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Are Web Designers REALLY This DUMB? (What Happened to Website Functionality?)
I put my website back together. I was ready to go back to work. Unfortunately, I do not have the images I need for it. So it looks kinda unfinished.
Understand. When you offer certain types of services, it is HARD HARD HARD to find “speaking” images. When you offer training, it is nearly impossible to find anything that conveys the process of learning or teaching. So the lack of images is not incompetency on my part, and I cannot just go get them at BigStockPhoto either. They don’t HAVE them.
I did what all good business people do. I went to see what the competition had, to see if I might be able to fake it like they do!
Their sites are worse than mine!
Oh, they HAVE images. Not good ones, but they HAVE them. They just have BIG images.
In fact, that is ALL they have!
They are VERY contemporary. And really STOOOPID.
The prevalent design seems to be totally dysfunctional.
One big image.
Three words.
One button.
For some, that is ALL THEY HAVE.
Perhaps, in a few, some indecipherably small menu links across the top. Not more than 5. Filled with teeny tiny text that blurs together it is so small. I don’t have the best eyesight right now (stopped wearing glasses when my eyesight was worse WITH them than without), and it wasn’t that! NOBODY could read them!
The one big image does not tell me what they do.
The three words tell me what they want me to want from them. But not NEARLY enough to tell me whether they HAVE what I want.
The one button gives me TWO choices only. One is to “START HERE”. The other is to LEAVE.
Why do I want to START HERE?
Start WHAT?
You have not let me get READY to START HERE. I am not ready to start something I have not CHOSEN to do with YOU. And you have not LET me investigate. You have, in fact, SHUT DOWN every opportunity to investigate!
So I click START HERE. I have no other choice if I want to know whether I can see WHAT THEY OFFER.
I then am presented with another ACT OR LEAVE choice. Not a good idea when you just met someone!
The page shows a SIGNUP FORM.
I don’t even know if I WANT what you offer, and I have to SIGN UP in order to find out if you offer something I even want to INVESTIGATE.
I’m in INVESTIGATIVE MODE, and you force me to COMMIT!
I don’t know WHAT YOU WANT ME TO COMMIT TO! Or what it will COST me!
So I exercise the only other option they give me.
I leave.
If I am not going to sign up with a store just to see whether I MIGHT want to buy from them, I am not going to sign up with YOU just to see what you offer. You are just another Zulilly and I’m no sucker.
Under the teeny tiny menu links of another almost IDENTICAL site, I discover a page of product listings. Each product listing has a list of features, and a price. NO IMAGES!!!
Ok, so I don’t mind that so much, but so far they’ve not shown me ONE SINGLE EXAMPLE of the nifty thing they said they could do for me, and now they are expecting me to click the BUY button! A fairly EXPENSIVE buy button at that!
They do not let me SEE what I might be able to buy. They only offer me the choice of BUY, or go away!
I went away.
Another similar site HAS IMAGES!!! They have a Flash Rotator.
Aparently they LOVE their Flash Rotator.
They have 12 of them.
All in rows.
You cannot see all of the rows at once. There are TWO rotators PER ROW, and they scroll down, down, down.
I can see TWO ROWS at a time.
That is FOUR images that keep changing. Fairly rapidly. ALL AT ONCE!
After 10 seconds my eyeballs want to fall out of my head and keep on bouncing. Everything is moving.
It is like having to document every move of 12 toddlers. ALL AT THE SAME TIME.
It didn’t matter anyway.
EVERY SINGLE IMAGE WAS THE SAME!
They just had different pictures behind them. Other than that, they were identical. They were all just as dysfunctional as the website they were displayed on.
Honestly folks, a SINGLE ROTATOR would have done! Heck, a SINGLE IMAGE would have done, they are all the same thing!
I sighed. This stuff is just so dumb.
And I’m still stuck with a site that looks half finished.
I know just ONE THING.
I am NOT going to finish it like those websites!
