Nathan Massey's dashboard

It would be great for PC World to create a forum (forum.pcworld.co.uk) where customers can sign up and talk to each other about the products that PC World sell. Many companies now do this (O2, Vodafone, Gameplay etc) so maybe PC World should as-well. It would be a great way for PC World to build a community around their brand, and get a sense for which products people are talking about.

It would be good for PC World to have a blog to announce new store openings/re-openings, new features on pcworld.co.uk, and other announcements. A blog would be a great way for PC World to communicate with customers, and to hear back from them in the comments.

Many companies have blogs, and I think it creates a great bond and loyalty between the company and customer by showing that the company isn't some faceless corporation, and that personalise the brand.

PC World's website is in dire need or a redesign. There are a lot of issues with the functionality and design of the site which need to be looked at, and a full redesign is probably the best way of doing it. Some of the biggest issues that come to mind at the moment are,

- Dual navigation - It seems stupid that there is the same menu navigation both horizontally and vertically across the page. There is no need to duplicate the site's navigation, as it wastes space, and could potentially confuse visitors to the site.

- Blatant SEO-ism - You only have to look at the title of the 'Laptop' section on pcworld.co.uk to see how some SEO advisor has got their mitt's on the website. A title of "Cheap Laptops at PC World - Buy cheap Laptops in the UK. New Laptops and Laptop computers from Acer, Sony, Advent, Toshiba and Compaq." is a little much. Maybe just "PC World - Laptops" would suffice?

- Use of images for text - If you look at the first bit of navigation in the top-right hand corner, all the options are not text, they are just images with text on them. This isn't good practice for a number of reasons, the main being the lack of accessibility of it.

- No DOCTYPE - This is more of something you'll care about if you've dabbled in web design, but it's a indicator of the low quality of the site.

- Horrible URLs - You would expect the URL for PC World's laptop section to be pcworld.co.uk/laptops right? Wrong. It's "http://www.pcworld.co.uk:80/martprd/editorial/Laptops_homepage/?int=top_nav".

PC World just need to get a outside agency in to completely redesign the website, as the internal web team at PC World (if there is one) don't seem to be up to the job.

These are just a few of the problems I can think of at the moment, but i'll reply to this topic if I think of any more.

If you go to the 'Laptop' section on pcworld.co.uk, you'll see that on that page it says "PC World Recommends Windows Vista® Home Premium".

As PC World sells a wide variety on computers with a various operating systems (Windows XP, Vista, 7, OSX, Linux), it would be good for customers if PC World, as a organisation, remained impartial on recommending specific products. PC World should leave it down to their customer advisors to show customers the features of each product, and let the customer decide for themselves.

I think it would be really useful if PC World were to create a forum (http://team.pcworld.co.uk) that any member of staff could log into, and share best practice and ideas. It would be a great tool for staff to gather new ideas to improve the business, and improve their own skills and product knowledge by talking with other members of staff from across the country.

Staff would login with their employee ID number, and create a password of their choosing. Each post on the forum would have the authors full name, branch, position (CA, BA, Tech Guy, Manager etc) and photo avatar next to it.

With the recent news about the DSGi Facebook group, employees clearly want to come together to discuss things, maybe it would be a good idea to provide a place for them to do this, but in a private, moderated environment.

As a ex-employee, I think it would be good to for PC World to change the staff uniform. The problem with the current uniform for customer advisors, is that the whole shirt and tie setup just shouts "I'M A SALESPERSON" to customers, which isn't a good thing. Customers don't want to be sold at, they want someone to give them some friendly advice, so I think making the uniform a little less formal would help to change (some) people's perception of customer advisors.

Here's what I think they changes should be,

- Managers: White Shirt, Black Trousers, Purple Tie.
- Business Staff: White Shirt, Black Trousers, Blue Tie (to match PCWB logo).
- The Tech Guys: No change. (Grey polo shirt, Black cargo trousers).
- Customer Advisors: White polo shirts (large PC World logo on back), Black Trousers.
- Warehouse Team (OOH): Black polo (large PC World logo on back), Black cargo trousers.

With CA's in a new more informal uniform, along with a new lanyard name badge, would be great.

As someone who has previously worked at a PC World, this is more a request coming from a employee than a customer.

I think it would be useful for PC World to replace the current staff name badges with a lanyard badge (with built in RFID chip).

