Note to Check­ers, South Africa — What about the users?

Below is a note I wrote to Check­ers Super Mar­ket Group in South Africa. I am on a mis­sion to ensure that fel­low users in South Africa get a bet­ter web exper­i­ence. The best way is to give the com­pany dir­ect feed­back. I thought I would share the note with you. If you have any issues with any web site I would love to hear about it of even if you too have had a prob­lem using this check​ers​.co​.za web site!

I am appalled at the lack of access­ib­il­ity and ease of use on this web site.

I also sur­prised that check­ers does not have an online store — con­sid­er­ing that I have known about the drop in inter­net costs and unlim­ited inter­net was com­ing for two years I assume you did too?

That your time sched­ule was put up in PDF and not html is bizarre as the page is at 90 degrees and so long its illegible — not to men­tion out of date! From what I can see it says Decem­ber 2009!

I know two things pro­fes­sion­ally ; 1. with the advent (at last) of the cheaper unlim­ited inter­net that more and more people are going to start shop­ping online added to 2.PayPal finally get­ting its toes into South Africa retail­ers like yourselves now have a trus­ted plat­form that any­one can use, and no you do not need to have a FNB account if you are just purchasing.

The next thing that is com­ing in the tele­coms world is called local loop unbund­ling — this means Check­ers could actu­ally sell cheap inter­net — not that you would but it also means that within the next 24 months that prices of inter­net access are going to dive and the inter­net pop­u­la­tion is going to climb from the cur­rent 5million fixed line users and 9 mil­lion phone users to 8.3 mil­lion and 9.8 mil­lion within 18 months! Check­ers will lose the gains if you do not go online and provide what the users are look­ing for and soon!

You can also save mil­lions by using the online store as a way of man­aging your stock and your soft­ware costs.

I hope to see an improve­ment in the web in RSA and I for one can­not wait until South Africa gets on par with the world — the world cup as been an abso­lute boon, for without it the web in RSA would have been just as bad now as it was five years ago.

Check­ers respon­ded that they are busy with a site update but that they do not see a point in devel­op­ing an online web store at this time.

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