SPG.COM: Back to the Whiteboard

SPG.COM (as in Starwood Preferred Guests) recently overhauled most of their site and it is still not entirely clear to me what they were trying to accomplish. But one thing is clear, they sacrificed simplicity in the name of “prettiness” — much of the site resembles a messy desktop with a nice desktop picture placed behind it.

In addition to the structural issues with the site they also got the small stuff wrong. Often times it is the little features that can either delight or frustrate users to no end. Here is an example of one of the most basic site features – logging in- gone wrong:

Login: Initial State

Login: In Focus State

So, whats wrong with this design?

The single biggest problem is that they require you to omit the letter from your SPG number (e.g. F8732333) when using your SPG number to login. This is likely a back-end issue that somehow forced its way to the front-end, this should not happen. The back-end issues need to be dealt such that they don’t hamper the user experience. After all, back-end systems are there to serve customers. Once you are dealing with this constraint here is what you don’t want to do:

1. Place the helper text in faint gray letters (see the Initial State screenshot above)
2. Place the helper text within the input box. Once the user sets their focus in that box that helper text is lost and if the user

Additional issues include:

1. Placing the “Retrieve Password” by the UserId — it should go below the “Sign In” button.
2. Placing the “Privacy Policy” link in this area.
   • a.) Once a user agrees to a Privacy Policy then stick a link to it in the footer — why place it in the login area.
   • b.) What purpose does it serve in the login area —is somebody going to say to themselves… wait before logging in again let me make certain that I agreed with their privacy policy.
   • c.) I wouldn’t be surprised if the internal dynamics (strong and empowered legal department vs. a weaker products group) yielded this poor experience.

As a customer of SPG I am looking forward to a return to function over form — focus on task completion not cinematic value.