Ster-Kinekor re-redesign
Once upon a time, Ster-Kinekor - the largest cinema exhibitor in South Africa - redesigned their website.
Unfortunately, it didn't work as well as their users would have liked, and quite a few of them made that very clear. Others left complaints on public service site HelloPeter.com. While technology news site Tectonic gave them a scathing review about their lack of support for web standards, 84% of MyBroadband users voted that they should consider another redesign. Even Wikipedia joined in on the action, claiming Ster-Kinekor had "the slowest loading website in Africa"!
The people spoke, Ster-Kinekor listened, and four months later, they re-redesigned.
Present day. This post is not another review. Our design community and local bloggers provided them with more than enough useful, experienced and free feedback to improve their online presence, and I'm not going to waste my time again since judging by their new site, they're content to continue learning by making their own mistakes. I'm not saying the new site is a mistake, but I wouldn't call it an improvement either. I'll explain why. Here's a snippet from what I wrote last time, which I refrained from expanding on:
With some forward-thinking, Ster-Kinekor could potentially have one of the largest national websites
Consider this. Ster-Kinekor have, according to them, over 1.5 million members in their Movie Club. That's 1.5 million potential website users, if I'm correct in assuming that those members with access to cinema have access to the web too.
I was a Movie Club member for a number of years until late 2003, during which I received regular e-mail updates informing me of the latest releases, competitions and special offers, my points balance, etc. That was great, but it never developed further for whatever reason. But what about today, three years later? With 1.5 million users knocking at their door, the opportunities they're faced with are phenomenal; a web marketer's wet dream. So why are they still treating their website like brochureware? What about this "Movie Club" that they promote so much?
After more than six years online, you'd think they would have progressed from that phase of redesigning every few months in favour of providing their users with long-term practicality and feature-rich services.
Once upon a time...
- My Ster-Kinekor website would recognize me and welcome be back on return visits.
- It would already know my region and closest cinema.
- It would let me buy movie tickets with a few easy clicks, without requiring plugins or having to disable my browser's popup blocker.
- It would let me link to individual pages of the site on my blog, and send page links to my friends and family. These links wouldn't break for the next 5 years.
- I'd be able to customize the site based on my personal preference.
- It would offer me recommendations sent to me by my Movie Club friends, and groups that I'd joined.
- I'd be able to write my own movie reviews, and share them with other members.
- I could meet other members that share similar interest in movies.
- It would show me new release trailers based intuitively on previous movies I'd watched, reviewed, or added to my favourites list.
- It would let me keep a list of movies that I hadn't yet seen, and compare it with those of my friends so that we know which DVD to hire next, or which ones I could buy as gifts through the Ster-Kinekor online shop.
- It would automatically enter me into competitions.
- It would reward me with a free ticket if I'd booked more than 10 in the last 6 months, or referred more than 5 friends to the club.
My Ster-Kinekor site would do all of that and more. What does your Ster-Kinekor site do?
UPDATE [25/09]: Consumers 'being fed a lot of hot air', by Wendy Knowler (IOL)
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48 Comments
i was just extremely happy it loaded…
Now Damien I’m not sure why people have sand when you give your feedback about things because you do it in such a professional manner and infact give them a free consultation with all the good advice you offer. But do you really think they’ll accept this generous feedback, ignore you or dare I say, slap you with some nasty long winded emails?
Damien – yr SK sounds like my kinda site! :P
My first impression was it reminded me of the old 5fm site. This craze of blue gradients in the background area of flashy websites is getting a bit tiresome.
You are defintely correct in saying the landing page is a tad busy. I think what makes it so is the large buttons in the “Movies in the next 7 days” table area. They immediately scream for your attention.
Ster Kinekor have definitely take a step in the right direction. Booking a ticket does seem more straight forward. The usuability of the site has improved. Pity an error occurred when I got to the final step of the booking process though. Unfortunately, first impressions like that do count.
Digiguru: Ignorance is bliss according to SK it would seem so I don’t expect a response – but if others can learn from their mistakes then at least something positive comes from all of this.
Mark: I said that? ;)
Great feedback indeed Damien. Thankyou.
As you will see on the site there is still a lot to be activated as this is only phase 1 of a long development timeline. The first and most important deployment was of course enabling users to easily choose and book their movies at speed and get rid of the old one! The site was beta-tested by over 200 very digruntled people who sent complaints to SK about the last site and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive.