It Isn’t Worth It, Google
Every time I login to my Google AdSense account, I am greeted by dire warnings that if I don’t put an ads.txt file in every one of my AdSense sites, that my earnings will be at risk.
At risk of what, Google?
Going down?
You already did that!
You already did that so hard that nobody makes more than a few dollars where they used to make a hundred. Or a thousand.
You already annihilated the income of literally millions of small business owners who partnered with you, to make YOU rich, and to make them financially stable.
They kept their part of the bargain. Why didn’t you?
I don’t see how my earnings could be more at risk than they already are! You’ll punish me whether I put the thing in or not.
And then there’s the robots.txt file that Google notoriously ignores. This tells us that if we DO put one in, and you ever give us a reason to actually want to use the thing, that you’ll ignore it also. (‘Cause the reason you give me to put one in is really silly, and a waste of my time, since if someone DOES rogue my ads, they aren’t going to be stopped by THAT, any more than YOU are stopped by a robots.txt file.)
Not worth the effort, really.
Someone suggested to me that Google may penalize my account for having written this.
Seriously?
Would I honestly NOTICE?
‘Cause Google has just about run out of leverage when it comes to withdrawing any benefit to the browser, the publisher, or the advertiser.
And we won’t even get into the two-way usage terms which WE have to abide by, but which THEY will not!
And Then I Lost My Appetite
Shared with me today:
The girl behind the counter was wearing a mask. This being a restaurant, I asked if she was sick. She said not really, but she had a runny nose, from the heat and her allergies, and her boss said she had to mask and glove up. I wondered immediately if she needed to perform surgery on my sandwich.
I told her, helpfully, “Sucks to be you!”. She sighed, and looked discouraged, and said, “Why does everybody keep saying that to me?”.
I can always find something positive in a situation, so I told her, “At least it keeps your nose from dripping in the food.” She looked up and replied, “Well, yes, but sometimes I have to lift my mask.” She turned her back to me and did just that. She lifted the mask, wiped her dripping nose with her gloved hand, and went back to the cash register with an expectant look. Surely I was ready to order NOW!
This restaurant had two cash registers, on opposite sides of the dining room, one for one popular brand, one for the other, along with two kitchens, one for each brand.
The large “Eat Safely” sign persuaded me that a psychotic was probably running this chain, because it instructed customers to maintain a 6 ft distance, wear a mask if they were sick, and to never accept food from someone who appeared sick. But this masked and gloved girl was rendered safe to serve food by a paper mask and a pair of gloves with a hole in one finger. The manager in the back is assembling food, periodically coughing, no gloves, no mask, and the occasional scratch to his nose. He also had to stop periodically to pull his pants up in back, with the hand he was using to assemble the food. I am a practicing physician, and I am not afraid of the common cold, no matter how many lies some of my colleagues tell about it to milk the government cash cow, but this was beyond believable in an eating establishment.
I looked hard at her and said, “I’ll just order from the other side.” I left the counter, and walked to the other order counter in the nearly deserted restaurant. She left her cash register, and walked around behind and came over to the cash register I now stood in front of. “Can I help you?” she asked, just as the cook with the sagging pants walked around from the kitchen he was working in, to the other. I already knew my quest for food here was probably hopeless.
“Do you always wear a mask?” I asked. She sighed again and said, “Why do people always keep asking me that? I mean, like, aren’t you afraid you’ll get sick?”.
“Yes. I think I really am.” I said, and turned and left the restaurant, just as she said to the man behind me, “YES! I always wear a mask!”, and he replied, “Sucks to be you!”.
We are still looking for a place, two hours later, who will just SERVE US A MEAL, without contaminating it in the process with their novel “COVID-19 Response Policies”.
Pity the Orange and Purple
If a person is yellow
He may be a good fellow
If someone is red
They can still earn their bread
If a child is green
They may be scrubbed clean
If a friend is blue
They may still love you
If a cousin is pink
They may still learn to think
But pity the man who is orange
Or the woman who is purple
This is a joke. Some people will not get it.
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