When Web Breaks Business

A broken website today means lost customers and orders. It is still surprising how often that happens, especially with well established companies. Companies, which have majority (vast majority) of sales through the Internet.

One such recent surprise - I have been trying to rent a car through Hertz.com. All was well until (at the final step) the website complained about the missing CVV2 number associated with my credit card. Of course! But the catch was - there was no field to enter the CVV2...

Of course - a browser compatibility issue - I thought. So closed my Firefox and went through the rental procedure in Chrome. The same error. Then I repeated the process on mobile Safari on an iPad. The same. Did not work. Installed the Hertz app. Did not have the Las Vegas airport as a pickup option. That was enough. I booked with another company.

But out of curiosity - don't they see a drop in orders which would trigger them to take a look at what people are doing on their web site? Isn't there anything indicating a problem? Well, nothing is unbreakable. Our own website goes down too sometimes, but then we clearly see the issue and the repair action is immediate.