Let me address your ‘once upon a time’ wishlist… one by one
Recognise you: – not sure we want to recognise you personally as such, however your profiles and preferences as well as your favourite cinema will be. We may include personal recognition though during the customer profiling phase.
(This also covers your point 2)
Book tickets with a few easy clicks:… When we add your favourite cinema functionality (phase 2) this will cut down the clicks of course. Giving maximum choice options here without the clicks is tricky. Please let me know, where you would cut down the clicks without compromising your choice. Your constructive help here would be useful.
Plugin?: Flash 6 compatibility, one cached small framework load, maximum functionality, 56k optimised, explorer 7 and all browser/platform compatible and very secure. Not a single visit or so far in the stats has had a player issue. Everything including trailers is delivered using a ‘plug-in’ that comes as standard (6) instead of requiring a download. The site is also delivered faster than an html equivalent with similar functionality….go try it on a 56k modem and compare it with the home page of a IOL, Media24 or any other mainstream site. I really cant see a problem here at all. You will also be pleased to know that a mobile version is also planned.
Pop-ups: As you should know, Payment needs to happen on a secure server (over https). This means that unavoidably another window needs to spawn. Although not treated as a pop up by most browsers, some do. I would welcome your practical suggestion how to incorporate HTTPS without simply overwriting the site in the same browser window? (which we want to avoid for obvious reasons)
Page linking. The site’s core is fully built with this funtionality. You will be able to link to literally anything specific on the site, right down to automatically playing a trailer from the link or and actual perfomance and seating plan for an individual performance. This is an obvious requirement for the SK site and will tie in with send2afriend, wish-listing and moviemail.
Customised Personal preference: Covered that already. (later phase)
Recommendations from friends: yep, send2friends and wish lists in project plan as well as profiling via Moviemail, etc… (see direct linking above)
Own reviews: Its been discussed, but I doubt we go this route. There are plenty of blogs and sites that cater for this (including this blog). Lets just remember that SK have suppliers (the movie distributors), although they would love to do it, they cannot be seen to publicising any bad reviews under their brand.. and they can’t just approve the good ones otherwise it is pointless an unfair. Common sense must prevail here I am afraid.
Meet other members: This is not Ster-Kinekors job i am afraid and opens a brand up to trouble and all the well publicised problems of putting people, kids, adults and unsrupulous members of the internet community together . Again, there are plenty of other sites that cater for this. You could try DatingBuzz.. or you could speak to the people in the same cine as you when you go, as they most certainly will have the same movie interests as you.
Intuitive trailers: Sort of covered in profiling/wish listing but not really for trailers. It will point you to the seperate movie features, but you will need to click a button to view the trailer as Bandwidth is too expensive and it would be intrusive to automatically launch a trailer. Anyways, o flick thru the blockbusters and actually choose what you want to see is not that tricky. If you want to watch the trailer, fantastic.. go watch. If you have a genre preference rather than look thru lists… go pick a genre and it will cut it down for you.
DVDs: A completely different department I am afraid. This site is for SK pictures… they put bums on seats in cinemas (not in front of your TV) and strangely enough compete with the DVD market. (even though another division of SK rent/sell them of course). I believe there will be a link offered to SKHE when their site goes live though but dont expect too much integration/crossover for the logical reasons explained here.
Automatically Enter Competitions: section not live yet as you can see, and as you more than likely know it is a legal requirment on a site such as this to add an element of skill to any high value prizes. Flash is great, but it still cant guess what multiple choice answer you will choose. So this will not happen. You will have to click something to enter.
Free ticket: Please read all about Movie Moola… you will see they already do that
So.. all in all, it looks like you will almost have your ‘Once upon a Time site’ (with a few exceptions) but we have only been working on this for 3 weeks so far so bear with us ;)
As you will see on the SK site there is a comments section, all comments coming through are being addressed no matter how small, from making some scrollers more obvious to changing the flow of bigger things. This site is work very much in progress… SK and us are welcoming all comments and change requests. The feedback from previously disgruntled users has been phenomenal so far and we are also receiving emails directly. SK and Prezence are listening to make this better and better… end of story. I see someone says the homepage is busy… It definately is… but what could you feaibly drop from the front of a site like this… that is indeed a very tricky one. Any ideas there would be very welcome.
