Many companies have crappy websites

[Bregalad]

It's just some random complaint again...
This has nothing to do with NESDEV, but I am currently searching for a stage summerjob that is required for my master, and man, I can hardly belive it.
The same "trend" hit both small companies and large multinationals. They have horrible websites.
In a globalized world where internet is so important you'd expect companies to invest some effort in order to maximize communication with potential customers and potential employees, and to have a nice and friendly website. I could understand that very small companies with <10 employees are too busy and don't have time or skill to care about their websites, but at least big companies and multinationals should have a dedicated team that takes care of this stuff !

I'm not pointing any particular company for private reasons, but :

1) At least half of the time when you go to their main page, you have no clue what is their domain of activity. 2/3 of companies will not mention it ! You'd want at the VERY LEAST to know exactly what the company is producing or, if it's a strict 3rd sector company, what kind of services it will procure to their customers. This information should be written in a very large font on the main page ! However, most of the time it's not.

2) Most of the time, they are just saying "We offer the best solutions." or stuff like that. Okay fine, but solutions to WHAT ? This coupled with somewhat ridiculous pictures of people smiling in a very naive way... Kinda of bade taste if you ask me

3) Some companies have sites which requires some advanced flash plugins or a particular browser to display correctly. OMG they should be burned. Thanks god this only covers a small 10-20% of companies, and mostly small ones, but still, this is unacceptable.

4) The site being old/outdated. For a large multinational I'd expect the site to be updated daily, for a small company monthly or so would be sufficient. However sometimes after just a few clicks I ended up on statistics of the company for the 2004-2007 period or stuff like that. There was a company that had it site not updated since 2005 ! It is a very small company and I suspect they are extinct now (else why wouldn't have they updated their site for 7.5 years ?), but still, the least thing they could do is remove their website, or say they are extinct. Who still pays the bills for hosting the site ?!

5) Being lost in useless stuff. Normally you'd expect a structure where customers and people looking for jobs can clearly see the various products, sectors of activity or whatever. Some times this is okay, but some times there is vague and useless tabs everywhere, and you have no clue what is their meaning and where you are going.

[WedNESday]

...that is required for my master...

For who?

[blargg]

He probably meant master's [degree].

Your experience tells me that these websites are like old shacks on the company's lot, not something used to get new business or by clients. Apparently they have other methods of getting business/employees.

[rainwarrior]

They probably have some methods. An effective website is a good method that they're stifling, however.

[Hojo_Norem]

Can I add to this? There is one thing that royally ticks me off. It can happen to any website but its usually ones run by not small companies. What is it? "Website closed for renovations" and their ilk!

Honestly the number of times I have come across that on a site I visit for the first time... and last time!
Why can't they just run the old version of the site with a small entry page saying "We are renovating our site, come back soon to see what we have to offer. In the mean time feel free to look around the old one."

Once the new site is done a simple bush of a button is usually what is needed to switch it over. Panasonic know this all to well. They offer favourable prices to independent retailers who don't have a website over those who do. And that means ANY kind of website, even non e-commerce based ones because they know that with planning and a push of a button a simple "We exist!" website can be turned into a fully operational e-shop and back again in a near instant.

[tepples]

"Website closed for renovation" with the old site taken down may mean they were forced to take it down for legal or other business reasons. Think of how Brian Provinciano had to take down his site when Vblank Entertainment was trying to get a license to develop for consoles.

[koitsu]

Most of this stuff is the result of commercialism/capitalism playing too big a role, combined with too many idiots doing web-based things today. I can remember interviewing people at past jobs who claimed to be webdev folks, but couldn't explain even on a simple level how HTTP worked or behaved; instead they just want to churn out massive piles of crap, all driven with either Java (doesn't matter if client-side (applet) or server-side, it's all garbage) or some other language/framework involving a class/object which they didn't understand the internal operations of.

