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Coporate_Website_Content_Design_Failures
| Coporate Website Content Design Failures
Examining the failures of the web content design of many
enormous consumer corporations.
When you think of the world's most successful businesses, what
names come to mind? Most likely, consumer-oriented giants such
as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Sheraton, Disney, IBM, General
Electric, and IBM. Not only have they spent billions on
advertising to buy their way into your head. They offer
convenient products and services that have made them a part of
your life.
But when you think of the most successful web sites, what names
come to mind? Names like Google, Yahoo! Amazon, AOL, Kazaa (for
better or worse), and Hotmail.
The late-1990s mantra about the web being a disruptive
technology that would destroy traditional companies may have
been overstated. But a decade and a half into the web's
existence, it is clear that the world's leading corporations
have been sidelined on the web.
The biggest shopping site is not walmart.com but amazon.com. The
biggest map site is not randmcnally.com but mapquest.com.
Established companies have usually only been able to buy their
way into this market through acquisitions (as with Microsoft's
purchase of Hotmail, which it used as a base for creating MSN).
Why, with few exceptions, were the world's most successful web
sites not launched by the world's most successful corporations?
Many Big Name Companies' Web Sites a Vast Waste of Time for
Visitors The McDonald's web site talks about food, but has no
real menu. The Coca-Cola USA web site has no clear ingredients
list or nutritional information, no recipes for floats or mixed
drinks, no company history, and nothing else useful to people
who like Coke. All that information has been inexplicably
located on the “ company” page, which on every other web site is
used for investor relations. The Johnson and Johnson web site
has useful information if you can access it—when the author
attempted to open it, it crashed two different web browsers
(Internet Explorer and Mozilla) before finally yielding (to the
Opera browser).
Many big-name companies' web sites offer lessons in what not to
do in web design. The biggest lesson by far is not to sacrifice
usability in an attempt to look cool, and never forget why your
users came to your site in the first place. McDonald's may be
the world's largest restaurant chain, but it didn't get that way
because of its web site.
Why Big-Budget Websites Are More Often Bombs than Blockbusters
The web sites of many successful corporations (both B2C and B2B)
are like big-budget Hollywood movies that spend millions on
stars and special effects, and a quarter of a percent of the
budget on the script. Worse, the special effects of blockbuster
web sites are far more annoying than impressive.
Special Effect that Bombs Number 1: Flash! When web sites don't
offer any content—any useful information to read—what do they
put up there instead? Spinning Coke bottles. Chicken McNuggets
and French fries that zoom out toward you when you position your
cursor over them. Changing pictures of generic-looking office
buildings and men in suits (on the web site of real estate giant
CB Richard Ellis—but that essentially describes the generic look
of many corporate web sites).
Of course, Flash can be used as a way to present content—words,
both printed and recorded, and pictures that actually illustrate
something. But more often, it is used to impress. And most
often, it ends up annoying. Who wants to spend the better part
of a minute waiting for a rotation of generic pictures of
smiling models?
Special Effect that Bombs Number 2: Splash Screens You type in
duracell.com expecting information on batteries—which you will
find, if you have the patience not to hit the “back” button
while the site shows a picture of a battery revolving painfully
slowly. On www.mcdonalds.com you're met with pictures of happy
children playing with Ronald McDonald and a menu to select what
country you're from. Johnson's and Johnson's web site shows a
logo before automatically redirecting you to the main page—that
is if it doesn't crash your browser first (which happened when
the author tried to access the page on May 2, 2004 ).
Another way big consumer corporations' web sites from Schick to
Mercedes-Benz to Thomas Cooke waste your time with splash pages
is by making you choose what country you're visiting from. This
could have been detected automatically, or at least, useful
worldwide content could have been placed on the homepage, with
an option to choose a country prominently displayed.
Splash pages are the internet equivalent of making patrons wait
in line out front before letting them inside. Unless a site
belongs to a night club or a professional services firm with too
much business, this can't be a good idea. On the web, where the
“back” button and the URL bars loom temptingly, making people
wait is business suicide.
Special Effect that Bombs Number 3: Overbuilt or Badly Built
“Dynamic” Functionality Every web surfer has a story about a
shopping cart that malfunctioned just when they were about to
click “purchase” on something they really wanted. Or a detailed
form that lost all the information after the “submit” button was
pressed. When there are so many good “dynamic” sites out there,
why are there still so many bad ones? Part of the problem may be
overbuilding and needless custom design. There are already
excellent Open Source databases out there, which can be
endlessly customized and updated by any skilled designer. Yet
many companies prefer to spend their money reinventing the wheel
so they can have their own proprietary technology, even if it
doesn't work.
Sometimes, dynamic content can distort the way an entire site
presents itself. If the dynamic content is so complex that it
presents problems for many users, it is unlikely the dynamic
content is worth it. On disney.com, your first greeting is a
message that your computer is sufficiently up-to-date (or not)
to handle the site. Is that really the magical and fun
impression you want to give visitors?
About the author:
Joel Walsh is the founder, owner, and head writer of UpMarket,
an online copywriting / internet marketing services firm & web
content provider to small and medium-sized businesses.
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