Company Website Frustration
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Douglas Troy wrote: No, I can't do that, I'd ruin all the nice cubicals down there. And presumably all of that state of the art computer equipment used for little more than e-mail, word and powerpoint presentations... :rolleyes: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Shaun Austin: .NET Specialist. Spreading the word of .NET to the world... well the UK... well my tiny corner of it!! :-D
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You're preaching to the choir. :-D Our company website (although it's 100x better than it used to be) is hopelessly crappy. Check it out at ****Removed due to lack of competition**** Notice the blocky graphics? Notice the incoherent navigation? Notice the complete lack of product or software support? I could go on and on... X| Let's have a contest! Whose company has the worst website! Rate this post to give your opinion of "our" website. 5 = Great site! 3 = Average. 1 = "My eyes are bleeding!" <EDIT> So far 17 fine folks have rated "our" site for an average of 1.2. A score which is very generous in my humble opinion ;P , but this is supposed to be a contest as well! I've seen thousands of awful sites over the years, as bad as "ours" is, it doesn't stand alone. I'm sure "yours" aren't perfect either. Let's see a few more! </EDIT> <EDIT2> Ya bunch of weasels! :mad: Not one of you had the cajones to offer your sucky company web site in competition. I should have guessed. :rolleyes: :laugh: </EDIT2> All I've ever wanted was an honest week's pay for an honest day's work.
I thought the intro was Etch-A-Sketch:~ I am baffled by the way the buttons spawn another, smaller window with the same thing, with no maximize button.:confused: I guess the page border makes some sense, dealing with construction. I try to think but nothing happens.
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You're preaching to the choir. :-D Our company website (although it's 100x better than it used to be) is hopelessly crappy. Check it out at ****Removed due to lack of competition**** Notice the blocky graphics? Notice the incoherent navigation? Notice the complete lack of product or software support? I could go on and on... X| Let's have a contest! Whose company has the worst website! Rate this post to give your opinion of "our" website. 5 = Great site! 3 = Average. 1 = "My eyes are bleeding!" <EDIT> So far 17 fine folks have rated "our" site for an average of 1.2. A score which is very generous in my humble opinion ;P , but this is supposed to be a contest as well! I've seen thousands of awful sites over the years, as bad as "ours" is, it doesn't stand alone. I'm sure "yours" aren't perfect either. Let's see a few more! </EDIT> <EDIT2> Ya bunch of weasels! :mad: Not one of you had the cajones to offer your sucky company web site in competition. I should have guessed. :rolleyes: :laugh: </EDIT2> All I've ever wanted was an honest week's pay for an honest day's work.
Mike, I feel your pain, although our site's "design" is better than what you're having to suffer with ... *ACK* I would just be happy if they would update ours, like once every 6 months would be good. As for a score on your site ... Emmm ... I'd have to say somewhere between 1 and 3 ... 2 - If I squint with one eye and close the other, it's kinda tolerable. D.
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I thought the intro was Etch-A-Sketch:~ I am baffled by the way the buttons spawn another, smaller window with the same thing, with no maximize button.:confused: I guess the page border makes some sense, dealing with construction. I try to think but nothing happens.
Richard Jones wrote: I am baffled by the way the buttons spawn another, smaller window with the same thing, with no maximize button. Yeah, I pointed that out about 10 seconds after the marketing weasels published it. It's been over 6 months and they still don't get it. :doh: All I've ever wanted was an honest week's pay for an honest day's work.
