a local URL and an Australian company handling all operations, but it's still shipping merchandise from the States and asking Australian shoppers to wait "12 to 14 working days. This "request" prompted one Australian publication to ask "whether Australians would be prepared to wait two weeks to receive something purchased online."
In an overall down market where the 150-store Nordstrom chain is seeing a 4.3 percent sales drop, online operations are accounting for 15 percent, hitting almost 8 percent of all sales. Company execs there now project online to soon top 10 percent.
The new version of PCI due out in October will let the outdated WEP wireless security standard stick around for almost two more years, while also reducing the required frequency of firewall rule reviews.
It's late on a Friday night and as Jane Smith walks into her local grocery frozen food aisle, she notices a neighbor walking away carrying a frozen pizza, right near a digital advertisement for 20 percent off of a Budweiser six-pack. Jane reaches into the freezer to grab her favorite Hagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream but notices that the digital ad instantly changes to hawk 40 percent off fresh apple pie in the bakery section.
It's generally accepted that any key economic issue—whether it's a housing slump, rising gas prices or tax refund checks—can have a sharp impact on business spending. But the IHL Group is floating an interesting theory that recent gas price hikes are going to have a very specific and direct impact on IT spending next year.
After years of trials with only the rarest evidence of CFO-friendly RFID ROI, shelf stock monitoring is quickly emerging as "the first major application of RFID in retail with a strong business case," according to a new report from London-based RFID analyst firm IDTechEx.
While North American retail execs are planning for trivial—if any—IT investment increases this year, with "more than one-quarter of retailers expecting lower IT spending," more than half of their Asian Pacific counterparts are preparing for significantly higher IT spending, according to new Forrester numbers released this week. A bit of the Tortoise and the Hare perhaps?
A gang of data thieves in Ireland has well learned the lesson that the best place to hide is in plain sight. The group hit a large number of retailers throughout Ireland and grabbed more than 20,000 payment cards by placing skimmers on card-swipes by wearing what appeared to be maintenance uniforms and saying that they were performing bank repairs.
These days, when U.S. government officials want to ask questions about privacy and data security, it's never clear if they want to protect consumers' privacy or learn the best way to violate it themselves. But retail execs who want hints can drop by a Sept. 22 hearing at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's Washington, D.C., headquarters.
Retailers who are worried about RFID security problems will have more details available to them now that a federal judge has killed a gag order on MIT students who had identified flaws in Boston's contactless RFID subway cards.
Based on the PCI Standards Committee's official hints about what will be in the 1.2 release, it appears that clarifying when and how virtualized servers can be PCI compliant didn't make the cut. But before the server and security geeks start lighting their torches and getting all "vigilante" on the card brands, let GuestView Columnist David Taylor make his case for why it won't matter in the slightest.
As major chains are doubling up their focus on computer-savvy young consumers, some are finding their aversion to avatars giving in to their adoration of avarice.
A "persistent and mysterious technical glitch" has severely disrupted business operations at the massive online film rental site Netflix, "potentially affecting millions of its customers."
