hopeless-homepages.com

I singled out the homepage of the International Boxing Federation for scorn on Monday. It’s no wonder it’s so bad when you look at the homepage of the company that designed it for them. The words “total” and “disaster” spring to mind.

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I was still reeling from having looked at the website of the International Boxing Federation on Monday. “How can it be so bad?” I asked myself. So I took a look at the website of the company that designed it. This wasn’t hard to find out who was responsible for this shambles – this is one of the few things that the IBF website does have on its homepage.

So I went to the website of Curbon, Inc. It didn’t take long to figure out why. The Curbon site is an even bigger mess.

Let’s start off with what they do well. OK that’s enough of that.

Now, on to the stuff they need to do better:

• Their list of services includes “website design”. Based on this effort they shouldn’t. Curbon say they “. . . can build you a site (whether it be Internet or Intranet) that is intriguing, engaging, and geared toward keeping the attention of your clients to promote your business”. Yeah, right. The only reason they have my attention is - like a rabbit caught between headlights – I am frozen with shock at what’s in front of me
• Their menu is a complete mess. In fact they have two menus – with exactly the same options - running across the page as well as down the left hand side. I cannot understand why they would do this, especially when the menu itself is absolutely awful. Twice the pain.
• The only intrigue is how Curbon managed to convince anyone that they can design an effective web presence. It’s certainly not working for me. This website isn’t a great advert for their services, at least as far as it applies to effective website design

Curbon proudly display the IBF logo on its “clients” page. Perhaps if they did a better job with their client’s website they would have something to be proud of.

What do you think? Have I been unreasonable? Please take a look and decide for yourself. www.curbon.com

Given all the money that the sport of boxing generates, it’s surprising that the IBF don’t have a better homepage than they do. Whoever did this may have taken too many punches to the head, or else had their gloves on when they produced this monstrosity. Either way, this website is a unanimous loser.

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So the “biggest heavyweight fight in the UK for over a decade” was over. Two guys who both seemed afraid to throw a punch danced around each other for 12 boring rounds. Audley “A-Force” Harrison, a former Olympic gold medal winner, had clearly not learned anything from Olympic Sprinter Maurice Greene.

Greene famously said before the Athens Olympics, “It’s my gold medal, I’m just here to collect it”. Greene failed to win anything that time around. Like Greene, Harrison had boasted that he would be victorious and had simply flown in from Las Vegas to beat Danny Williams. Danny had other ideas and he won on points on a split decision.

What has this got to do with the IBF website? Well, I wondered who the current world champions were and wanted to find out. Seems a simple thing to ask. This being boxing though means you can’t have one world champion - there’s one for every day of the week. So I headed off to the websites of the organising bodies, namely the WBA, WBC, IBF and WBO (Please don’t ask me what the letters stand for, I long since stopped trying to remember).

The WBA site is bad, but at least it has some information on its homepage. No so for the IBF.

Instead it proudly tells you that you’ve arrived on the IBF homepage. That’s about it. Oh yes, there are a pair of boxing gloves, just in case you forgot that boxers wear these when they fight. And there are the letters “IBF”, which helpfully take up about 50% of the screen.

What else does the homepage give you? Nothing! Yes, there is a menu, but because the options on the menu are the same colour as the background it’s almost impossible to see.

It’s not surprising that these options are hard to see. I clicked on each of the four menu options. Two of them lead to pages that are “under construction”.

In fact, the only good thing about this website is that it does have the current rankings for all weights (unlike the WBA website). This is a disgrace. There is so much that the IBF website could give its visitors. Instead it just gave me a headache.

What do you think? Did I miss something? Or is the website as bad as I’ve said. Please tell me I’m wrong. IBF website

What do you get the man who has everything? A better website! It’s easy to see why Berkshire Hathaway shares are so valuable. They don’t spend money on their web presence. None. Nada. Zip. Warren Buffet, you have more more than you can spend so don’t tell me you can’t afford it. Fix up your homepage!

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Berkshire Hathaway may just be the best investment company on the planet. Just one share costs over $89,000. Of course, you’ll struggle to buy one, not because you can’t afford it but because so many other people are dying to get their hands on them.

So it’s a real surprise that, for all its wealth, Berkshire Hathaway haven’t invested a few minutes in thinking about how to make its homepage better. Warren Buffet, I’m not asking you to spend money on a good web designer. I’m just begging you to think about the people who visit your homepage.

Here’s why:

• Your homepage layout is dull, boring and wastes space. The layout probably hasn’t changed since in late 90s. The links are plastered down the middle of the page and, unfortunately for people with poor eyesite or with visual impairments, the text describing the links is way too small.
• The colour of the links on your homepage are the wrong colour. They are purple, the colour that most people recognise as visited links. This is a mistake, because it makes it look like the links have already been visited. Blue! Not purple. Please!
• Your homepage also helpfully advises visitors that they may need Adobe Acrobat in order to read some of the documents. May need? Almost everything I click on starts up the Adobe Acrobat reader. This is really painful. It would have been better to format the content properly so that clicking on a link didn’t start up Acrobat. Instead, how about just formatting the content so that visitors just get good old HTML web pages? Saves everyone time.

