RE: UKNM: ATTENTION: New Business People

[Jamie Unwin]

While were on the subject, I was looking for a TV ariel for my dads house at the weekend, the old one has fallen down. Not having a recent copy of a Maplin's catalogue to hand. I thought I'll look on the web - big electronics company, must have a online catalogue and right I was. The thing that horrified me was that when I got there (and the home page "finally" downloaded on my 28k modem) I was presented with a 620 x 316 pixel, 148 kB jpeg image map. I couldn't even start to click anywhere (even though I could see the "Catalogue Browse" link)


After waiting for the pointless image map to download I was taken to a slightly better, although still disappointing shopping cart where I could buy what I wanted online (I didn't, I was fed up with the site by then)


What this shows, I think is what Matt, Clay and Dorian are all trying to point out, ie. Design is very nice (and I don't think we should go back to using Lynx) but function and quick access to information in areas such as this is SO much more important. The designers of this site have totally destroyed what could have been a good online ordering system. I suspect 90% of Maplins current business is Mail order, what better direction for them to move into than the web  ?


http://www.maplin.co.uk


Inter.Net http://www.inter.net.uk the designers of this site should be ashamed. Although the front page of their site informs the user "Sorry, this site requires at least Netscape v3.0 or Microsoft Internet Explorer v3.0; please upgrade" so what could you really expect ?


jamie

____________________________________________________________

Jamie Unwin :

jamie [dot] unwinguardian [dot] co [dot] uk

 :  http://www.guardian.co.uk

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