Ajaz Ahmed: There are no queues on Google – why are there on retail websites?

People now realise that they’ve been travelling many hours for a one-hour meeting. Now they use these services instead, but the sad thing is that these tools have been around for years.

In those video meetings you can see your colleagues dressed casually for the first time and, in the background, you can see their bedrooms, living rooms or makeshift home offices.

Some people spend time rearranging their environment so that it looks beautiful. Others don’t. A lot of colleagues have their phones or computers pointing upwards so you can see their nasal hair – I’m sure Amazon has seen a surge in sales of nasal hair trimmers.

Previously, I’ve written about how ‘The internet has made fools of timid retailers’. It seems that in this lockdown period that’s sometimes more the case than ever.

People have rushed online to buy things they’re no longer able to purchase on the high street. But when they get to the ecommerce sites of their beloved retailers, they are often met with disappointment and frustration, with messages like ‘You’ve joined our queue – leave the queue and you’ll lose your place.’ The queues can be very long, maybe an hour.

Imagine visiting Google, Amazon, eBay, the BBC, the NHS or gov.uk and being greeted with a message that says you’re in an hour-long queue? You wouldn’t be happy and might even spend time complaining about your experience on social media.

“Warehouse capacity, people and vans are a different story, but not being able to let people view your site is unforgivable”

Some of the retailers that have put visitors in a queue are pureplays, such as Ocado. They don’t have shops, they’ve only got websites – nothing else. For years, they’ve tried to get customers to shop with them, and when they do they can’t cope.

Warehouse capacity, people and vans are a different story, but not being able to let people view your site is unforgivable. Customers might only want to have a look around to see if you sell a particular item.

Why can’t retailers cope with the extra surge in internet traffic? Because they didn’t specify their sites accurately to make them scalable. If was the MD, chair or significant shareholder of one of these companies, I wouldn’t be happy, and I’d want answers now.

Just as Bill Gates predicted in a TED Talk that nations should be prepared for a major virus outbreak, experts have tried to tell large companies that their architecture needs to be able to cope with an upswing of visitors. Obviously, they didn’t listen.

Don’t listen to your experts – go and talk to Google, Amazon and Microsoft, and they’ll tell you what you should do.

If you’ve spent a fortune building up brand loyalty, it might disappear because of the poor shopping experience and because your customers are in a queue.

If your sales are hundreds or even billions of pounds, it’s not acceptable that your site can’t cope with the volume of customers. All websites can be built to deal with heavy traffic.

“Now they have no income, so 30 years after the internet started they’ve decided it would be an excellent time to see if it can help them”

Other retailers have seen their sole source of income – the high street – disappear. Now they have no income, so 30 years after the internet started they’ve decided it would be an excellent time to see if it can help them.

As I wrote this article, a story on the BBC site read: “Primark goes from £650m sales a month to nothing. While many clothing rivals have been able to make sales online, Primark sells only gift cards through its website.” Oh, dear.

Not every retailer can sell products online, but they should have a good website that can help to build their reputation – it might offer help, advice, videos or podcasts, for instance. If they’re not careful, their competitors might get there before them.

This lockdown period might be a good time to reflect on your company’s proposition. It’s an excellent time to figure out how you can improve so that, when you reopen for business, you can attract a broader audience that doesn’t just shop on the high street.

Many people have said to me ‘this is going to be a game-changer’. Whatever they mean, it already is.