I've been involved in a lot of debates recently around low-cost airline Mango's Web site, which, among other things, has e-mail links to addresses that bounce, has crashed at least once, and, at one point, listed the company's address as RO Tambo.
To summarise some long and pointed arguments, a company's Web site is, in this day and age, as much a part of its "face to the world" as the demeanour of the person who answers the phones, or the call centre agent who handles complaints.
Get it wrong, and consumers will doubt your ability to deliver a good service. In Mango's case, I would be wary of flying with an airline which cannot even get its own address right. It makes me wonder what else it has neglected to do...
This little point was further driven home this week when, all a-flurry, a bunch of us tried to enter the Siemens Profile Awards. These awards recognise science and technology journalism and are handed out on an annual basis to the justly deserving. Justly deserving of the frustration of trying to get an entry submitted, in this case.
It's fantastic to use all that new and funky technology which the Internet enables, but in this case, it is totally redundant.
Samantha Perry, features editor, ITWeb
The designers of the site have seen fit to allow journalists to upload entries, be they jpeg, movie, audio or PDF files. But, even if you upload your entry, unless it is exclusively published online, you have to deliver a physical copy to the PR agency handling the awards. This makes me wonder why we should bother going to the trouble of uploading. It's fantastic to use all that new and funky technology which the Internet enables, but in this case, it is totally redundant.
Then, after realising that we would have to submit physical copies, we tried to find the entry form, and couldn't. We then tried to call the PR agency - and couldn't. Said agency hadn't bothered to update its telephone number, or physical address on the Web site.
After getting the company's new number from a friendly body who answered the old number, I called to try track down the entry form. "But you've already uploaded two entries," said the young woman who tried to assist me. "Yes," I replied, "but I need to send you physical copies and I can hardly send them unannounced and unaccompanied can I?" She's e-mailing it to me, because she can't find it on the Web site either.
And speaking of which, I'd be highly entertained to find out how many journalists are going to be arriving at the company's old offices today, ready and willing to enter the awards, only to discover the PR agency has moved...
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