A key factor in being able to buy something is being able to find it. When people seek things out on the web, they typically will know the details of what they want, and have been intimately involved in deciding to buy it. But at Christmas many potential childrens gift buyers like uncles, aunties, cousins are often looking for things they don't know about, haven't decided on buying themselves, and might only have been told about on the phone. In this case many will resort to the online High Street store they know and trust.

It almost seems like Harrods want to keep hold of all the toys, just like Scrooge

For example, did you know the very popular Bratz toys are spelt with a Z not an S? So if you go along toHarrods online store and type in 'bratz' to the search box, you get about nine Bratz, ranging from £4 to £30. But what about the misspelling - 'brats'? You guessed it, nothing, nada, empty shelves.

Its not only 'brats' that shows empty shelves though, it get worse. Much worse. Typing 'barbie' in the Harrods search box shows ten Barbies, but typing ‘barbies’ - a simple plural - shows an empty shelf.

I'm afraid this is NVQ usability, as basic as you get. Jakob Neilsen has talked about it and Mark Hurst back in 1999 and it's in all the books. It's not rocket science. But for the Christmas reasons outlined above, its more acute right now.

It almost seems like Harrods want to keep hold of all the toys, just like Scrooge. They don't want to sell anything. Perhaps they should extend this idea to their stores? They could hire Sales Assistants that didn't understand plurals and spelling errors. Then they wouldn't sell half as much stuff! They could keep all the toys!

"Have you got Barbies?" "No!"
"Have you got any Barbie?" "Yes!"

How good an idea is that! Must be a good one, because Debenhams and John Lewis do it too!