If any of you have any constructive suggestions of how we can feasible change things to improve anything on the site we would appreciate it greatly. BTW: If any errors happen during the booking process eg. if it flags a ‘technical or unknown error’, that is fed from the booking engine itself which they are also in the process of upgrading that but everything on the site is being comprehensively tracked to give them feedback on these very rare failures.
Not sure we as a company could ever do anything 100% right to please this forum (or have any need to), but actual user feedback is essential and that is what we are working from. I do hope you guys will be involved constructively as this is a site that most of you have discussed and critted long and hard… If you have any examples of better all round movie theatre websites anywhere in the world which may illustrate any of your points made, I would appreciate it as we struggled to find any.
Best
Tim (tim at prezence.co.za for any suggestions please… )
Your Ster-Kinekor sounds strangely like Flickr…
jk: I was thinking more Last.fm myself, but then it’s all pretty general web 2.0 (cringe) stuff really.
The new SK site is a thing of beauty that does a lot of things very well, and it seems you’re just whinging that it isn’t [your favourite website here] to your choir.
Does Not Provide You With What You Want is not the same as Clearly Does Not Get It Sigh. SK’s market is no more Digging links and browsing tag clouds on Flickr than they are seeing art flicks at Cinema Nouveou.
By your way of thinking, SK should replace the flashy high-budget trailer’s shown on TV with video clips of Joe & Jane giving their views, uncensored, on the movie they’ve just seen as they come out of the cinema. While my faith in marketers isn’t absolute, I do suspect that they’ve thought of, and discarded, this idea.
Tim, thanks for your comment.
Just to clarify, by “recognize me” I meant the site would make use of sessions. This, along with the rest of my wishlist, implied that the site would be built around a social network of movie club members that currently have no desire to visit the site other than to book movie tickets online.
Payment needs to happen on a secure server (over https). This means that unavoidably another window needs to spawn. [...] I would welcome your practical suggestion how to incorporate HTTPS without simply overwriting the site in the same browser window?
Simple really, misapplied technology. Don’t use Flash to accomplish a task it wasn’t designed for.
opens a brand up to trouble and all the well publicised problems of putting people, kids, adults and unsrupulous members of the internet community together
You’re right, what was I thinking? An online Movie Club with no social interactivity is so much better, that must explain why sites like YouTube are so successful. :)
I few month ago I emailed Presence, the company that developer SK, about VodaFoneLive.co.za … The reason why I mail them was because of a vodacom4me poll where just under 50% said they couldn’t view the website.
And I believe I got a response from Tim above.
I attempted to point out that they are using Flash when HTML will suffice. And basically his response was the same as above. “Flash loads faster than HTML, plugin architecture, supported by 98% of the people browsing the website, etc…”
Presence is a Flash development company. I don’t think it’s going to change.
Jon you’re right, my wishlist is nothing more than dreaming up a site I’d love to see. It may not (probably doesn’t) fit within SK’s business model, but it would for others and that was my ultimate point.
Instead of repeatedly blowing budgets on redesigning their website why don’t SK lower their exorbitant ticket and snack prices.
Check out Virgin Radio’s new site.
Can you believe it they’ve managed to make a successful, usuable site with very limited flash! Unbelievable.
Damien you clearly have very little understanding of this.
‘Recognize you’ as you put it will be implemented as I said… ie. it will know what cinema you like and your profile when this is implemented. We dont need to use sessions to do this… so as I have already said, in this context it will indeed recognise you (whether you have cookies enabled or not)
Your main misunderstanding seems to be around the Movie Club.
The Movie Club is not a ‘Movie Club’ where you can hang around and meet people every day.. and the Movie Club is not anything to do with the SK website at all. (As you can see if you have read it.. you cannot sign up online, it is not an online initiative).
Instead, it is a loyalty programme which rewards you for going to the cinema and offers extra discounts on movie tickets. This is not a community building project!
How on earth can this be mis-applied technology? … and what do you think Flash nowadays is designed for? (and I dont mean what you are still using for or have the limited capabilities to do). In what way does this site fall down due to mis-applied flash? (and it cant be the payment thing surely as that is flash as well.. and the https issue of course).
Imagine if we applied your philosphy elsewhere and could not use the internet now for tasks that ‘it wasn’t designed for’ (you obviously know what it was originally designed for right?).