Nowadays it’s easy to get a great web presence for next to nothing. In fact, the software costs nothing. So there’s no excuse for not doing a better job than this, especially when this site itself is so simple.

What do you think? Am I being unfair? Take a look and see for yourself. www.berkshirehathaway.com

Today’s ‘Guardian’ newspaper featured an item on the poor visitor numbers on many UK government websites (”The Websites Nobody Wants“). Why am I not surprised? I spent a month reviewing local and central government websites. On the whole they are simply awful.

Just over a year ago I wanted to see how well designed government websites were. I looked the homepages of hundreds of local government and central government sites and I can say without any doubt that there are some people who need help. They need help in understanding who their websites are supposed to serve. For any that may read this here’s a clue: Your customers

My personal favourites? There were so many, but here are a few that, one year on, are still hopeless.

The Veteran’s Agency - This site is much better than it was last year. Now it only suffers from:

• A multitude of menu options (I counted 20, plus another 6 text links on the home page)
• Useless images - out of focus and distracting
• Poor positioning of text (as an example, the mission of the site is so far down the page it can’t be seen without scrolling down)

The Drinking Water Inspectorate - This site hasn’t changed its layout since I last looked at it. I can’t tell you how bad it is, you’ll just have to see it for yourself and you’ll understand.

The Export Credit Guarantee Department - Another website that has hardly changed its layout since last year. Helping customers is obviously not part of its remit. It can’t be because the hompage has:

• Far too many links and menu options
• A useless picture of a globe that (for some reason) the web designers thought would help people navigate, and
• Possibly the smallest search box I’ve ever seen. Just 5 characters wide!

The Office of HM Paymaster General - Another site that hasn’t changed in a year. It was completely hopeless then. At least it didn’t get any worse. Then again it couldn’t.

The Review of Tribunals - A microsite that should have been removed yours ago, but wasn’t. Now it just sits there, an embarrassment to everyone who helped create the site. Too harsh? Take a look and you decide.

Most businesses don’t have the sort of budgets that the UK government throws at their websites. It wouldn’t be so bad if there was any evidence that these site represented money well spent. Sorry to be negative but in the case of these five it most certainly was money down the drain.

What do you think? Take a look and tell me I’m wrong, I challenge you.

We’re kicking off by looking at a homepage that really deserves the title “Hopeless”. It’s poorly designed, badly laid out and only helps to switch customers off. These people are losing money day in, day out.

I just sat down to work this morning and in my e-mail I received yet another e-mail newsletter from someone I don’t know. This time it’s from Wellingtone, a project management consultancy based in Windsor, Berkshire, UK.

Despite my disgust at getting unsolicited mail, I decided to open it because it’s from a project management consultancy and I’m always looking for information that I can share with clients to help them in their business.

The newsletter is a disaster!

• The images don’t show up
• The text is weak
• Despite some really useful facts they don’t hit home because the writer hasn’t bothered thinking through what these facts mean to their target audience.

Now I’m interested. I wonder whether the website is as bad.

Was I right?

Oh. My. God! The website is even worse than I imagined. Which was a tough challenge because I thought the website would be very, very bad.

Where should I start? No, I won’t tell you all the problems they have, but I did make a list. It was a very long list.

There were quite a few good things to say about the company, but it doesn’t stop them from losing business. It’s likely that they have good, experienced people, a good range of training courses and they probably add value to their clients’ businesses. The trouble is people visiting their website won’t see this. All they see is a homepage that suffers from:

• Poor navigation
• Awful use of colours and shading - in one case it’s so bad that it completely obscures one of the main menu options (unbelievable, but true)
• Confused messages
• Weak text which is badly organised so becomes difficult to read.

If they looked into it a bit deeper they would see even worse, including:

• Grainy, dull photographs of two of their other consultants
• A profile of another one of their consultants with no photo, but the caption “Awaiting Photo”. How easy can this be – companies are giving away camera phones for free. Just tell the guy to take a picture and send it by text. Job done!

How much business are these people LOSING, I asked myself. I calculated that on any given day they must lose thousands. I’m not saying they don’t get business through their website but they could get much, much more.

In order for Wellingtone to win business from their newsletter and website they have to:

• Overcome people’s reluctance to even open unsolicited mail. This costs them a proportion of their potential client base. They can do this by producing an effective newsletter that only goes out to people who have expressed an interest in it.
• Persuade them to visit the website. Unlikely because the newsletter is so bad. They can overcome this by developing useful content and hosting it on their website
• Persuade those who do visit that they are worth dealing with. Chances of that? Slim. A better homepage is the perfect way to convert visitors into customers. As it stands they are disquaifiying themselves from future business.

Can Wellingtone do better? Definitely! But they probably won’t because they are probably happy with what they have. I’m sure they don’t mind losing that much business. They probably have lots so it’s not a problem.

What do you think? Take a look and tell me whether I’m being too cruel: www.wellingtone.com/