Vegas Sites - Big City Big Problems

09 August 2009

This article is going to look at how the #1 industry in Las Vegas has an almost Jekyll and Hyde relationship with the visitors to their city versus the visitors to their web sites.

First let's look at how a first time visitor deals with planning the trip. On my first trip we were staying at Caesar's Palace, wanted to see Penn and Teller, visit Fremont Street, and watch the fountains at the Bellagio and maybe the Sirens at Treasure Island.

The first place I normally would go is the hotel web site and see what they had about getting around. In this case I visit a site that is pretty much Harrah's boiler plate. Dark, dated and literally nothing that tells me I am visiting a premier property in Las Vegas.

Now when you lay out a site, you put the most important thing to your visitor close to the top of the page. I know, duh.

So when I visit the Caesar's site, the most important things seem to be mainly how to get to other sites and properties. On top of that, oddly there isn't even a Roman theme to the site. The black background and gold font screams 1998. The menus don't seem to really be planned out. There should be only a few main menu items when you come down to it. These were mixed together like they never really planned for people to use the site.

Actually I would probably have just a couple extra areas. The main four should be:

Accommodations: One of the things that let me down on the site was the lack of information. There needed to be a single location with everything I could want to know about the rooms. Floor plans, pictures, prices, differences in the towers and cost of incidentals. I need to know that wireless access on the hotel property costs as much for a day as I spend for a month at home. I would have brought my access card if I knew that or I'd get my company to pick it up. I ended up needing to hold some of my gambling money back in case I need to get some access. Money I took home with me. The real question is, why on Earth would they need to charge for it? Honestly, any system they use to provide WiFi to guests should have ad replacement. They could easily sell space for more than they probably make on skimming peoples gambling cash. What's really weird to me is that Cox provides the WiFi, something they do for free in other areas. So to me it comes across as greedy, and since I now know the speed is very sub-par it's doubly greedy.

I couldn't really figure out what my room was going to look like. I needed to bring an extension cord, I didn't know that. True I doubt any site would have told me there were two outlets in the room as far away from the bed as possible, but I would have loved to know that. How about that the pool apparently is only three and a half feet deep? It is not a pool area for swimmers, it is a pool area for sun worshippers. Nothing wrong with that, but I like to swim. This actually is a consideration for me when I choose a hotel. My friend is a sun worshipper, so she was happy.

Casino: Current site talks about how big the casino is. That's not what I should take away about your casino. Unless I'm planning a major poker tournament I don't need to know how big it is. I'm in Vegas at a premier property, I'll assume we won't need to shoot dice in the alley behind the place. Instead of a just a grey blob on the map marked Casino how about an actual map of the casino floor? Talk about the features of the casino, not the size. Blimp hangers are huge, but that doesn't mean I want to hang out in them for a few hours. Talk up your Players Club in the casino section. Talk about what your latest games are. The dichotomy here is that your floor staff in the Casino is GREAT. The staff were all very nice, knowledgeable and obviously picked for personality and an understanding of how to address people funneling money into games. I have no delusions about the fact that I exchange money for a good feeling. When we had an issue, the slots managers on duty were awesome. We're amateurs, we know that their staff knows that, but the staff knows how to overcome that.

Restaurants: You have better luck going to the web sites for the actual restaurants. Wait, what? I shouldn't have to go anywhere to find out more. We planned to eat at Mesa before going to the Penn and Teller show. Do I need reservations? OK granted I should have assumed it, but I live in a city that you literally can't make a reservation at a restaurant. Seriously, I stopped trying years ago because the host would act like I am asking them to enrich uranium when I wanted to make a reservation. I have a pretty short list of things I want from a restaurant site. Menu, prices, location and pictures like anyone else would want. On top of that, what's the dress code for nicer places. Nothing ticks me off more than walking in and finding out I should have grabbed that jacket out of the closet. Mesa is a Bobby Flay restaurant, he had been there the day before. My friend would have been there a day early if we had known that and we would have gone there twice instead of just once. If you have a signature restaurant, treat it as such and tell the patrons that the reason they want to go just got better.

