Google vs. HP

I posted last week on how I had to search Google on how to do something on Windows and the Windows help "feature" didn't help me at all.

Saturday I encountered a similar problem with HP. When I bought my new laptop (HP Pavilion -- Love it!!!), there was a little slip of paper in the box that said I could turn my laptop into a TV. I threw it out without a second thought. Until Saturday, when my husband and I wanted to watch the World Cup on TV. I saw that it was being broadcast in High Def and because we don't have cable (we don't watch much TV), I remembered that little slip of paper that came with my laptop. I logged on to hp.com to look for it and couldn't find it. They gave me all sorts of irrelevant products and services....no TV tuner. So then I go to Google, and once again, in about 2 seconds, I had a whole selection of TV tuners to choose from.

Which brings up a couple of issues. HP should have some type of feedback button. I would have filled it out in a second to tell them that I couldn’t find what I was looking for. Whenever I go shopping in regular stores the first thing they ask me when I am checking out is “did you find everything you were looking for today?” Why not have something like this on your website? Second, why is there search capability so bad? I used to work for an automotive supplier and part of my job was purchasing hardware from HP. They were bad then, we complained, and it seems like they haven’t gotten any better since I left 2 years ago.

I will restate my original proposition – unless companies begin realizing that the search capabilities on their website needs to be as good or better than Google’s they will continue loosing sales because customers will go to Google to find products that they could have found on their own web site.