Website Watch

New City of Port Phillip council Website - a step backward ?

As a resident of the Port Phillip area and an Internet professional, I must express my disatisfaction in the new look City of Port Phillip council website (www.portphillip.vic.gov.au).

Visiting for the first time last week after being told of the recent redesign, I was initially excited, but a couple of clicks quickly turned to confusion and disappointment.  With a newly elected council I had expected better.

For starters, I use this website frequently and I was a fan of the old site.  Sure it was tiny on my larger screen, but that was a design flaw which could have been fairly easily fixed without a massive overhaul.  The services form used to be good.  It kind of fell off the rails and the "e-services" system became too complex a year ago and as a result, where once my queries were answered promptly, several of them were incorrectly redirected or not answered at all.  But overall the old website was traditional and easy to navigate and had a visual connection to the identity of the area.

The new site was released incredibly buggy, with forms not working, exposed code, littered with lorem ipsum placeholder design text and broken links.  All of which were very frustrating for users like myself and many of these problems remain unfixed for weeks after launch.  In fact I attempted to email the council through the site, but it just threw a nasty error which is really poor accessibility for a government site. 



Now lets look at the problems of the new site (pictured above) ...


Continue reading New City of Port Phillip council Website - a step backward ?

Comments (4)

New Whitehouse Website Looks the Goods

I usually only comment on Australian websites, however I stumbled across a new look White House website recently and was very impressed by the latest incarnation of the White House website.  I was pleasantly suprised by its, well - white - look and that it shows off almost every latest Web2.0 trick in the book.

With the change of US presidency, a White House website (www.whitehouse.gov) was launched a few months ago sporting a clean look (below).



The previous website was a fairly staid and conservative blue affair.  It had the cliched podcasts and RSS feeds as well as a rich media interface (videos and photos) that were fashionable about a year ago.

So here's my impression of the new site ...


Continue reading New Whitehouse Website Looks the Goods

Comments (0)

Take your website back AFL, says MLB

Sometimes it takes an outsider to tell a company the bleedingly obvious, what I've been saying for years. 

The Australian Football League (AFL) should stop outsourcing its website, afl.com.au, and the official websites of its member clubs to Telstra for profit.  They should take control of it and start actually reaching out to its fans instead of selling themselves and their fans short.

That's the message that Major League Baseball is selling to the AFL.  Really a polite way of saying "AFL - your website sucks".  And they ought to know, they didn't pull 78 million fans through the gates in 2008 for no reason ....

As a marketing exercise, I personally agree with the MLB that the Telstra AFL websites are a failure.  They fail to connect with the key audiences - fans and potential fans - in any meaningful way, if anything it simply gives them a brutal old heave ho.  In truth, it would take a near miracle to repair the bad reputation of years of poor Internet service.  It is ironic that most of the people who would be the most likely to complain have already left for other sites.  Our own philosophy is to get it right the first time or fix it - quickly, and not by trial and error, the main reason is because Internet users are unforgiving and will rarely give your website a second chance after a stuff-up. 

It is a ludicrous situation that, quite frankly I am astounded could continue so far into the Internet age.
Comments (2)