Shopping: The Shops in the Forum are about 10 times more amazing than the site leads you to believe. They need better mapping, better information, better pictures. Run a video camera on a steady cam rig through the place. Show how huge the place really is. The site makes it sound like the shops occupy an area the size of an average grocery store. In actuality, it's an area the size of major mall. The site completely drops the ball here. The Forum shops need their own site and be linked to from the Caesar site. They may actually have their own site, you wouldn't know it from what you'll find online. One thing I thought they needed was a way to order merchandise online, turned out I was sort of wrong. If you hunt around you will find a single link to an online store. The store appears to have about 1/1000 the number of products as in their various gift shops. That online gift shop should be on every page and filled to the brim with current products. Two weeks after a guest leaves they should get an email with a list of products for them to remember their stay. Why two weeks? Because most guests will have had a payday by then and be a little more likely to send some more money back.

Next up I need to know how to get around. I want to get to shows not at my hotel. I'm a first time traveler to Vegas and it seems that they have a million ways to get around. Taxi, bus, shuttles, monorail, and just walking around are all available. So how do I get from one place to another? If I want to hang out on Fremont, what's the best way to get there? We needed to get to the Rio, which you can't walk to really. There was a shuttle to Rio from Bally's across the street. The web site didn't tell me that, I found out from another excellent employee of course. Honestly, I think if Harrah's, Bally's, Wynn or some other major property had sense they would create an independent site that let you find out how to get from one place to another. If I lived in Vegas, that would be my site. Click on Venetian and want to get to Fremont? You'll get a rough cost for cabs, what bus would get you there, a shuttle if it's available and all the places you can get to that transportation. It should be cell phone friendly so you can check it from anyplace. Plus you'd have potential for ad revenue.

What are the restaurants in the area and price range? It's unrealistic to expect me to eat every single meal at your hotel. Don't pretend you're the only choice for food on the strip. You don't have to list your competitors, but you can at least talk about what's in walking distance. Except for Cabo Wabo restaurant, they kind of sucked. Top 5, worst service I've ever had plus the terrible server overcharged us $30 for two bottles of Corona. Which of course guarantees we never go to any other Cabo Wabo again.

Want to go to Hoover Dam? The site says figure it out yourself. If I ask a Caesars employee, I will get fantastic information. You may have read my article that says to treat your site like any other employee, the site isn't as helpful as the least helpful employee I met on the property. The least helpful employee was the one that had to lead me to someone that could help. They were the least helpful only because it was their second day on the job and they didn't know the answer.

Another issue with the Caesars site, the property maps. When I hit Maps and Information the first time, there was a distinct lack of property maps. I had to go to the site map for the entire web site to find it. Now it is a small text link on the page under the main picture. It should be a pretty obvious button that you are presented with. The other issue is the name. Maps and Information This is a classic naming mistake, a rookie mistake. The site is information, so what makes this information special? This is classic mystery meat navigation. That is called click expectation, you have an expectation when you click on something of what you will see after the click. You expect a map or a map icon of some type. I'm not saying to treat your user like an idiot. Treat them like someone that needs information that you want to help make it as easy as possible.

On Harrahs' sites, the Total Rewards area is a little bit better than most of other areas. However there is one major issue I found. When you want to look at the report for your account, it only goes to the previous year. If I copy the URL into a new page and change the querystring to he current year, I get a current report. Your users should NEVER need to do that.

Yeah, long article. I can't help it, there is so much bad out there.

Next up, Penn and Teller.

OK, truth be known I am a fan of Penn and Teller. I couldn't wait to get to Vegas and see them. Penn and Teller have their own site. It doesn't really suck, unless you have an iPhone, but it's good enough. If you want to order tickets, you get handed to the Rio hotel web site which is another Harrahs property.

Let me start with the take-away here. The steps to order are linear. I pull up a date. I tell the system what date I want plus the number of tickets and section. Next I tell the system what date I want AGAIN. Then I get asked for my credit card number.

What's wrong with that? Besides asking me a question twice, the site never tells me the cost of my tickets before reaching for my wallet. Never grab for the wallet too quickly. I want my total before I have to give you personal information. In this case that is a sin of equal offense of not letting me pick my seat. On top of that is a timer at the top of the form telling me I only have 15 minutes to keep those tickets. Rushing me isn't making me want to order the tickets any more. This is a selling mistake. Instead of a message warning me I'll lose the tickets, tell me that for my convenience you will hold the tickets for 15 minutes. Make it a positive instead of a negative. However since I don't know where my seat is, this is a pretty empty warning. I am likely to close the deal if your holding aisle seats on the second row versus mystery seats somewhere in the back row behind a pole.

