Fail! The mysterious case of the pointless corporate gifts website
Posted by Riana MeyerToday, Joanne Reidy, our creative director, stumbled across the fascinating existence of a South African catalogue website that give you absolutely NO way to purchase from them. I was hoping somebody can help us find the owner of the following website so that we can point the severity of the error out to them. And, of course, the simplicity of fixing the problem.
The story in short: The website is listed in Google for “corporate gifts”:
We click through to the home page:
Evaluating it from a usability perspective …. so far so good:
- The landing page has relevant introduction copy
- The gifts are organised into categories that make sense (although perhaps too many of them)
- The dates on the catalogues are recent.
Joanne opted for the “funky finds” category as she was looking for notebooks to brand as corporate gifts. She lands on a typical CATEGORY PAGE. Although it isn’t the best example of a page optimised to aid simple comparison.
Scrolling-and-scanning she quickly spots the right product and click to the DETAIL PAGE:
There are no calls to action on the detail page!
Well we didn’t want to give up there but even putting our backs into it we couldn’t locate any contact details whatsoever on the entire site. Not even the name of the person/company responsible for the site. Nothing!
Did we miss something? Do they not want people to buy from them? Or is there another mysterious reason for this? Can anybody help?
March 9th, 2010 at 2:49 pm
it’s a very sad state of affairs… i’ve seen it in so many places.. people just don’t get call to actions…
Their loss!
May 24th, 2010 at 10:31 pm
This company is a trade only supplier, they only sell to promo houses and not end users.
In most instances you would be directed to this site from a promo company, the idea is for promo companies to link to this website from their own to use as an online catalog.
The login and code search are for us to login and view pricing and at times live stock on hand.
I suppose you finding this on the first page of Google is a rare case of ‘too good SEO’!
Hope this helps clear things up for you!
If Joanne is still looking for that notebook, then feel free to contact us! Vawdas Promotions – info@vawdas.co.za
May 25th, 2010 at 10:38 am
Hi Raeesah, thank you for replying and finally solving the mystery for us. To improve the site’s usability I do suggest adding some explanantion on the top landing pages. Also, the company could direct “accidental visitors” to one of their promotional companies (provide links and contact detials) to increase sales via the correct channels.
All the best
Riana