Why the new Cell C web site will harm their brand

I have always admired the Cell C brand and perceive it to be well communicated, witty, organized and consistent. I'm not a marketer nor a brand expert, but as the old saying goes, first impressions last. And considering the strategic importance of web design and usability for your ability to interface with customers on the Internet, Cell C are quite clearly failing.

It's like hearing about a great product, seeing great reviews of the product, hearing people talk about how good the product is, and then you call up to ask one more question and you're put on hold for 20 minutes. The person who answers the phone can't answer your question, can't sell you the product and doesn't know anything. All the money they just spent on convincing you that they're a good company is out the window.

- Jim Sterne

Today, I stumbled on the new Cell C website after reading a review on Ananzi's Top 10. Their previous website left much to be desired, you can read an archived ATW review of it here. Here's what Ananzi had to say about the new site:

Sometimes it's fun to look at a site just because it is groovy. Cell C conveys that edge. The graphics are funky and the navigation interesting - the press releases perform a 'drop-up' trick. The Web site also follows the new trend where you need to search a little for some of the information. However the one thing lacking is that added extra - on this site you just find a few screensavers and (yawn) some TV ads. Cell C is hot and the goodies section should reflect this.

Quite obviously, they only reviewed what they saw. And I agree with them - the graphics are funky, the navigation - although not very obvious, and I wouldn't say interesting - is acceptable. What they forgot to mention though is that the site is inaccessible, the usability stinks, and technically it's a developer's nightmare.

According to their terms and conditions, I am prohibited from linking to any page on their website, including the homepage, without their prior written approval. So I'll link to this Google search result instead - simply click on the first result.

I fired up the site in a new Mozilla window, my browser of choice, and this is what I experienced:

1. On load, the site resized my browser window to a size of 1024x768 and moved it to a new location on my desktop. This is considered to be an intrusive technique aimed at forcing the user to view the site at their set size, instead of letting the user decide what size they want their window to be. Because my desktop taskbar is positioned at the top of my screen, the repositioned browser window was moved under my taskbar, removing all window control and disallowing me access to resize or move the window. Testing reveals that they resize the site to fit your desktop resolution.

2. While the site was still loading, it promptly closed the window I was viewing it in. A little confused, I opened a new browser window and tried again - same thing. After opening the site in Internet Explorer, and on closer inspection, I noticed that the site carries the following message: "This site is best suited to IE 4 and above."

Their site therefore closes in Netscape-compatible browsers, with the following malformed JavaScript code:

<script language="JavaScript">
{
if(navigator.appName == "Netscape")
opener.close();
}
</script>

Not only does the site close my Mozilla browser, but because of the poor JavaScript code above, I believe that it closes Internet Explorer as well - when you refresh the page. The dangers of browser-dependent web development have been proven repeatedly. Another fine example of this IE-only strategy is the Liberty Life website.

3. The scrollbars are disabled. Before I discovered that they resized the site based on your screen resolution preference, I thought not having scrollbars would be a serious problem. Scrollbars do however provide accessibility functions for certain disability types, so I guess for some people it could be a problem.

4. With the source of the site still open in a new window, I took a quick look at their CSS and HTML markup. I also ran their site through the W3C validator service. I received one warning (Warning: No Character Encoding detected!), a Fatal Error occured (no document type declaration; will parse without validation) and the validation failed. I have never seen such bad markup before - a stylesheet is declared above the page , a Microsoft VBScript runtime error is occuring at the bottom (not visible on the site itself), and although there has been an effort to use CSS, they're still using deprecated HTML <FONT> tags to wrap the styles.

5. Brand management starts before your visitors get to your web site. The <TITLE> of your web site is arguably the most important HTML tag or element when it comes to search engine listing - the first impression of your company could be a listing on a search engine. On the Cell C website, every page has the same title, simple "CELL C".

6. Hoping to receive an answer from Cell C on the above, I decided to fill out their contact form. Not suprisingly, the form submit timed-out on repeated attempts - giving me no assurity that they were receiving my message. It is at this point that I decided to close the site out of pure frustration.

I have never claimed to be knowledgable on web site usability and accessibility, but as a web developer I have learnt that to provide a decent and efficient service, you have to fully understand the web as a medium for effective communication. Anyone trained in this field and with the necessary tests could easily provide me with the last 4 points for this review.

Until then, I'll wait and see what the response is.