In the course of a week I look at a lot of different web pages so I thought that it would be an instructive exercise to make a note of any design issues that made me think, "Why on earth did they do that?"
Too many promotional sites have not been updated for months or years. When you see content such as “Our next meeting will be in September 2010” or “I am hoping to publish the next issue of the magazine in January 2011” it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. This problem seems to happen most frequently when the design of the site has been entrusted to an external contractor - who I can only assume wasn’t contracted to do any work other than the initial design and who then left leaving the site owner without the knowledge or access passwords required to do the job themselves?
Hyperlinks that direct the reader to a third-party page that has long since vanished (annoying) or hyperlinks that don’t work at all (very annoying) or hyperlinks that encourage the reader to send an email to an address that it not monitored (keyboard-bitingly annoying) can be found on most sites.
I’m always rather curious why designers, having carefully contrived to get a potential customer to visit the web site, should then provide a quick and easy means for them to leave it again. But that is exactly what external hyperlinks are intended to do. If I have my house decorated by Bloggs Builders I don’t allow them to include an advert for their business on my external wall. So why do so many paying customers allow web site designers to do exactly this?
One final point – external designers don’t always appreciate that authors don’t earn anything when their books are sold second hand through Amazon so always check that they haven’t included a link that encourages clients to do exactly that!
Thursday, 22 March 2012
Thursday, 8 March 2012
Why do people put up with it?
I belong to quite a few special interest societies that are based in the USA. The USA where, people would have me believe, standards of customer service are much higher than in the UK. Perhaps I’ve just been unlucky, perhaps the strongly male orientated groups I have joined are not typical of the US as a whole. Perhaps all manner of things – the fact is that over the last couple of years I seem to have more than my fair share of negative experiences.
For me it is seldom the initial problem that really annoys me. It is the over-casual approach of some groups to resolving complaints from subscription paying members that can sour the business relationship between us. Ignoring all complaints seems to be standard practice for some groups and I usually have to repeat the same points several times before any answer is received.
Some of these groups seem to be absolutely and genuinely outraged at what they regard as an unfair criticism and yet they seem totally oblivious to the fairness or otherwise of their response. I can still recall receiving a four page tirade in response to a four line comment I made within a discussion group!
Membership perks that mysteriously are declared to be “unavailable to overseas members” despite being advertised within the promotional material sent out to prospective members is another widespread problem. I remember one occasion where ten perks in theory became three perks in practice - despite overseas members paying a 40% subscription premium. I think this is called “bait and replace”.
Coming back to original question I asked. Why do people put up with it? I think the answer lies in the word special, as in special interest society. When there are no alternative groups around there is nowhere else for an unhappy member to go and I suspect the worst offenders are well aware of this fact.
For me it is seldom the initial problem that really annoys me. It is the over-casual approach of some groups to resolving complaints from subscription paying members that can sour the business relationship between us. Ignoring all complaints seems to be standard practice for some groups and I usually have to repeat the same points several times before any answer is received.
Some of these groups seem to be absolutely and genuinely outraged at what they regard as an unfair criticism and yet they seem totally oblivious to the fairness or otherwise of their response. I can still recall receiving a four page tirade in response to a four line comment I made within a discussion group!
Membership perks that mysteriously are declared to be “unavailable to overseas members” despite being advertised within the promotional material sent out to prospective members is another widespread problem. I remember one occasion where ten perks in theory became three perks in practice - despite overseas members paying a 40% subscription premium. I think this is called “bait and replace”.
Coming back to original question I asked. Why do people put up with it? I think the answer lies in the word special, as in special interest society. When there are no alternative groups around there is nowhere else for an unhappy member to go and I suspect the worst offenders are well aware of this fact.
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