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You're preaching to the choir. :-D Our company website (although it's 100x better than it used to be) is hopelessly crappy. Check it out at ****Removed due to lack of competition**** Notice the blocky graphics? Notice the incoherent navigation? Notice the complete lack of product or software support? I could go on and on... X| Let's have a contest! Whose company has the worst website! Rate this post to give your opinion of "our" website. 5 = Great site! 3 = Average. 1 = "My eyes are bleeding!" <EDIT> So far 17 fine folks have rated "our" site for an average of 1.2. A score which is very generous in my humble opinion ;P , but this is supposed to be a contest as well! I've seen thousands of awful sites over the years, as bad as "ours" is, it doesn't stand alone. I'm sure "yours" aren't perfect either. Let's see a few more! </EDIT> <EDIT2> Ya bunch of weasels! :mad: Not one of you had the cajones to offer your sucky company web site in competition. I should have guessed. :rolleyes: :laugh: </EDIT2> All I've ever wanted was an honest week's pay for an honest day's work.
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I'm part of a development team that works very hard (60 - 80 hours/week) to produce solid, reliable software products for our clients. Despite all our hard work and effort, the portion of our company's website that has information for our product is never updated. The cause: our Marketing department, for whatever reason, is the group that "maintains" this site. I feel strongly that this is a direct reflection on our group, and have voiced my opinion as such ... several times ... I've been told that it's being "taken care of", but we're about to release a new version of our software, and the the site hasn't even been updated to reflect our LAST release!?! Now, I would be worried if I knew our group wasn't pulling in sales, but the product we develop is one of the company's top sellers, and our Tablet PC product scored more sales than any other product in the last 7 years! So it's not our product, it's not our team. I was wondering how many other developers out there suffer the same type of issues, where the company's website is maintained by another group, and that group doesn't have the "drive and focus", perhaps, that you do ... so the site never reflects what you've done. I'm to the point where I'm wondering if I'm the only person that gives two &#!^$ about what our clients think of us. :mad: Are there solutions to this? Other then my going down to the marketing department with a flame thrower I mean ... although ... o.k., No, I can't do that, I'd ruin all the nice cubicals down there. :rolleyes: D.
I'd copy and paste all the responses you get here into a memo and pass it on to whoever has influence over Marketing. In my experience, Marketing folks really do try hard, and truly believe that they are the most important part of the company's success. They can't help being clueless - it's in their genes. But sometimes they can be led/intimidated into productive avenues. "Your village called -
They're missing their idiot." -
Mike, I feel your pain, although our site's "design" is better than what you're having to suffer with ... *ACK* I would just be happy if they would update ours, like once every 6 months would be good. As for a score on your site ... Emmm ... I'd have to say somewhere between 1 and 3 ... 2 - If I squint with one eye and close the other, it's kinda tolerable. D.
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The text links at the bottom, which are good to have, are almost unreadable. Red on Black does not show well. More perverse, though is that the clickable buttons, do a retrieval of a .gif during the mouse over. When I watched the opening flash, I was anticipating two gorillas to appear with bananas in their hands and that I was going to control how they throw them. Anyone remember the QBasic game that came with DOS 6? My youngest daughter was three at the time and she and I use to play that game for hours :) Chris Meech It's much easier to get rich telling people what they want to hear. Chistopher Duncan But for a man, barbecuing eggplant and portobello mushrooms is a sure way to have people question your sexual orientation. Kuro5hin I can't help getting older, but I refuse to grow up. Roger Wright
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I'm part of a development team that works very hard (60 - 80 hours/week) to produce solid, reliable software products for our clients. Despite all our hard work and effort, the portion of our company's website that has information for our product is never updated. The cause: our Marketing department, for whatever reason, is the group that "maintains" this site. I feel strongly that this is a direct reflection on our group, and have voiced my opinion as such ... several times ... I've been told that it's being "taken care of", but we're about to release a new version of our software, and the the site hasn't even been updated to reflect our LAST release!?! Now, I would be worried if I knew our group wasn't pulling in sales, but the product we develop is one of the company's top sellers, and our Tablet PC product scored more sales than any other product in the last 7 years! So it's not our product, it's not our team. I was wondering how many other developers out there suffer the same type of issues, where the company's website is maintained by another group, and that group doesn't have the "drive and focus", perhaps, that you do ... so the site never reflects what you've done. I'm to the point where I'm wondering if I'm the only person that gives two &#!^$ about what our clients think of us. :mad: Are there solutions to this? Other then my going down to the marketing department with a flame thrower I mean ... although ... o.k., No, I can't do that, I'd ruin all the nice cubicals down there. :rolleyes: D.