You Tube is not a ‘household consumer brand’ with something specific to sell… i can’t understand the comparison between SK and YouTube???. I repeat again Movie Club is not an online community club. Building communities is not what SK needs to do or wants to do, it simply needs for you to see what is showing and book it quickly and easily. They would like you to get away from your dingy bedsit writing irrelevant ill-informed rubbish and go out and see a movie… hey, you might even meet some people there and start your own Movie Club.
Hopefully now the concept of Movie Club is explained things are a little clearer as this seems to be your majot gripe (apart from the flash which i still cant see is a problem in any way at all). I will send thru a suggestion through to SK though that they are misleading you into thinking that you could find some friends on their site.
Please do send me a link of any Movie theatre site in the world that pleases you immensely and then lets take it from there…. just to see where SK currently sits in the world rankings of Movie Theatre sites.. even though we are still at Phase 1 as already comprehesively explained.
Can anyone on this blog not get into the site? is it slow for anyone? Has it broken for anyone? Has anyone tried to book a seat today? Can everyone find what they need? Can you view trailers without launching external media players?
How about i pay you (Damien) out of my own pocket to design the ideal SK site (or at least visual, technical overview and storyboard).. as well as provide me with cost for the final product so we can compare apples with apples. Up for it? Its a paying job just to see if you do live in a glass house or not. Then you could afford SK’s exhorbitant ticket price of R7 on a Tuesday (as you are a Movie Club member).
Lets put all of your comments to good use and see what you are made of ;) its not like you dont have the time. Our wallet is open and ready! I really do want to see if there is any substance behind all of this. We can then both post your version on this site.
…and yes. Prezence are a flash development company. No argument there from us.
Cheers
Tim
Nice site Mark. Have you seen Gucci.com? No less than 10 external JS library includes – I wonder how well that scales? I found more about it here.
Regarding PeterP’s comment of 50% could not view the V-Live site.
I have just dug out your email and you said…
7% of 5179 people said “the website would not load.”
Where does the 50% sudddenly come from (up from 7%)?
The poll finally closed at 4%.
Wow Tim, slow down.
Like I said in response to Jon’s comment above, my list – which you’ve clearly taken to heart – is nothing more than what I’d like the SK site to become one day, hence starting it off with “Once upon a time…”. Movie Club – same applies here. I was hoping to get SK’s direct feedback on my suggestions but it seems as though you’ve obliged to act as their official spokesperson on the matter.
I’m not about to get into a design debate with you, which is why you’ll notice I completely avoided mentioning anything relating to your team’s involvement. If you feel you need to defend the site, please do so elsewhere, because you’re going OT…
They would like you to get away from your dingy bedsit writing irrelevant ill-informed rubbish
…and getting nasty.
I don’t have time to accept your challenge to build a hypothetical site unfortunately, as much as I would love to. I’m not a Movie Club member like you claim and have real work to keep me busy, so that I can afford Ster-Kinekor tickets.
Okay – My bad.
But here are the relevant results:
Number of votes received: 32222
Great Website: 60.13 %
It’s alright: 26.00 %
I don’t like it: 6.99 %
The website would not load: 6.88 %
From these results you can see that just under 40% don’t enjoy the website… Might have been higher at the time I mailed you, probably not, but I suppose that this is what I was refering too… I just remembered it been “wouldn’t load.”
Bigsoz.
God I hate flash.
Money talks folks. If SK came to me with R100000++ and told me to design them a site, do you really think I would start preaching standards this, accessibility that? Hell no! I would make it as flashy as they wanted it!
I have a lot of respect for Flash designers, as you seriously have to have alot of design talent to knock out something that looks like SK
Flash has a place on the net, but IN MY OPINION, not for a movie club where people are trying to get information regarding movies / prices and make bookings etc. Stick to the tried and tested.
The website they had last year was way better than this one and I havent booked through their website since it changed… It is just so unecessary to use flash here for this kind of site… the site takes way longer to download and I’m using ADSL, it must be terrible for people on dialups… Why do a complete re-design to something that works so well already without flash, rather just make positive improvements.
dear mr coda,
i really think you should think about what you are saying… yes you are entitled to your own opinion however you dont seem to know what the internet is actually intended for. Meeting other people is a lame reason for such a grand contraption wouldn’t you think? How would you like to spend the better part of a decade working your ass off ignoring family and friends just to complete a project (i’m refering the birth of the internet) that allows other people to meet other people .. have you been out today?!
if you really don’t like the SK site and think you could make it bigger, better, whatever (without any direction from the client in terms of functionality, marketing and design) why not take up mr bishops offer? – personally i don’t think you’re up for it, nope i don’t think you could handle the heat i dont.