Having a RFID chip in the lanyard would mean that staff could get into restricted areas (warehouse, staff room, secure cage) just by touching their RFID badge to a reader. They could also login to the store's computer terminals using the same method, touching their badge to a sensor connected to the terminal. It could also be used to track when stock is taken out of the warehouse (replacing the 'laptop log'), an employee simply touches their badge into the system, then scans the products they are taking out of the warehouse.

Here's a mock-up of what the badges could look like,

There is lots of information for POI on the web version of Google Maps, that isn't viewable on the iPhone 'Maps' app. It would be great if Google could include,

- A picture of the business/POI if one is available.
- The opening/closing hours of a business/POI if available.

It would also be good if Google added the ability to view and create reviews of business/POI on from within the Maps app.

On Apple's UK 'Find a Reseller' page (http://www.apple.com/uk/buy/) you can enter your city/postcode and see a map of nearby places to buy a Mac. It currently uses ViaMichelin maps, which aren't great to use. It would be better if Apple used Google Maps instead.

Get Satisfaction is a great tool, and it would be great if Apple could get involved in it. Obviously Apple doesn't comment on future products, so most 'Ideas' posted wouldn't get a response, but when people are reporting problems on here, it would be awesome if there was a team of AppleCare reps who could post a response and resolve people's issues on GS.

Having Apple become active in their GS community would also mean that the community would be better moderated (product/service list could be kept correct and up-to-date, and old threads archived away.

I think it would be great if Apple started to use Twitter to communicate with customers and provide support.

twitter.com/apple - Tweet's about new product announcements, software updates and stuff on Apple Hot News (http://www.apple.com/hotnews/).

twitter.com/applecare - Would be managed by a team from AppleCare who would be able to provide support to people tweeting about problems with their Apple products. Quite a few companies are providing support this way of Twitter now.

You could also have a Twitter account for each Apple Retail Store, so people could follow their local Apple Store on Twitter, and keep up to date with events going on at the store (workshops, artist events etc).

I think it would be great if Apple offered a 'all you can eat' subscription service on iTunes. Basically you would pay a set amount per month (£20, £25?) and you would have access to all the content on iTunes (apart from the App Store).

The service would ideally work in a similar fashion to Spotify, where content is streamed directly from the server, rather than downloading the content to your computer (but like Spotify, you would be able to save 'Offline Playlists' to your devices, so you can access them while offline).

A streaming service means that users would not have to worry about large HD video files taking up loads of hard disk space, which is becoming a problem for some users.

This kind of service would work great when paired up with a AppleTV. Imagine having all that content from iTunes, all available to watch anytime you want, for just £25 a month? I'm sure a lot of people would ditch their Sky/Cable TV subscription for something like this!

Today's revamp of the iTunes Store is great, it now as a nice clean look to it, with large graphics taking center stage.

One thing that would have been nice to have been done with the redesign, is a few changes the the 'reviews' functionality.

Firstly, if you rate a item (let's say a app from the App Store) using the drop down list of available ratings, once you have selected a rating, it says 'Thank you.' next to the drop down list. The problem is that when you go back to that page, your rating isn't saved (or it doesn't look like it has been saved), as you are shown the drop down box again. Maybe Apple could change this so that when you return to the page, you are shown the rating you gave the app, with the option to change it if you wish.

Also, if you have made a written review of a app, it should also be displayed (perhaps in a section above the 'Customer Reviews' section) in a section titled 'Your Review'.

Next, in iTunes 9, on the store, in the top right hand corner, you have a drop down list of account options (Account, Redeem, Wish List, Sign Out). It would be useful to have a additional option of 'Reviews' where you can see all of the reviews you have made on a single page. You can get this functionality my clicking 'Manage Reviews' on the account tab, but I feel this should be on the account drop-down list so it's easier to access.

Lastly, you should be able to link your Facebook account to your iTunes account using Facebook Connect. This would solve the biggest problem with Facebook review, the lack of accountability that means people write stupid reviews. Facebook Connect would mean that people would post under their real names, and their photo would be shown next to their reviews on iTunes. You could also have the reviews that people make show up in their feed on Facebook, so their friends could see their reviews, and maybe purchase things from iTunes based on that.

I love watching the shows from Revision3 (especially CO-OP, The Totally Rad Show and Diggnation), and it would be great if I could watch these shows on my 360.

You can already watch stuff like 'The Guild' and 'Red vs Blue', so why not add Revision3?

Quite simple really, make the Kindle available in the UK!