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| Is YOUR Web Designer
Working for the Enemy? During the 2nd World War, people in the UK were warned by the government that "Careless talk costs lives." If, you regard marketing as warfare, then a modern version of this homily might be something like this:- "Careless web design costs customers." There have always been rubbish web sites. In the mid to late 1990's a lot of web problems were caused by the problems of having to support 2 browsers, when Internet Explorer came along. (IE displayed pages differently to Netscape. In the early days the differences could be acute if you didn't specify some default options.) Then Java came along and crashed millions of screens until web designers became more familiar with its dark side. Nowadays, the main offenders are the people who use Flash. No, I'm not talking about those expensively designed home pages which assume I will be informed and entertained by watching their company logo whizz around the screen, hit all four corners, expand, contract and then bounce back into the middle. Those companies - often high tech web services companies - send out a clear message:- "We assume that our customers have the IQ of a 3 year old, have a lot of time to waste, and will be impressed by how much money we can waste." - Those companies typically go down the plughole when their investors' money runs out, and then their CEO will probably write a book later to describe why the Internet wasn't ready for their kind of business. My big concern is the blank white screen phenomenom, which I've seen on a number of sites this week. You go to a home page and all your see is a white screen with the text message - "Your browser is not optimized for Flash content, Download Flash5 Player now." No other options are offered. Upgrade or go away. You can't bypass this message. Maybe the problem is just me. I'm running IE6, and do have some unknown version of Flash which works well enough on most sites. But the web designers of the blank white screens think Flash 5 is a better browser than IE6, and their web site is not going to tell me anything about their company unless I pause and do an upload. Well... I don't play computer games and I really don't care about those companies, because most of them are going to go out of business if they take that attitude to customer communication. I've got hundreds of web sites I have to visit every day, and later in the year when I'm less busy, or maybe next time I change my PC, I'll get another version. My advice to you is this... Take every opportunity you can to see what your home page looks like to others. the next time you visit one of your VARs or customers, ask then to dial up your home page. The web is not TV. What you see may be quite different to what others see. "Careless web design costs customers." |
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| Marketing Views | STORAGEsearch | SPARC Product Directory | ACSL - the publisher |