So I had to call. If I have to call to get decent seats why bother to order online?

On top of all that, I had a promo code. The code generated an error on the site. I know this because the helpful screen that said my order was completed, but didn't have any details. I didn't get a confirmation email. That's how I knew I had an error. Wait what? You read that right. As far as I knew, my order was completed with no problems. Only because of my career in ecommerce did I think that perhaps there was an issue with my order.

Anyway I call, give the code and the extremely helpful human tells me that the code is fine, the problem is it will expire before we would go to the show. The human, tells me to wait a couple days and check back. There would likely be a new code issued.

This is one of the moments when you realize that while Vegas may be more expensive these days, their employees still know how to service a customer. I wait a couple days, the code didn't renew and I called back. The person I get on the phone gets me possibly the best seats I've ever had for a live show. Again, the site completely fails the customer completely. Why is this acceptable?

To how many people would this entire process be onerous? I can't help but think this is keeping people out of the seats.

Dozen of sites that claim they can get you cheap show tickets. Sites that are unconnected to the properties or performers, and so poorly designed that you're nervous about giving them any personal information, much less your credit card. Suddenly what should be a reassuring and positive experience turns sour. I'll pay the extra $40 so I don't have to worry about getting ripped off when try to pick up the tickets.

I know I am picking on Harrahs and you would think I had a lousy time, quite the opposite. I had a blast. The problem is my experience was mainly with their sites and Harrahs owns a lot of places.

I don't see a lot of good sites out there in Vegas. is the site for Herbet Keller's restaurants. The site is almost unusable (Update: Totally unusable last I looked, site was completely dead). Not just Flash, but bad Flash. Flash that adds nothing to the experience, it is just chewing up real estate and laying there like a 4 day old fish. It might even be smaller if it was just straight HTML. On my first visit the Flash took so long to load I thought may be broken too, if not just on a really sub-par host. I'm on my iPhone and want to look at the food menu for the Burger Bar at Mandalay Bay. You may think, Well, you are on an iPhone. You're out of luck already. True enough, I will give you that one, except I couldn't get the menu to load on a PC the first time either. When I do get it to load, it is images of an actual menu. In fact all the type seemed to be set for people with 75 inch monitors set to 640x480. Tiny copy on dark background, that screams to the world I think dark backgrounds make me cutting edge! If you look at the source code, you will see that not even the most basic SEO was performed. So what about the page for the Burger Bar on the actual Mandalay Bay site? Well the hours and phone number are there, so that's a start. How about the menu? It's a PDF which is great, but with only 50 words in the menu itself, why bother with the PDF? It looks like they used a room service menu. No pricing and very little to describe the dishes. OK, in truth there is nothing to describe the dishes. Second burger on the menu and I'm not making this up, Rossini. No that was really everything they said about it. What is being communicated to the consumer here, We didn't think this through? (Full disclosure, a year or so after I posted this they fixed the menu issue - So who is this site for? It fails the customer, so it can't be for us. It fails the owner, because it fails the customer and probably fails on all the business levels for promoting the restaurant. Someone got a paycheck for making the site, so I guess that's who it was for.

This should get people thinking about how their site services their customers and why no matter how big you are or how well you are known for your customer service, you can still drop the ball completely. This is also the kind of article that a web manager reads makes a lot of notes. They sit too close to the site and have trouble seeing the site with fresh eyes. The worst thing would be to keep the status quo and ignore everything, luckily this article is becoming more out of date as they address the issues. Some of that happens because you get your ego too wrapped up in a site. It can be hard to disconnect your ego from a site, once you do you suddenly see things with entirely new eyes. Always remember your site is for your customers convenience.

I would love to have to put a preface on this article about how the problems listed have been addressed and the Las Vegas resorts and businesses realize that their websites are more than just a place to stick a couple shots of the pool. Hopefully they realize that their web sites are the performing at a level they would never tolerate from any employee at any level. It is still one of my favorite places to visit. I think I have been there five times at this point and every visit I find something new I want to see.