Pizza Hut.com, To Borrow from Vincent Flanders, Sucks

I wanted some lunch delivered. Delivery options for my location are slim, but we have a fridge, so if I get pizza, it lasts for a while.

So, since I hate Domino's and am allergic to Papa Johns, I selected Pizza Hut.

Along my path to ordering, every single one of my design and usability flags was raised.

Here is a sampling.

Bacon cheeseburger pizza? Yum? (Well, let's pretend I say Yum! to that.)

But I want is on a thin crust! Not allowed? Why? Will the pizza like exploded if I order that particular combination of cheese and meat??? The combination just magically vanishes if I select Thin Crust.

Unfortunately, I didn't play with this to find out what other combinations would cause the Warp Core to Destabilize...

Ok, how about some Wings, instead....

First of all, all the normal user notices here is that they can order a bunch of "Full Descriptions."

Me, I wonder, "what is a description of a Hot Wing? Or a Dippin' Sauce? Does Pizza Hut explain where that missing 'g' went?"

Well, that answers exactly nothing. It's actually LESS information than the non-full description.

17,000, 243 screens later I manage to get to the point of actually ordering.

Design 101 -- where does it look like you should click? My eyes immediately go to the big red button. Luckily I was paying attention, because if I was in a rush I would have removed the Pizza instead. On a similar screen on my bank site I actually cancelled the same payment three times because the only button to click on was "cancel" on a green background.

To confirm that order, click the font size two red link to yes. Who designed this, anyway?

Yum! Brands will take my American Express card for a small bean burrito at the Taco Bell drive through... but not for a Pizza Hut online order. As I type this I'm wondering if AmEx failed them on some sort of audit or something....

No! You must have a side order of Spam! No orders without spam allowed!

Why the heck do you need my birthday? Is there a minimum age to order? Has Pizza Hut suddenly stopped delivering to anyone over the age of 60? It's not so you can send me birthday coupons since you don't ask for the date.

The best part of this grab is that it shows how insanely LAZY the production team appears to have gotten. Typing out Month names? Too much work! Populating a pull down with years? Also too much work!

Instead, just make people who are not computer people figure out exactly what MM and YYYY are. Yes, if you're on the InterWeb a lot you probably know this, but doesn't Pizza Hut want Internet novices to come order pizza and stop using up the phone guy's time?

The post-order confirmation screen! Built to please... if you dare.


Really? Pizza Playlist? Really? If you want to cash in on iTunes, try giving away free songs with pizzas. Pizza Playlist is just lame.

The final coup de grâce, the email confirmation. So I get this big ugly email (why is it HTML formatted, anyway, so they could put that ugly table in it? If you're going to go with an HTML email, have a reason... like branding the email with your colors and logo.) The ugly email says twice (in case I missed it before) to present my card to the driver, but is so poorly formatted you have to wonder who approved sending it out.

Certainly one hopes the highly paid executives of Yum! Brands didn't approve it. I especially like the side-scroll inducing line without breaks.

The ugly email also says (in the Wall of Text) that since this is my first order, I will get a phone call to confirm I exist.

The phone call never came, but the pizza did... :40 minutes before my delivery estimate. Good thing I was just sitting here waiting for the call to confirm I exist....