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Comment by isykt | Hacker News Reader

The thing is, Apple is still the leader in the online ordering process, even though the competition has had decades to catch up. Dell’s website is a mess. For years the top result on Google for the XPS Developer Edition was a page saying they didn’t make it anymore, even though I had just read a blog post about the new one. Clicking a specific configuration sometimes makes the option for a previously available configuration disappear. It’s maddening.

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Same for HP and Lenovo. Those sites are such a disaster and I'm surprised that nobody in their sales orgs are raising hell. There has to be lost sales due to not being able to easily find things. Those sites are incredibly slow as well.

I would assume for dell, hp, and lenovo, corporate sales through other channels drive the majority of sales so consumer facing websites are left to rot.

I suspect, but don't know, that there's a healthy halo of synergy between consumer products and enterprise choices, where that at all makes sense. Can go in both directions, people wanting to also have the good products they use at home in the office and vice versa.

I think there are stories of companies exploiting this, Microsoft with Windows and MS Works and Office, Apple and their angling on education, Adobe cultivating future Photoshop professionals in various formal and informal ways (a relationship they've since shit all over).

Seems like a missed opportunity.

Just figuring out what Lenovo laptops exist is an impossible task using their site. It's amazing just how unusable the site really is.

But I'm guessing that's the point - make it confusing and unusable to steer people to specific choices??

Lenovo PSREF.

However, just because a device exists on PSREF doesn't mean it's actually available to purchase anywhere, particularly since COVID.

I really like the frame work ordering experience. Despite having a lot of options, the interface is uncluttered and usable.

I guess part of it is having so few models to choose from, but maybe Dell, Lenovo, and HP don't actually need that many models in the first place...

Dell’s website went downhill when the dropped WebObjects.

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