I thought the only benefit to programming in a cubicle as a dead-eyed corporate lackey was so you didn't have to worry about stuff like that? ;P If you care so much about the company's image, you should be in business for yourself...no?
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I support two teams: the Canucks and whoever is playing the Leafs! -
I'd copy and paste all the responses you get here into a memo and pass it on to whoever has influence over Marketing. In my experience, Marketing folks really do try hard, and truly believe that they are the most important part of the company's success. They can't help being clueless - it's in their genes. But sometimes they can be led/intimidated into productive avenues. "Your village called -
They're missing their idiot."I bet that the webmaster is already reading this based on wondering why the site has suddenly slowed to a crawl and there are thousands of hits from some "codeproject" site he's never heard of.:-D
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I support two teams: the Canucks and whoever is playing the Leafs! -
I'm part of a development team that works very hard (60 - 80 hours/week) to produce solid, reliable software products for our clients. Despite all our hard work and effort, the portion of our company's website that has information for our product is never updated. The cause: our Marketing department, for whatever reason, is the group that "maintains" this site. I feel strongly that this is a direct reflection on our group, and have voiced my opinion as such ... several times ... I've been told that it's being "taken care of", but we're about to release a new version of our software, and the the site hasn't even been updated to reflect our LAST release!?! Now, I would be worried if I knew our group wasn't pulling in sales, but the product we develop is one of the company's top sellers, and our Tablet PC product scored more sales than any other product in the last 7 years! So it's not our product, it's not our team. I was wondering how many other developers out there suffer the same type of issues, where the company's website is maintained by another group, and that group doesn't have the "drive and focus", perhaps, that you do ... so the site never reflects what you've done. I'm to the point where I'm wondering if I'm the only person that gives two &#!^$ about what our clients think of us. :mad: Are there solutions to this? Other then my going down to the marketing department with a flame thrower I mean ... although ... o.k., No, I can't do that, I'd ruin all the nice cubicals down there. :rolleyes: D.
Sounds like this case::laugh: http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20031012.html[^] I try to think but nothing happens.
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I thought the only benefit to programming in a cubicle as a dead-eyed corporate lackey was so you didn't have to worry about stuff like that? ;P If you care so much about the company's image, you should be in business for yourself...no?
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I support two teams: the Canucks and whoever is playing the Leafs!Douglas, sack up and go into business yourself. Why would you bust your hump 60/80 hours a week for a presumably, a salaried position? You obviously know how to produce a quality product and are concerned about its presentation/marketing, so quit working working your a$$ off for someone else, and get compensated appropriately for a job well done. Jim QTExtender - The OFFICIAL addon for QuoteTracker.
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I bet that the webmaster is already reading this based on wondering why the site has suddenly slowed to a crawl and there are thousands of hits from some "codeproject" site he's never heard of.:-D
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I support two teams: the Canucks and whoever is playing the Leafs!John Cardinal wrote: I bet that the webmaster is already reading this If Marketing is in charge of the website, it's unlikely that anyone has noticed the traffic. Most of that sort have trouble figuring out email and playing solitaire. More likely some poor sap in IT is stuck with the duty, backtracing the hits recorded in the log, reading these posts, and laughing his arse off. "Your village called -
They're missing their idiot." -
Douglas, sack up and go into business yourself. Why would you bust your hump 60/80 hours a week for a presumably, a salaried position? You obviously know how to produce a quality product and are concerned about its presentation/marketing, so quit working working your a$$ off for someone else, and get compensated appropriately for a job well done. Jim QTExtender - The OFFICIAL addon for QuoteTracker.
