I think that the trend of companies and products opening websites is wonderful. I am so much more likely to look up information on the web than I am to call an 800 number or (god forbid) actually GO somewhere. I also like to shop online when I can. It fills my heart with joy when I see a TV commercial flash a web address on the screen.
But then there are some things that just confuse me. Sometimes I think that it’s going too far, or in a bizarre direction. For example, today. I bought some hummus from the grocery store. I can easily picture a hummus website: information about what is in hummus, where it comes from, how to serve it, etc. Valuable information, to be sure.
And sure enough, there was a web url on the top of the package. In fact, there were three.
I went to the first site, http://www.twosheiks.com/ and sure enough, there was information about the ingredients, some recipes, etc. There was a page with “The Hummus Story” which told the history of hummus from Plato and Socrates in 400 BC to the present, with the Tribe of Two Sheiks brand hummus in my grocer’s refrigerated aisle. There was a contest to win a Tribe of Two Sheiks hummus T-shirt, with the somewhat baffling chore: “To qualify for a free t-shirt please tell us your story about Tribe of Two Sheiks hummus”... Even so, an informational and valuable site.
Then I went to the second url that was given, http://www.ritefoods.com/ which just took me to the same website as before! Ok, I can understand having multiple domains point to the same site, but why list them both on your product packaging? The only interesting moment was when I first went to the site, I mistyped it as “tirefoods” and got nowhere, for obvious reasons.
The third site listed, http://www.oceanbeauty.com/, took me to Ocean Beauty Seafoods, Inc which had a grotesque photo of a beach littered with fish carcasses as its opening page graphic. Buried in the fancy javascript menu (which crashed Netscape twice, forcing me to launch MSIE) under “Brands” I found Tribe of Two Sheiks, which I clicked and got a two paragraph blurb and a picture, with a link back to the previously mentioned and reduntantly listed site.
Ok, they are hip and with it in having a website, but geez, let’s get a handle on this! If I put out a product I’d probably put http://www.opalcat.com/ on it, but I wouldn’t ALSO put http://fathom.org/opalcat, nor would I add the url of every site that mentions me!
Now another way some websites are just out of control is just being too diverse. Not to say that this isn’t valuable in some way, but if you’re a company for one thing, try to at least relate to that thing on your site. An example of a site gone too far is http://www.pepsiworld.com/, the Pepsi site. Music, games, movie trailers, jukebox, downloads, join (JOIN??) etc. Where is the soda? I didn’t see any mention of it anywhere.
Another trend I’ve seen is search engines. I remember when a search engine fit in one browser window without scrolling. It had a box to type your search into, a button, and a handful of links to things like “search tips” and “add your site”. Now, however, search engines have a TINY search box, to make room for all the news, current events, product endorsements, free mail services, “communities”, chat, message boards, auctions, tv listings, movie listings, weather, and anything else they can jam onto the screen. It’s unreal!
Or maybe I’m just over reacting.
— 04:18:31 AM
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