September 25th, 2006 at 5:05 pm
This really isn’t a strategy issue, or accessibility issue. It is a single special interest group suing a major retailer because it CAN. The vision impaired don’t have the same accessibility to billboards along the highway, most certainly not the “new” style that are essentially huge and annoying TVs. They also, for the most part aren’t able to physically DRIVE to stores, where they could equally miss out on huge and colorful displays, sale signs, and aisle markers. Sure, there are supposed to be (or mandated) brail aisle identifiers, but if someone actually needed them they are certainly not as accessible as signs that can be seen from many aisles away. It would be far more practical to have another site beyond the main site dedicated to the visually impaired, but then that would be considered discrimination as well. Oddly enough, everyone in the world is NOT blind or visually impaired (hence the concept behind the term). It makes NO sense at all to force everyone else into a little visually impaired box of limited color, visual display and interaction. Some people like animated sites full of cheesy flash animations, or they simply would not exist! Online shopping for most anything beyond downloadable music is a VISUAL experience, by nature and DESIGN, the internet is a visual animal. A picture is said to be worth a thousand words, so how exactly does the author and proponents of this suit expect Target or any other online e-tailer to EXPLAIN every picture of every item in their ever-changing inventory? Explaining texture, feel, fit, drape is fine initially, but just like color and fashion they are subjective to consumers. One thing right in this article is this is just a bunch of people making attorneys richer. The end result will be no better for the visually impaired, but probably a lot worse for the sighted. Welcome to the wonderful world of political correctness…
September 26th, 2006 at 8:21 am
It seems to me that Tony is living in a world of, say, 80 years ago. It’s true that “The vision impaired don’t have the same accessibility to billboards along the highway”. And the hearing impaired don’t have the same access to cell phone noise in the airport. Think of all the steps folks in wheel chairs don’t have access to. But most of us believe that it is a civil right, in fact it is civil decency, to do what we can to build accessibility into the picture as a normal part of doing business. That is what the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) passed in 1990 guarantees - access to the world of business and entertainment for people with disabilities.
Even though the National Federation of the Blind focuses on the issues it knows best, the suit relates to all people with disabilities. One of the most damning access failures on the Target website was that it was impossible to complete a purchase without using a mouse - using only the keyboard. Folks with even minor mobility impairments as well as blind visitors were shut out of shopping on Target.com. (This problem has now been fixed.)
The issue is not whether people with disabilities have a right to expect accommodation, but whether that right guaranteed by the ADA, extends to the WEB. That was the issue decided by Judge Patel on September 6, 2006 when she allowed the suit to move forward.
Providing accessible web sites, as Evan Schuman says, does not mean dumbing down design. The Target web site could be made accessible without changing a single pixel of the visual display. It would be better for Target to take on a significant redesign, as Evan suggests, into a lighter faster CSS based out that would entice more customers and function on more devices. But such forward looking design is not a requirement of accessibility - for the blind or for any disability.
September 29th, 2006 at 5:54 am
The ADA never just meant physical disabilities it also included visual
audio and mental disabilities in the original and passed law. For Target
to assume the law doesn’t apply to its web page is wrong not only
because tha law doesn’t mention the web at all but also because the web
page is interstate commerce and the ADA definately applies
Robert Schoenfeld
Rapid Telecomm
October 19th, 2006 at 5:10 pm
The ADA “issue” is ridiculous! I feel bad for those who are handicapped, but to impose the costs of equipping our nation for the small percentage of the population that is handicapped has become unreasonable. For example, a movie theater must not only provide seating for the handicapped, but must provide seating that is “equivalent” to that of seating for non-handicapped individuals. This requires elevators, mezzanines, and numerous ramps. For a stadium seating theater this represents almost 4% of the cost of a new facility while handicapped patrons represent less than .02% of the total patrons a theater will see in a year. There must be a reasonableness criteria for any such equivalency requirement! It is one thing to provide access and another to provide the parity that is being required!
The requirement as to whether this or any accommodation should be required should be based on the relative benefit. Although we would like to think everything should be accessible, it is just too expensive, and the cost would likely go to waste. My perception, and likely the perception of most of your readers, is that a very small percentage of those who are visually impaired actually surf the web, let alone shop on the web. If I am wrong, I would like to see evidence of this usage (something other than anecdotal evidence). This is a waist of valuable resources. This lunacy should not continue!!!!
October 20th, 2006 at 8:20 pm
What I believe is funny about this article is the fact it bashes Target and specifically mentions alt-text. Yet storefrontbacktalk.com where the article is posted doesn’t use alt-text nor does the authors own eweek.com. Go to eWeek.com and see the tabs at the top of the web site. They use a no-no for accessibility…images for text, and then to top it all off the site doesn’t include alt-text for those images which allow site navigation.