My thoughts exactly, but I already do that you should tell Douglas, not me! ;P
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I support two teams: the Canucks and whoever is playing the Leafs! -
I'm part of a development team that works very hard (60 - 80 hours/week) to produce solid, reliable software products for our clients. Despite all our hard work and effort, the portion of our company's website that has information for our product is never updated. The cause: our Marketing department, for whatever reason, is the group that "maintains" this site. I feel strongly that this is a direct reflection on our group, and have voiced my opinion as such ... several times ... I've been told that it's being "taken care of", but we're about to release a new version of our software, and the the site hasn't even been updated to reflect our LAST release!?! Now, I would be worried if I knew our group wasn't pulling in sales, but the product we develop is one of the company's top sellers, and our Tablet PC product scored more sales than any other product in the last 7 years! So it's not our product, it's not our team. I was wondering how many other developers out there suffer the same type of issues, where the company's website is maintained by another group, and that group doesn't have the "drive and focus", perhaps, that you do ... so the site never reflects what you've done. I'm to the point where I'm wondering if I'm the only person that gives two &#!^$ about what our clients think of us. :mad: Are there solutions to this? Other then my going down to the marketing department with a flame thrower I mean ... although ... o.k., No, I can't do that, I'd ruin all the nice cubicals down there. :rolleyes: D.
Douglas Troy wrote: Are there solutions to this? Like so many other things in the business world, it all comes down to people, and knowing how to deal with them. In this particular case, you have 2 or perhaps 3 individual tribes in the mix: your group, the marketing group, and (perhaps) the management group who could exercise authority over the marketing group. Without going into long and involved explanations, the fundamental solution to this problem involves finding the key people in those other 2 tribes who have the authority to make these changes a reality. You must then approach them based not on what you want (nobody cares about your> agenda, only their own), but on what's in it for them if they do as you request. The combination of finding people with authority, making your agenda appealing to them personally, and the basic people skills necessary to have these conversations will take you a long way towards the solution you desire. Don't fall into the trap of appealing based on the "good of the company", "what's the right thing to do", etc. Nobody cares. Make it personally appealing to the individuals you speak to, i.e. focus on what they get out of it individually if they support you. If you can't answer that last question, then why should they support you? Chistopher Duncan The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World Unite the Tribes: Ending Turf Wars for Career and Business Success RSS feed - News & notifications
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You're preaching to the choir. :-D Our company website (although it's 100x better than it used to be) is hopelessly crappy. Check it out at ****Removed due to lack of competition**** Notice the blocky graphics? Notice the incoherent navigation? Notice the complete lack of product or software support? I could go on and on... X| Let's have a contest! Whose company has the worst website! Rate this post to give your opinion of "our" website. 5 = Great site! 3 = Average. 1 = "My eyes are bleeding!" <EDIT> So far 17 fine folks have rated "our" site for an average of 1.2. A score which is very generous in my humble opinion ;P , but this is supposed to be a contest as well! I've seen thousands of awful sites over the years, as bad as "ours" is, it doesn't stand alone. I'm sure "yours" aren't perfect either. Let's see a few more! </EDIT> <EDIT2> Ya bunch of weasels! :mad: Not one of you had the cajones to offer your sucky company web site in competition. I should have guessed. :rolleyes: :laugh: </EDIT2> All I've ever wanted was an honest week's pay for an honest day's work.
Thats pretty bad.
"Je pense, donc je mange." - Rene Descartes 1689 - Just before his mother put his tea on the table. Shameless Plug - Distributed Database Transactions in .NET using COM+
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Douglas, sack up and go into business yourself. Why would you bust your hump 60/80 hours a week for a presumably, a salaried position? You obviously know how to produce a quality product and are concerned about its presentation/marketing, so quit working working your a$$ off for someone else, and get compensated appropriately for a job well done. Jim QTExtender - The OFFICIAL addon for QuoteTracker.
