Examining the failures of the web content design of many enormous consumer corporations.
When you think of the worlds most successful businesses, what names come to mind Most likely, consumer-oriented giants such as Coca-Cola, McDonalds, 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 webs existence, it is clear that the worlds 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 Microsofts purchase of Hotmail, which it used as a base for creating MSN).
Why, with few exceptions, were the worlds most successful web sites not launched by the worlds most successful corporationsMany Big Name Companies Web Sites a Vast Waste of Time for Visitors
The McDonalds 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 itwhen 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. McDonalds may be the worlds largest restaurant chain, but it didnt 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 dont offer any contentany useful information to readwhat 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 Ellisbut that essentially describes the generic look of many corporate web sites).
Of course, Flash can be used as a way to present contentwords, 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 batterieswhich 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 youre met with pictures of happy children playing with Ronald McDonald and a menu to select what country youre from. Johnsons and Johnsons web site shows a logo before automatically redirecting you to the main pagethat is if it doesnt 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 youre 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 cant 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 doesnt 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 head writer at focusing on small and medium-sized businesses and those who serve them.
MSN PPC Advertising Long-Awaited Debut AnnouncedYou probably already know that there are really only two major players in the world of PPC advertising: Overture and Google Adwords. By the end of 2005, there will likely be a third: Microsofts MSN Search.
Microsoft recently announced that it is launching its new MSN PPC advertising engine in Singapore and France by mid-late 2005. Smart marketers are probably already planning how they might justify advertising their products or services in Singapore to get a taste of the new service. The services introduction into Canada, the UK, and the US may very well come before the end of 2005.
The new MSN advertising program has been long awaited. MSN is Microsofts leading website property, and perhaps the webs most visited portal (website with both search and content such as news) after Yahoo! MSNs search engine accounts for one in five web searches, putting it in third place behind Google and Yahoo!
Search engine advertising mostly a two-player gameCurrently, MSN shows advertising that comes from Overture, the webs largest online advertising network in terms of revenue. Overture was bought by Yahoo! a number of years ago. Since Yahoo! is the direct competitor of MSN in every way, plenty of people have been wondering why MSN didnt take its advertising program in-house long ago. It seems especially strange considering that even Lycos, whose search engine now accounts for a small fraction of total web searches, has its own advertising network.
In many minds, the fact that Microsoft would go to Overture only demonstrated how excellent an online advertising program Overture was, and just how hard it really is to set one up. Before going to Overture, MSN was getting advertising from LookSmart, an advertising network that does not own any websites that compete with Microsoft properties in any big way. Even before it had lost its largest advertising outlet, LookSmart was widely seen as a subpar second-tier engine, in a category with FindWhat or even Kanoodle. The fact that LookSmart had seemingly squandered a chance to make inroads into an online advertising market dominated by two big players cast a lot of doubt on whether there would ever be a serious challenger to Google Adwords and Overture.
What Microsofts new advertising network means for the futureWill the new MSN advertising network succeed where so many have failed Or will it become a bloated, relatively uncompetitive product only supported by Microsofts vast bulk (Not that Bill Gates has ever fathered such a bastard child.)
Theres a very good reason to believe that the new advertising program bears the seeds of its own destruction, thanks to a typically Microsoftian act of overreaching and obliviousness to public opinion. That bad seed is the same bad seed that has spoiled the fruits of so many internet marketing labors: behavioral and demographic targeting, which always seems to disagree with some peoples stomachs, no matter how delicately it is arranged in the bowl. (Editors note: too extended a metaphor Well, website copywriters have egos, too, you know, just like the rest of the web dev. community. At least you didnt have to sit through five minutes of flash animation to read this.)
Next: MSN PPC Advertising to Incorporate Demographic & Behavioral Targeting: Killer App. or Achilles Heel
Microsofts press release announcing the new MSN advertising program is also worth reading if youre that into this.
Joel Walsh is the head writer at UpMarket, internet marketing services, online copywriting services, & website content provider focusing on small and medium-sized businesses and those who serve them. Website: