Monday, February 4. 2008Web Site "Selling"John Linton It always surprises me how many people (customers) react so violently whenever we make a change to our web site - which we do constantly and have done ever since January 2004. I would make between 20 and 50 changes each week to the web site either adding or deleting pages or modifying the text in some ways to add clarity or to better describe some aspect of the services. Sometimes, obviously, there is a need to add a whole new section or to completely revise a current section - the latest case in point being the total re-work of the User Facilities that was executed over a five month period with a complete re-design and a lot of additional function. More recently we have completed the changes to the front page that we began over 9 months ago. While there are still some minor changes that will be made over the next 2 - 3 months the major work is now complete - apparently much to the ire of some of our more vociferous customers - mainly objecting to the use of 'flash' on a web site front page. I understand some of the more thoughtfully worded 'criticisms' which, of themselves, make perfect sense. However....... I have always taken the view that Exetel's web site is its most important 'selling tool' and as I have 100% responsibility for generating the revenue for Exetel I think I can rightly state that the usability and information layout on the Exetel web site is decided on and determined by the one person whose whole commercial personal existence is dependent on how well the web site operates. Exetel has no marketing manager, no advertising manager and no sales manager nor do we have outside creative consultants or advisers. What we do have is the tyranny of second by second reporting systems that measure every aspect of new order receipt, activation and cancellation across a range of ten services. Unlike the senior executives of, I imagine, all of our larger competitors we also have the ability, via a comprehensive web hit tracking system over 500 plus pages, to see the effect of any changes we make to the web site and whether they contribute positively, negatively or neutrally to our second by second business transactions and, also I imagine unlike the senior executives of our larger competitors, I have written every single word and 'designed' every single page layout on the Exetel web site. I doubt that it's possible to take the importance of a company web site more seriously than Exetel do; and have always done. When we make changes we track the impact of those change, irrespective of how small they are, to determine their effect and then 're-change' them if we don't get the result we expected. Our objective has always been to keep re-developing our web site until it looks and operates completely differently to the web sites of all of our larger competitors and to use whatever language and selling skills that I have developed in a life time sales career to do a much better job that the 'marketing' children (in relative terms) employed by our competitors. Whether we will succeed in that or not can't be assessed after four years and, in many respects, may never be able to be quantitively assessed in any time frame. What we can do is determine whether or not our web site brings in more business each month and whether or not the changes we make add or subtract from any upward trends. We do that every second of every day. So the 'squares design' of the front page is there for a reason as is the moving cloud design and the simplistic logo (and now the associated 'mission statement') and the finch and the Deloitte and Carbon Neutral logos. They are all part of an almost complete design intended to make it very apparent that Exetel is very, very different to the companies it competes with. Whether it does/will do that will continue to be intensely invigilated and constantly changed based on the information that is fed back - not in "omfg your web site looks like it was designed by a five year old" terms but by analysing the detail collected from the web trackers and the management reports generated every second of every day and constantly reviewed by the people responsible for making sure Exetel operates as effectively as possible. ...currently 48 months of revenue growth in succession and planning to make that 49. Trackbacks
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Hehe,
Well when I first saw the moving clouds... I though oooh pretty!, then... glad I'm not on dial-up - Exetel must have though enough visitors have ADSL now for it not to matter. Also the finch is a winner! T. Comments (2)
True but people on dial up should disable flash.
The page detects flash/no flash and sends 'no flash' to the old version of the front page (no flash implemented) What is it you like about the finch? Comments (6)
Well, it's pretty (eye candy! as they say - http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=eye+candy )... and it links to your environment page so it's more than just pretty it's informative and shows Exetel cares for more than just themselves.
Comments (2)
There are over 500,000 words on the Exetel web site.
