Target’s Troubles

I’ve been reading up today on what I once thought was a pretty cool and bold redesign, but now is an evident disaster: the relaunch of Target.com after the company’s break from Amazon.

Fun dog photos on the homepage aside, it seems the site is plagued by timeout errors, vanishing wedding/baby registries and unresponsive customer-service centers. (I haven’t seen this myself, but then I’m not a big target.com customer in the first place: For the types of things I buy online, I usually just go straight to their ex-e-commerce partner.) This is sort of like the fresh coat of paint on a dilapidated house, only in this instance the house is brand-new construction where the owner hired 20 contractors and expected them to coordinate. That number might, just might, be the source of these issues.

If anything, this is an important reminder that the underlying technology has always got to be solid and the first consideration — great design is everything, but you need Atlas holding everything up. It’s therefore important to pick a firm that can coordinate both technology and design. I’m searching around for ideas on this one.