Wait, I have notes

I’ve gotten so many blog posts from analysing corporation-run websites (and so many more ideas) that I have made it into a series. I’ve named it, “I Have Notes“.

#IHaveNotes #WebTechnology

Should I buy a share in Boots’ parent company?

I’ve been a bit obsessed with the website of UI Highstreet brand Boots. I have written four nerdy posts about boots.com theorising about why the website is so rubbish and slow.

In the order written:

I could easily draft a technical report to be given to the web development team which (if followed) would make the website much nicer to use, faster, and (probably) more profitable.

So I was thinking of buying a share in Boots. Well, in Walgreens Boots Alliance the American company that owns Boots.

As a shareholder, I would be entitled to a say (a really small say but a say nevertheless).

The thing is, although the share would be cheap it might be a bad investment.

Over the last five years, the share value has tanked from US$80-ish to US$17.85.

The thing I am wondering about is this: How much value could I add to my mono-stock holding by getting boots.com to be a better-performing website?

So I put it to the Internet at large – should I buy one or more shares in Boots and then leverage my part ownership to try and fix things?

I’m confident that my advice is money-in-the-bank gold which will make boots.com better. I’m not confident about the cooperation as a whole. They got the whole thing so wrong to start with. I have no idea if the team behind the site could or would do as I ask. I can still ask.

I have further doubts about the cooperate oversight with that plummeting stock value. I’d bet all I have on: If I were CEO for a year then the stock would go up. Me as CEO is an unlikely scenario with all the goodwill in the world. I’d make the same bet for CTO (Chief Technical Officer).

In short, I think Walgreens Boots Alliance needs new leadership. I would be a great investment as part of that if they offered me a sufficiently large number. I’d even consider taking stock and options as part of that deal.

TL;DR: Boots, call me. I can help.

#Boots #CEO #CTO #IHaveNotes #RSVP #shares #WalgreensBootsAlliance

A possible reason boots.com is so slow

Just recently, I got curious about how slow boots.com is. I looked at the infrastructure but other than a mighty slow ping time on the domain, I saw little to explain it.

I looked again.

I wanted something to compare against. I used authorbuzz.co.uk which I have optimised for speed as hard as I can. In CDN finder you can see that boots.com is not doing […]

#Boots #CDN #HTML #IHaveNotes #optimise #waterfall #webDesignBasics #TheInternet

I have a new theory about Boots’s car crash of a website.

I’ve become somewhat obsessed with the boots.com website and its endlessly hilarious bad front end. My theory in my last post was a bad or underskilled manager. A bully or an idiot or both.

I still think there is some bad management shite going down at boots.com but I have started to wonder if the fault might not be further upon the chain […]

#badCode #bigCompanyFails #Boots #codeSmell #errors #HCLTechnologies #IHaveNotes #IBM #managers #muggles #WebSphereCommerce #wizards #CodingAndDevelopment

I suspect that boots.com has vacant senior developer positions

Nothing else explains what I just saw.

Yesterday evening, I decided to create an account with boots.com. I realised that I was paying more with a 15% “subscribe and save” discount on Amazon than I would if I just paid regular high street prices. Things took a turn for the silly and sad.

For my American readers: Boots is a high […]

#Boots #codeGore #HTML #IHaveNotes #poorManagement #WTF #TheInternet