[LINK] More Bad Web design

[richard@auscoms.com.au]

Phenomenal Success?

Well. It's not on the Neilsen rating lists out this week.

I am not a first time user. As I mentioned, with two kids one of my regular
school holiday surfs is in response to my wife's telephone call -- "What time is
Dinosaur in the city?" 

Now. The site generates eyeballs, you claim. Well: I'd want the numbers filtered
by a professional. Every page is dozens of elements. Just to search a single
movie is a dozen or so clicks across pages which contain lots of elements to
generate lots of hits - if you're not scrupulous about how you report your hits.

So I just tried it again, and discover that I've been kind to the site. It's
just been redesigned. Now you can't print movie details from the session times
pop-up at all (well, no more colour problems I guess). You can only print from
"my movies" which you can only use with cookies enabled -- except that it didn't
even work when I switched cookies on.

This is close to the worst case of an insurrection of design over function that
I've seen this year. 

Richard Chirgwin






____________________Reply Separator____________________
Subject:    Re: [LINK] More Bad Web design
Author: "Garry Brennan" <gbrennan@ew.aone.net.au>
Date:       16/06/00 7:15

on 15/6/00 12:19 AM, Adam Todd at at@ah.net wrote:

> Speaking of which, it's now easier and faster to call Greater Union on
> their 13 number (costing them real revenue) than to use their web site to
> find out what movies are on at your local cinema.
> 
> I've already tested this site with Tony Barry and he gave up really
> fast!  At least now the links are dark purple on almost black background
> like they were in the previous version!
> 
> So the challenge is out there.
> 
> Visit http://www.greaterunion.com.au
> 
Actually, you have raised an interesting point . . . how come a site, which
the web design puritans loathe, gets to be so phenomenally successful?

As I work in the film and TV sector, I have watched the evolution of this
site closely since its management was taken over from Spike by Selenium
Interactive.

There can be few sites in the country that have grown as fast and
consistently as this one -- the numbers that it is doing is amazing,
especially when you take into consideration the size of the Australian
population.

As some of you have may have observed there have been occasions recently
when its has bumped into the ceiling of bandwith and hardware constraints
and slowed somewhat -- such has been the (unexpected) growth.

Keep in mind that this is a site which most users visit on a regular basis,
and they can find their way around it remarkably quickly -- unlike the first
time visitres from this list, apparently.

Whether we like it or not, the users are voting with their eyeballs . . .
and Greater Union loves that.

I think we have to admit that the site is a big success.

r,

gbrennan