Hi Komodo
Please be aware that Hetzner who now host the server cluster had a serious outage in their Joburg datacentre this morning and everything was crawling (those of you will receive an email regarding it later). Try it again now as I believe they are at full speed again since 10.55am. It is now lightning fast once more and perfectly acceptable on dial up (especially on repeat visits) and certainly way faster than previous SK sites.
Try booking on this one and see how you find it.
Tim
God, I hate whiney CSS technicians.
Tim, part of the discussion here seems focused around Flash vs. standards-based markup. I don’t want to bash either clump of supporters, but just try to sway you towards the benefits of ditching the one for the other and future-proofing your client’s investment.
Your Flash is flawless. It’s slick, it’s quick, it’s relatively lightweight and fluid. Compliments to the team. Clearly you’ve hired a talented bunch of ActionScript coders and designers. But next time you have an opening in your company, maybe look towards someone experienced in the XHTML and CSS technologies. It also wouldn’t harm your company to have someone experienced in the field of information architecture to help out with the layout, accessibility and usability areas of your sites. I feel very strongly about this, when I say that in this country especially, too much budget is spent on the design-side of a project and not nearly enough is devoted to the usability side. I’m sorry to say that I don’t feel the new SK site is easy enough to read… the layout needs to be tweaked to introduce more “whitespace” – it feels like you’ve tried to clump everything up to avoid content disappearing under the “page-fold”.
Had the SK site been redesigned using best practice XHTML and CSS for layout, I feel it would have been easier for your team to maintain and try out changes like “what happens if we introduce a little more padding here”. It’s more difficult to do that in Flash, and I therefore am convinced that due to the effort, it’s unlikely that much of the user feedback you receive with regards to the usability of the site will be implemented.
With regards to the mobile version of the site that you said was being planned, again, had your team used best practice XHTML and CSS for layout, that site would already have been complete! SK’s customers would already have been able to use it. No reasons for telling them “it’s in phase 2, 3, 4″. The only work necessary would have been to create a simplified version of the CSS rules you’d used for the main site.
Even if you stuck to table-based layouts and used HTML 4.0 for the site, thanks to the fantastic Opera Mini midlet your site would’ve looked good on a mobile device.
Unfortunately, having the site built in Flash, means that this is currently not possible and it means you’re going to have to put in extra leg work unnecessarily. Hopefully, your Flash is pulling data from XML and all that would be required is writing the XSLT transformations needed to output the correct output you’re wanting to make accessible to mobile devices. That’s a lot of extra effort.
So not many people use the mobile web, right? Why bother. Years ago, shortly after the hyped introduction of WAP and WML, people proclaimed that WAP was dead. I’ve never believed it to be dead… just dormant. Now that almost any handset out there supports some form of wireless web format, and more people are learning how to make use of these features on their phones, I feel that before long a mobile version of your corporate site is going to become as invaluable as launching a website for your organisation was back in the mid-90’s.
Getting this up in 3 weeks is impressive, I know how tough clients can be and how much pressure there is to get it right. Truth is, you probably could have delivered it much easier if you’d opted for XHTML and CSS. As a Ster Kinekor customer, not a web-developer, I’m just starting to think that this is all a big mess. That’s the honest impression that I’m left with.
lol hi ‘mister’ coda guy
yeah you have no idea what you’re doing, that’s why you get paid to do it.
you don’t know what the internet is actually intended for – porn.
you never go out, loser.
you should take the challenge and create a kick-ass site for free. with ‘all that not going out you do’ (or is it ‘all that going out you don’t do’) you totally have the time and stuff.
nat
x
I love flash, for certain things I reckon it’s fantastic. For a site like SK, I’m not sure it’s current state is the best solution. But this is the route that has been taken. There is no doubt in my mind that it could be improved upon and from what I’ve read, Tim has said they were already going to do a lot of things Damien suggested. I think the guys at Prezence have great talent, but I don’t believe the current site has much merit … but it could. So my question is this, is there any timeline in which this next phase will be completed and released? I want to give you guys the benefit of the doubt, so if you can commit to a date to include everything mentioned above, I will be happy to review your site again in the future instead of knocking it for it’s current state.
