Ordering Pizza Online
Pizza Hut recently started offering online ordering of pizza. Papa Johns has had this for a while, and I've had great success with it. I hate ordering pizza on the phone. Using coupons is a pain, but if you don't they'll seemingly throw out some number for a price that always seems way to high for one or two pizzas. Plus you are running about a 30% risk the kid on the phone is checking out a cute customer and not paying attention to you.
Anyways, I thought I'd give Pizza Hut a shot. It has worked quite well, and I believe now they even take credit cards online. Woohoo! The problem is that the site is perhaps the worst looking site in the face of the internet. Here's a taste:
Click for a bigger and even uglier picture.
I couldn't find buttons to do things like checkout or add toppings. They seem to randomly pick either the top or the bottom (and sometimes both) to put the buttons to do tasks. On one page I counted 16 different colors being used. I think I found 6 fonts too. If you look at the source, it is a bizarre mixture of CSS and FONT tags.
The company that does this site is called QuikOrder (so quick, they don't have time for the letter C I guess). This is a system you can buy. I have a feeling QuikOrder put together this system and design in, oh, 1994 and hasn't upgraded it since except maybe to use an uglier shade of yellow someplace. I'm tempted to offer to do a redesign of their site in exchange for free pizza. What a deal! I saw some CSS at the top, so I thought it would be no problem. The random usage of font tags and bgcolor thwarted those plans though.
But the service is great, the pizza arrives on time and you can pick your toppings at your leasure (did you know you can request low sauce?) and know the price without having to deal with the confusing process of ordering on the phone. Good times.