Case study: TMNet's Bluehyppo E-browse - How not to be an online merchant

First, a little background: TM Net, Malaysia premier monopoly ISP. They have this little site called BlueHyppo.com, which touts itself as the "The Malaysian Lifestyle Portal". With gangrenous hippo as their mascot. Hmm, "lifestyle portal" using hippo as a mascot, what does that tell you? Okay, I'm drifting, back to topic...

I'm not really a fan of BlueHyppo, but from time to time, possibly due to sheer luck, they do have a good product. For example, they have this service call B-Smart or something that is basically an online education package that target primary and secondary students. Price is quite reasonable too. Another product, which is the topic of our discussion today, is called E-browse. Basically, it is an online newspaper subscription, with good newspaper selections, and it's quite cheap (RM20 per month, instead of almost RM40 for dead wood version).

Ok, seems like a good product. How can TM Net possibly screw this up? Hmm, let me count the ways...

1. To actually read the newspaper, you have to install an ActiveX control first. Yes...an ActiveX control called the Innotive iBrowser Control from some Korean company. Immediately TM Net has excluded around 12% Firefox loving people as their potential customer. And couple more percentage of potential users who are not running Windows. And the numbers will only get bigger in the coming years.
   Lesson 1: If TM Net thinks 12% is not a big number, think again. These 12% are the power users demographic - user who are more likely to shop online, and have stronger purchasing power.
   Lesson 2: Come on, haven't TM Net team heard of PDF, HTML, SSL, session control, cookies - all these technologies that are available since 1990s? Why must they use restrictive, proprietary non-standard software as their solution without any good reason? Last I check, nytimes.com is rendering their online newspaper using "plain" HTML.
2. The Innotive iBrowser Control installer is not signed. Users who are trying to install this ActiveX get warnings.
   Lesson 3: Don't be cheap. Your company image is at stake here. If you must use proprietary technology, use it properly. Get the installer signed and certified.
3. And the biggest joke is: you can't even purchase E-browse subscription online! Whoa, is it even possible to have e-commerce site without a functioning payment gateway? Yes, only from TM Net!
   First, whenever I tried to access the site using Firefox, the site will just drop dead after I entered my email. Ok fine, probably it needs Internet Explorer. So I fired up Internet explorer, enter my email, and was greeted with a nice popup blocker courtesy of IE.
   

   

   How intelligent TM Net can be.

   
   
   Wake up TM Net, this is 2007 and almost 2008. Popup is so 1990s. Even if you have to use popups, at least use JavaScript to detect that it is being blocked by the browser and inform the user. As far as I know, all major browsers (IE, Firefox, Opera) comes with popup blocking activated by default. So off I go to add *.tm.net.my to my IE popup blocker exception list. Reload. And then, I was humbled by this error message:
   
   

   

   Another example of TM Net skill in e-commerce

   
   
   Yes, you see it right. TM Net payment page spitting out error page cannot be found, for reason which they only know.
   Lesson 4: To have a proper e-commerce site, you need a functioning payment gateway. Hiring interns with minimum wage as developer does not count.

And I can only guess how many potential customer they have managed to lose every single day!