I'm always grateful to people who point out errors. Comments (6)
The front page isn't very usable in my browser configuration of choice (firefox with flashblock):
http://img.takm.com/Exetel-flashblock.jpg Note the cpu usage in that instance, and then once I have unblocked flash for this page: http://img.takm.com/Exetel-flash.jpg That's not very green It makes my cpu fan run even faster than the stupid corporate screen saver that's part of my desktop soe at the site I am working at (which I disabled as well because the animation is distracting). Note that the "Non-Flash or Linux users, please double click here" message only appears once I unblock the flash (can't see that in my images because of the task manager). It would be better to move it out of the object so it always appears. And why are you discriminating against linux users (who may have flash capability or be using windows at the time . "Double click"? Comment (1)
I am not worried about the clouds but the poor technical performance of a
web site annoys many people and was probably a provocation in this case. On my linux, firefox 2.0.0.11, Adobe flash 9.0.48 browser there are still problems. The front page re-direction should be on the basis of operating system as well as flash disabled, the OS identifiable from the browser user agent string. There are problems with many other pages because the 'Specials' flash display prevents access to the left most drop down menu, ('residential') in most cases. On a lower technical level there are further problems, using the validation service at http://validator.w3.org/ the present front page returns 8 errors and the 'residential' page returns 40 errors, I will leave you to explore the rest. Designing reliable and compatible web pages need not cramp your artistic style, get a few hints from here http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/ Regards C Bumkin Comments (2)
Thank you for taking the time to list the specific problems you found.
If you check the latest revision you will, hopefully, find that your major issues have been addressed. While validator is useful have you seen how many 'errors' it brings up if you use the Google front page (or almost any other of the most popular pages on the web)? The "double click..." has been removed with the addition of code to auto detect flash/no flash enabled. Let me know what you think if you get around to it. Comments (6)
Still says 'double click'.
As much as I do love the page with the flash, I can open that page and watch CPU usage jump to 100% constantly, change tabs and it drops down, return to the Exetel tab and it goes straight back to 100%. So that isn't good. Comments (2)
JL wrote> While validator is useful ....
While most of the errors are bureaucratic from DTD mismatch there are still a disappointing number of outright syntax errors. Using the residential page there are minor errors like ...title=""Naked" ADSL2">"Naked" ADSL2 should read ..title=""Naked" ADSL2">"Naked" ADSL2 Also there seem to be a number of unclosed or incorrectly closed tags. This can mean the appearance depends on the unpredictable error handling of the browser. Most browsers try to render incoming data as soon as it arrives to improve the apparent speed however unclosed tags can force it to wait until the entire page has been received before rendering, slowing down the user. Professional internet suppliers should not have these errors since they are so easily detected and corrected. JL> ...major issues have been addressed. The front page has improved considerably with the login fields now operational, but still not perfect. The 'Username' field will not remember my entry and the mouse scroll wheel will not move the flash unless I point to the scroll bar. (Needed to access the bottom row of links.) (If you tried to exactly fill the browser window then you forgot that nearly all firefox (and IE7) users have tabbed browsing which makes the widow smaller and pushes the links row off the bottom of the window at my 1024x768 screen resolution) The 'specials' flash still disrupts the dropdown menus on other pages. Regards C Bumkin Comments (2)
Thank you for your continuing assistance.
The 'validator' now returns no front page errors. Making the 'cookies' work is still under investigation. I've passed your other comments to the web developer. Comments (6)
I've got to say that I love the design, it has evolved beautifully over time.
Not sure why the link on the home page says to double-click when a single click works fine to get the non-flash version. I understand the concerns about flash and CPU usage, but I often have many Firefox windows open, each with many tabs.... sometimes I get an issue with Firefox being very greedy on CPU (and memory for that matter) -- I usually fix that by restarting Firefox and it comes good. So I am not so sure it is flash related performance issues although it might be with so many sites using flash these days. I only wish I had time to make some much needed adjustments to my own website, but time is not on my side with too many higher priority jobs that need to get done. Comments (2)
Maybe I was getting ahead of the timing for the change - on my browser I need to double click.
As for CPU usage - as a user will move away from the page after a few seconds does it really matter? It doesn't seem to affect my very ordinary desk top and lap top when I go to the page. Comments (6)
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