This "web crap" has become the norm. It's what happens when you get too many idiots working in the tech sector + too much of the tech sector being money-driven.

[whicker]

I want to deposit another insider opinion.
If this comes back to me I will delete this message.
Okay, here it goes:

Most skilled employees these days feel overextended. And they are. Measures have been taken about the average productivity of a skilled employee in proportion to inflation adjusted salary. Well, the salary portion has stagnated and "productivity" or "bang for buck" has gone through the roof over the decades. Time becomes a valuable resource (that final 2-3 hours spent chasing the product out the door makes or breaks the whole delivery experience. if only mgmt would understand that. passing QA doesn't necessarily mean that the product is golden).

What happens when a smart person that can fix the website, fixes or puts some effort into the website?

1. the website gets marginally better, such as actually working in Firefox or IE without locking it up.
2. the message always hits upper level management.
3. upper level management says "good job". in the very next breath they ask "can you do...?"
4. suddenly the person that touched the website gets responsibility for the website.
5. more work (more hours after 8 hours) for no extra pay, plus dealing directly with upper level management and their "this should only take a second" two day requests.
6. if you talk to somebody about it, it is always the "young people don't want to work hard these days" speech. but the reality is that the company will pay $50-$100 an hour for a consultant or outside party to put announcements on the website (text insertion), but won't compensate an internal employee one cent for the extra burden. (just future promises of what becomes a paltry raise that barely beats inflation).
7. become jaded. the company will take what it can get, and not reward improvement.
8. Same crappy shell of a website sits there for years, until some new web browser comes along and does a godawful job of rendering the broken html, or poorly parsing otherwise working html but "wrong to do it that way anymore" mentality.

So HR won't touch the website even if it would get better candidates, or make the hiring process easier on candidates (honestly what HR department actually thinks about how difficult they make the process on the candidate? that's an alien concept). HR people learn to protect themselves (from lawsuits, blame for hiring the wrong person, threats on life) by being vague, muddy, ignorant, and poorly documented. Or they naturally are that way and a perfect fit. Why would a straightforward website be in their interest? You need to show that you can overcome adversity(!) while simultaneously not showing desperation(!).

Engineering won't touch the website because if they put the wrong information on the website (actual information), they get yelled at for violating their NDA's. Oh, and god forbid they use a more general term instead of some "industry accepted" marketing terminology. That comes back like a homing missile.

Upper level management gets the website they deserve because most of them have attention spans of a hummingbird and are very, very sensitive to negative feedback. A page not displaying properly or any message saying "can't do that" (from either a living being or silicon) would set them off into a fiery rage. It's hard getting details out of them to fill a website because they only know the high-level information about the company (company name and building location(s), what the building looks like on the outside, market cap, countries they sell to, contact info of minions, and customers that will offer testimonials). I personally believe the story a corporate website tells (over 50 employees) indicates how knowledgeable the executives are about the operations of that company.

General office labor can be trained to be in the middle of marketing/management and the entity controlling the website. Hilarity ensues about compressing files, missing attachments, and "insert text here's" making it onto the live websites. More hilarity ensures about keeping older versions of pages on the webserver "just in case", and the web crawlers still accessing them, and the "WHY IS YAHOO STILL SENDING ME TO THE OLD PAGE!!! FIX THAT!" and the responses of "I promise you I changed the website, see as I click through these pages it's changed?" and the inevitable "must be YAHOO's FAULT GODDAMMIT!".

Nonskilled or assembly labor obviously can't touch the website. They don't have any sort of information to even access the website, nor would they ever be given it because they're supposed to be stupid (harsh but true, "open door policy" is just an extension of the echo chamber, feedback bounces around inside the otherwise closed off office and goes nowhere). In the case of assembly labor, they stand behind their "just doing what I'm told" mentality and would rather push a broom around than stick their neck out (because of herd mentality or because they also have been burned in the past).

