RAC Motoring Services: Warning signs can defuse user rage

Non-communication of selective functionality is a serious inconvenience.

The Site

RAC Motoring Services (now no relation to the Royal Automobile Club that spawned it) provides its 6 million members with a range of legal and technical advice and services as well as the roadside assistance for which it is best known. Its website reflects this portfolio and has several interactive features that are available to anyone who registers (free) with the site. In addition, visitors to the site are offered a route planner on the home page.

The Takeaway

The RAC aims to make its site “the first choice for UK motorists with internet access, regardless of the vehicle they drive…”. In the case of the home page route planner this does not extend to the make of desktop they pilot.

To call up a route from the home page route planner users simply have to enter the name or post code of their chosen start and destination points, and click ‘Go’. PC owners are then taken to a printable map with interactive features such as ‘zoomable’ scale and a written set of directions for the recommended route.

Mac users effectively do not get to pass Go. They are presented with a blank screen (if using an Explorer browser) or a grey page of Java script (if using a Netscape browser).

This may be a perfectly logical ROI judgement by the RAC – about 90% of visitors will be ‘driving’ a PC (although Nielsen NetRatings published research last year suggesting Mac users are more affluent, higher educated and ‘web savvy’ than the average internet surfer). But whatever the reason for the decision – and putting aside the thought that to leave 1 in 10 users stranded surely runs counter to the service’s ethos (so not good for the brand) – the RAC is at fault in not communicating the limited functionality to site visitors. Many will assume or worry unnecessarily that the fault lies on their desktop rather than that the feature does not function on some platforms and browsers. A simple note, better still a link to a ‘technological advice’ or ‘systems requirements’ page, would avoid an awful lot of road planner rage.

First published on 29 May, 2003