Disappointing high-profile websites: Really, we can do better
Browsing around South Africa’s corner of the web, visiting the sites of our government and more prominent companies, can be a frustrating experience.
We’re not talking about design issues either. There are basic site usability and navigation issues, as well as poorly configured web and DNS servers.
Let’s start with the most elementary of issues – getting people to your site from the browser URL bar.
Sites with bad web and DNS configurations
Try the following URLs: do.co.za, doc.gov.za, icasa.org.za, cosatu.org.za.
In fact, try any subdomain under gov.za (buanews.gov.za, tshwane.gov.za, durban.gov.za) and you’ll get variants of the good old “Server not found” error.
Most websites have adopted the default behaviour of routing to the main web page when the “www” is omitted from the URL. The South African government and other organisations seem to think that returning an error message rather than reverting to a default is the better option.
There can be much ranting about the usability of ICASA and the Department of Communication’s websites, but it’s South Africa’s biggest telcos that deserve a special mention here.
Sites for those with perseverance
Vodacom’s website woes isn’t breaking news. Subscribers have complained about the new Vodacom site since its launch in the middle of 2010, and earlier this month Vodacom confirmed that they were still sorting out problems.
Information isn’t organised logically and the menu system is cryptic. Sometimes one may have to click through multiple pages or endure long search times to find elementary information.
A notification posted on the login page of Vodacom’s site indicated that maintenance had occurred over the weekend of 26 November 2010, and further maintenance will be taking place on the evening of 29 November from 18:00 to 20 November 2010 at 06:00.
Hopefully this maintenance will sort out some of the issues.
The MTN and MTN SP sites are quite a bit better than Vodacom’s website – when they are up. MTN SP’s “upgrades search” is a great feature, but it’s a bit curious that it seems to run off a different set of data than the handset/device search.
Unfortunately none of the website features in the world are worth much when the website is down. MTN seems to have improved their website uptime in recent times, however. Maybe it has something to do with the huge Flash banner of the FIFA leopard (or whatever that creature was) being removed.
Telkom’s website rarely has downtime problems, but it can be a frightening process for a new user to find what they’re looking for.
Do you want to know what you’ll pay for a particular service? No problem, there’s a link to a price list right at the top of the site.
Unfortunately the pricing is presented in such a contrived fashion it requires a tertiary education focused on the telecommunication sector to understand what’s going on. Pricing and service information is available on other pages, but it isn’t particularly easy to access.
One would think that companies that are in the business of telecommunications would take better care of their online presence.
Creating good looking sites that make important information easy to access is a tricky thing, but SA companies should really be getting the basics right.
Poor South African websites << Discuss your pick of the worst local sites in the forum
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