Believe me, these are generally the kinds of reasons that drive people, like myself, to do just that ... I can neither confirm nor deny I am making such efforts. There comes a point in a company's "life cycle", where it becomes so large that the person, or persons, that started the organization, caring or not, can no longer manage it's every day functions. At that point, they must make a decision as to what is "important" and what they must hand over to others, in hopes that they too will make every effort to ensure a job well done. Eventually, person's that are uncaring will get into the corporate structure, and breed, and unless people like myself don't "make a stand", these people will continue to "drive" the company in very bad directions; that is why I am still here. But I guess there must come a time when even I must make the decision as to how much influence I have over the engine that makes the company "go". I wish more people would take pride in their work instead of taking the "It's not MY job" attitude that most take. If more people cared, and less took the path of "least resistance", then we could all profit from a job well done. D.
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Douglas Troy wrote: Are there solutions to this? Like so many other things in the business world, it all comes down to people, and knowing how to deal with them. In this particular case, you have 2 or perhaps 3 individual tribes in the mix: your group, the marketing group, and (perhaps) the management group who could exercise authority over the marketing group. Without going into long and involved explanations, the fundamental solution to this problem involves finding the key people in those other 2 tribes who have the authority to make these changes a reality. You must then approach them based not on what you want (nobody cares about your> agenda, only their own), but on what's in it for them if they do as you request. The combination of finding people with authority, making your agenda appealing to them personally, and the basic people skills necessary to have these conversations will take you a long way towards the solution you desire. Don't fall into the trap of appealing based on the "good of the company", "what's the right thing to do", etc. Nobody cares. Make it personally appealing to the individuals you speak to, i.e. focus on what they get out of it individually if they support you. If you can't answer that last question, then why should they support you? Chistopher Duncan The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World Unite the Tribes: Ending Turf Wars for Career and Business Success RSS feed - News & notifications
Chris, I have read several of your 'on-line' books and agree with many of your concepts and ideas. My issues are that I am trapped by layers of Mgt., and our marketing group's desire to generally do nothing ... I have begun to push harder on these issues with others that have more power in the corporate structure, to "get them on board"; as you have mentioned here. I guess I find the answer to the last question, Christopher Duncan wrote: what they get out of it individually if they support you obvious, and I think these individuals in the organzation should as well ... what they "get out of it" is a better company, with more clients, a higher profit, which means a better pay scale and an overall increase in job security and happeiness. I guess I'm just a rebel in this thought process, however ... D.
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I'm part of a development team that works very hard (60 - 80 hours/week) to produce solid, reliable software products for our clients. Despite all our hard work and effort, the portion of our company's website that has information for our product is never updated. The cause: our Marketing department, for whatever reason, is the group that "maintains" this site. I feel strongly that this is a direct reflection on our group, and have voiced my opinion as such ... several times ... I've been told that it's being "taken care of", but we're about to release a new version of our software, and the the site hasn't even been updated to reflect our LAST release!?! Now, I would be worried if I knew our group wasn't pulling in sales, but the product we develop is one of the company's top sellers, and our Tablet PC product scored more sales than any other product in the last 7 years! So it's not our product, it's not our team. I was wondering how many other developers out there suffer the same type of issues, where the company's website is maintained by another group, and that group doesn't have the "drive and focus", perhaps, that you do ... so the site never reflects what you've done. I'm to the point where I'm wondering if I'm the only person that gives two &#!^$ about what our clients think of us. :mad: Are there solutions to this? Other then my going down to the marketing department with a flame thrower I mean ... although ... o.k., No, I can't do that, I'd ruin all the nice cubicals down there. :rolleyes: D.
What kind of products are these? regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass South Africa Anna-Jayne Metcalfe wrote: "Cynicism has it's place in life - but it should be kept well away from your inner self." Crikey! ain't life grand?
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What kind of products are these? regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass South Africa Anna-Jayne Metcalfe wrote: "Cynicism has it's place in life - but it should be kept well away from your inner self." Crikey! ain't life grand?
Medical. All medical. D.