Salespeople value people over technology (to spin it positively). If the website isn't working correctly or doesn't offer the information needed, they'll just offer another method after initial contact. Even if it means having to have direct face to face contact they'll do that. They don't let technology get in the way, but they also don't fix broken things, merely "find a way around the problem."

Accounting, inside sales, legal, logistics, etc. have no use for the website. I think they stride around content that their company can check the checkbox for "has a website" and that's as deep as it goes.

[Jedi QuestMaster]

You're telling me!

I went & checked Sunsoft's site to see what they were up to:

http://www.sunsoftgames.com/

Really? That's it? I mean I'm pleased to know they still exist now days. At least I think they still exist. But that 'debrief' isn't really a debrief.

And to think! It's almost as bad as my little prototype website (which is a spinoff of Sunsoft)!

[tepples]

The purpose for having a web site is to Market the products. Perhaps the right solution is for someone in Marketing and someone in Engineering to cooperate on building the site. The Marketing person contributes the creative, and the Engineering person contributes the infrastructure.

[whicker]

The purpose for having a web site is to Market the products. Perhaps the right solution is for someone in Marketing and someone in Engineering to cooperate on building the site. The Marketing person contributes the creative, and the Engineering person contributes the infrastructure.

no, not just marketing.
The purpose of a website is to have an interface or interaction with the company. Along with that is the expectation to get a feeling for what the company sells and what industry they produce the products they produce for. Because a visitor might be wanting to sell something or offer a service to the company instead of buy from, and thus wants to get a phone number or email address from somebody in the company, and wants to navigate the internal structure correctly. You also should not turn away qualified people that WANTED to work for your company in disgust. It's like why spend money on painting the building or lawn care?

That an engineer should be expected to pull off to the side to wear the hat of being a public face of the company is laughable (but happens every day).

other reasons people have for visiting a website:

* replacement part sales
* employment application submission
* service information (getting a technician from the company out to your site)
* self-service information (using your resources to service the product you bought yourself)
* third party salespeople (vendors) wanting to come in show or demonstrate new products to engineering, manufacturing, professional staff, or general office. you don't always know what's out there that can literally save your company.
customer issue support
* returning customers looking at new products. (customer loyalty).
* general surfing by "fans" that speak highly of your company. If you do things right, you will have fans that admire you.

and that's just the stuff I can think of in 2 minutes.

[Bregalad]

The purpose for having a web site is to Market the products.

If only they were more focusing at "raw" maketting. That would imply their website should be clear and present briefly but completely the company's products, so that it would be good maketing in the way potential customers or potential employees can have a good image of the company and it's products.
Unfortunately, not all companies follows this rule, including big ones.

I have no doubt companies have other means to find customers and employees, but still... they should at least put some serious effort on their websites. Or are they still not taking the internet seriously after 15 years of worldwide democratisation of the thing ?

[ccovell]

What really bothers me (living in Japan) are shop/company websites (that provide on-line shopping, services, banking...) that, if they have an English page (thanks!) it is always an "investor relations" page begging for foreign investment (thanks for nothing!) Try almost any Japanese company's webpage and see what you get by clicking on "English".

Train pass vending machines and ATMs are similarly infuriating.

Here are the services offered in Japanese:

money transfers, inter-account transfers, deposits, etc. (Usually even more)

Click on "English" and you get:


The menu choices are reduced (and the button placement for each service doesn't correspond to its Japanese location, so you can't memorize the Japanese menus that way either.)

[zzo38]

You're telling me!

I went & checked Sunsoft's site to see what they were up to:

http://www.sunsoftgames.com/

If you select "COMMLINK" then you can view the Japanese stuff too, they have some games in there, including what appear to be mahjong solitaire on the faces of a cube

[Jedi QuestMaster]

If you select "COMMLINK" then you can view the Japanese stuff too, they have some games in there, including what appear to be mahjong solitaire on the faces of a cube

Don't think I haven't. The Japanese website is a completely different layout.