Stovax: Rationing searches

A search tool that inexplicably limits its own use.

The Site

Stovax, a UK-based maker of domestic fireplaces and stoves, has a brochure site that supports its strategy of selling only through approved independent retailers. Accordingly, the site provides a Stockists section with a link to a search tool that allows UK residents to find an authorised retailer locally, but which also limits its own use.

A ‘click here’ link opens the search tool, which works from a combination of post code (typed in by the user) and product selection (from a dropdown menu). The pop-up window where the tool appears has simple advice on how to use it and a cautionary note “that you can only make a total of 3 searches per week”. Two company telephone numbers and e-mail addresses are offered in case of “any problems with this form”.

The Takeaway

Full marks for the up-front warning, but Stovax may well have created a first for online marketing by rationing the number of times per week – not even per session – that consumers can use its Stockists search tool. It’s worth noting in passing for that possibility alone, but if such a thing as a website effectiveness panel game existed it’s also a puzzle to set before the team: if this is the answer, just what was the question? Was Stovax worried that amusement-seeking householders would get addicted to the interactivity and crowd out genuine stove seekers? Is there a meter running somewhere that means it has to pay a per-search fee for the service? Does it worry that a diligent competitor will hire an industrial spy to use the tool to recreate the full list of stockists?

Our suspicion is that the tool has been built on adapted software designed originally for a different purpose, most probably security related, that would automatically lock anyone out after three consecutive incorrect entries. If so, the lesson is that make-and-mend can have unanticipated ramifications.

First published on 22 May, 2007