One thing I want to make very clear though, this site is not what any one of us might have envisioned, but it is an improvement on the previous site which we all know was complete crap.
warrenski you make some very valid points! *w00t*
I’m with Nat re: designing the website with web standards and your vision. But, not for free, Tim did offer to pay you for your efforts…
I was also wondering if prezence uses templates for their sites because it looks very similiar to http://www.entertainmentafrica.co.za/
i second that, great comments warrenski.
this thread is starting to annoy me …
lets ask ‘Chuck’ why don’t we?!
I am actually glad I dont have to use SK to book my movie tickets.
http://movietickets.com/ is much simpler to use, faster and more effiecient. It works on a mobile device too.
In the end SK feels like it was made circa 2000, it feels dated.
(p.s. – SK doesnt seem to work well in opera browser?)
Egads… I’m friends with a bunch of people who read and comment on this site and yet I’m forced to break ranks here. I think the new SK site is pretty swish. The last time I tried to access SK it wouldn’t load on my 8 meg ADSL connection.
I think the argument here is whether you’re being employed to design your ideal movie website, or whether you’re working within the confines of both a brief and what you have the power to actually implement using the data your client can supply you with.
Successful sites are those that do one thing, and excel at doing them. Two quick examples of which are Flickr and YouTube. I think the SK site offers you quick access to everything you need to choose and book a movie with. In less than 20 seconds of first logging on I’d managed to start streaming a movie trailer and easily managed to upscale the quality to match my connection settings. This is GREAT usability. The fact that I’m in London means that I haven’t really tried to book a ticket online, but I’ve heard that this is quite easy.
I do agree that the site looks a bit busy, and I’m not a big fan of flash myself. But kudos to the guys who built the site. It does what it needs to do to facilitate SK selling more tickets online, and looks good doing it too.
coda, one of the first things you say in your post, is “and I’m not going to waste my time again since judging by their new site, they’re content to continue learning by making their own mistakes”
now, i’ve read through your old SK site blog (and everyone else’s at the time – all of which i found quite entertaining at the time, and shared your gripes) and i have to say, the new SK site seems to address ALL of the concerns that you and your fellow bloggers raised. so what’s the problem here folks?
i couldn’t even use the old SK site to book tickets from my ADSL at work!! i just sat here now using my crappy GPRS connection and booked for my Tuesday night movie chop chop. That’s the bottom line, period. All the info is there, it’s fast, it’s intuitive, it’s slick.
With regards to your wishlist – there are some awesome suggestions in there i agree, and i’m glad to see that Tim Bishop and his guys are going to be working on it, but let’s face it, all those ideas aside, the site is a vast improvement from what it was, yet you just can’t seem to stop whining
and if i hear one more css jockey whine about the pitfalls of flash, i am going to vomit in my mouth
wes, you’ve missed my point entirely by no fault of yours alone. The thread of comments that followed only helped to shift the topic focus away from my post and onto design-related issues, which isn’t what I planned for – SK are fortunate that they have a passionate user base (whining or not) behind them and I hope they appreciate that.
Whatever my opinion of the new site design, it doesn’t matter to this post and I’ve tried to make that clear in my comments. My previous SK blog addressed design issues, but I very briefly touched on the subject of community in that post which I wanted to revisit here. Rob’s post over at GottaQuirk is the only real response I’ve seen on this.
I could have applied the same wishlist to Nu Metro, Musica or Exclusive Books. But for comparison’s sake, spend a few minutes browsing 5fm. I’ve chosen this site because it offers similar content to a similar, local market and because of it’s new BlogJockeys feature. Along with their Opinion Polls and 5 Stars features, Podcasts, 5fm Dating, 5fm Chat, they’re continously experimenting with new features to build an online community around their brand. They’ve moved on from the days of pushing wallpaper/ringtone/screen saver downloads, to building real, interactive, engaging applications that attract new users on a daily basis, and keep them coming back.
I’d love to see Ster-Kinekor adopt a long-term strategy and offer similar features to their multitude of users, instead of just reskinning their site every couple of months and pissing off their users in the process. I can’t see why building a networked community of movie enthusiasts (which to my knowledge doesn’t yet exist in this country) promoting the Ster-Kinekor brand and content on and off their site, can be seen as a bad thing. Especially since they’re competing with the growing, cheaper, more accessible and readily available home theatre market as Tim points out.
