Cyberdyne goes to see the Wizard but forgot what to ask him for

Colin recently wrote about this and although I was probably the person who lead him to write his post, I had no intentions of writing a post myself.  However, after reading his post the reality of the situation struck me, as if I were a car stranded in the middle of the tracks of the supersonic clue-train.

To fill in a bit of background, I've been a faithful Cyberdyne customer for at least seven years now, to date I have zero (count them, none) complaints about them, in fact my only comments had been positive ones.  I've had fantastic service from them, generally no questions asked and only too happy to help.  As far as the human component goes, I don't think anything has changed.

Recently they've made an effort to improve their website and online presence (they were very manual process-ish,) an honourable task.  Unfortunately (for the general population at large) they seem to have gotten the meanings of "improve" and "destroy" switched around and I'd like to provide some constructive criticism.

The very first thing you will notice (when using Firefox, Chrome, anything not IE) is that it is impossible to focus the inputs for your login credentials, making it quite the challenge to log in.  I actually lied when i said "anything not IE" because it doesn't actually work in IE8 (in standards compliance mode aka the default.)

The second thing you will notice is that your credentials no longer work, despite typing them in for a second time.  The reason for this is that your previous account has actually been deleted, purged from this earth.  The only clue to this mystery is a little blue information icon next to the "Register" hyperlink that, when clicked, pops up a cramped bubble explaining some nonsense before getting to the crucial information: "Your account is... gone.  HAHAHAHA!  Seriously, how long did that take you?  That long huh?"
No news page with a post explaining what the hell is going on, no email in my inbox explaining that I will need to register again.  Hell, I didn't even know the new site was launched.  None of my information was migrated.  My old account name wasn't even reserved, my personal details were thrown away like a broken toy and my order history banished.

Now, if you've managed to stagger your way through the crotch-high thorn bush that was logging in, you probably want to submit a quote request.  From the cramped product selection widget to the 10-item paginated stock display to the lack of a search mechanism to the lack of product images... Hell, if you actually managed to find and select the item you were looking for, you should probably be receiving it free of charge as compensation for mental distress caused.

What I see here is essentially an e-cart system maybe with integration to warehouse or stock systems.  There are lots and lots of examples of successful e-cart systems on the Internet, one small one you might have heard of is "Amazon".  The serious disregard for usability (which ultimately equates to userbase population) is not entirely uncommon amongst South African online businesses, but this doesn't mean that it is acceptable.  If it's this hard to get me to spend my money to buy something I want then you're doing something seriously wrong.

On a postive note, the order status and process feedback features are a welcome change.

Finally, to come back to Colin's main point, targetting a website at a single platform (it's really more like half a platform) is suicide.  What do you do if you don't have access to IE6 or IE7 (consider the average Mac OS X user)?  You go somewhere else to spend your money, that's what.