I’m looking to take my family back to Dave and Busters (it’s been quite a while) for some family fun. I have one of their “power cards,” which is where game play credits are stored. Before we head out, I wanted to check the balance on the card – simple enough, right? Wrong.
Turns out, visiting DaveandBusters.com was a frustrating experience and a lesson in weak site design and usability. Finding the site was easy (thanks to the new Google predictive results feature – see video). What is interesting is that even after watching annoying flash commercials and fumbling through inadequate navigation, the answer was to call an 888 number and leave a voice message with personal information for some woman in the “corporate office”.
Welcome to the age where databases are hooked to websites and user experience is important. Here’s the 5 min video, “Dave and Busters – a lesson in designing for the user.”
Okay all the flash commercials and confusing link categories are bad enough, but you have to leave a voice message to get your Power Card balance?! Wow. Welcome to 2009, Dave and Busters…
Great lesson. You would think this would be common sense, right? I know a lot of sites that could use your advice. Nice work.