Coming back to design: in my experience, a project brief is the result of a joint effort between the client and the design team, and it’s the designer’s responsibility to make that happen. We haven’t heard from SK, but my guess is that they don’t know any different. If this isn’t the case, then their change of mind between the two redesigns over the course of 4 months is very dramatic.
We can continue to talk in circles about whether or not the SK site should be completely Flash-based or not, based on our own assumptions. I firmly believe that a seamless combination of Flash for rich-media content and XHTML/CSS for the remainder of the content (what they went with in their previous design) would suit the SK site best, for different reasons that are relevant to the end user, design team and client. Among those reasons, flexibility and portability – to allow for a list such as the one I put forth to materialise. And that in my opinion is the mistake.
Now that pretty much sums it up. Nice response Damien. I couldn’t agree more. I sill wish SK would actually respond as I can guaratee that through talking to us and listening to our suggestions we could all benefit in the long run.
Damien/coda… for a busy guy, too busy to take up that very enticing challenge, you certainly have enough time to post long-winded replies. I don’t suppose you get paid to run this blog do you?
I came across this post looking for info on the Ster-Kinekor group and It’s been quite an interesting read. I hope that you apply the same level of scrutiny to your own business/work that you do when critting other people’s work.
In the end nobody really cares about web standards and so on because if the client is happy with it, the client is happy. If the site works, it works. The way you go on about some things on this blog almost sounds like you’re the one paying for the job. Now why does that seem so petty?
Keep YOUR clients happy… thats what you get paid for. Leave everyone elses alone.
Glad you enjoyed the read Sven. No I’m not paid to blog, but perhaps you’d like to join my list of happy clients and sponsor me since you have such a keen interest in how I spend my time and what my opinion should involve. We can write about issues close to your heart, if there are any…
As for web standards, maybe you’d like to share your thoughts on their merit with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, you know, that guy who invented the internet.
Screaming users considered good over at ‘Creating Passionate Users’, as a matter of coincidence.
i’m glad to see that Tim Bishop and his guys are going to be working on it
Naughty Wes, we all all know you work for Tim….You little brown noser you.
For what its worth, flash is good and the new SK site is better, (despite having the same background colour as Entertainment Africa – upside down)
naughty nick, we all know you USED to work for tim (digiguru too). dammit man you saw right through me, i feel so embarressed
how the hell have you been mate?
There it is, its all out… Truth be told working with you guys was pretty cool. I had to leave to finish uni, got the honors to prove it.
I’ve been great thanks, I’ll give you a mail sometime.
Sorry to everyone else for changing the subject. And just to steer the thread back onto the right track; I still think the new *flash* site is better than the old one, and I have a warm feeling inside knowing that corporate south africa has chosen a flash website.
Neil you’re right it is a huge can of worms and something that has been much debated recently. Flash can be embedded really well these days and the vital information like links, titles etc are all readable by search engines. This specific site is not well placed for SEO, but one can’t flame all flash sites for this. Then it boils down to whether or not SK need good SEO. Honestly I don’t think so, I’m sure targeted marketing works alot better for them. With there being so few cinemas in this country it’s not likely people will be googling to find out where the closest cinema is. I’m sure there are advantages, but I would agree it’s not overly important for how they market and what they are going to achieve.
Sure they need SEO – to rank themselves above their bad publicity. ;)
Just kidding. Actually all the linking they’ve received recently can only serve them well.
Flash is so 1999. I think using less is more. I’m not sure why Prezence believe that Flash “is the future”. They are definately not taking into account how the web has been changing over the past six years. We’ve gone from huge top-heavy sites with multiple versions of the HTML layout, to CSS and XHTML which is light.
We’ve got rid of flash and moved over to web 2.0 things. DHTML reworked to AJAX. The other thing I have to keep reminding myself is that Prezence is no Stone Wall ;) I can’t even view the Prezence website under my OS of choice. Ster Kinekor crashes my Firefox. Get rid of the flash and use decent JavaScript libraries. Learn to use Version Control. Take your vitamins. Drink lots of bioplus. Reinvent yourself. Learn how to follow web standards. Innovate. Be creative.
And no I’m not a CSS jokey. I prefer having stuff which is cross-browser/cross-platform and does not take away from the user experience.
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13 September 2006
warrenski11:25 pm
Tried to book a movie at Tygervalley as a test. It worked fine up until selecting the show’s time, then: “Unknown error”. Argh! Back to the drawing board, Flash-jockeys!