Why Business Sites Should NEVER Consolidate all their Webs into a single domain

The trend in web sites by big companies to combine all sites into one single domain and have the people who are looking for manuals, a problem solution to be magically and transparently moved from the tech resource site onto the selling site without telling people. They only know it when a shopping cart shows up asking them to buy something when they were looking for an answer to a technical question.

 

Now another reason why they should never do that is that almost EVERY corporate level web filter program sees the WHOLE site as a SHOPPING SITE.

 

This means if you are a user at a corporate location and want to find a manual to fix your Gateway system - THE WHOLE SITE is blocked since Gateway domain sells computers so the web filter system sees it is a shopping site so everything is blocked - NO WEB SUPPORT.

 

This means you now have to fight the IT - and cyber people are paranoid and actually DO NOT care at all if you work can get done since they are out to protect the business regardless if their policies stops your work -- there is NO appeal of their dictates - to try and prove to them that you only want the manuals and driver updates from the site and you are not going to spend 8 hours shopping for your 509th PC to buy today.

 

Separating out support from shopping also allows PEOPLE to easily know where things are at spatially in their minds and so they know that going to support.business.com keeps them ON the site where tech info is at and the search results (most sites have LOUSY navigation since they user their INTERNAL names to classify items and not what people use.) are not contaminated with selling brochures and marketing hype that does not help a person SOLVE a problem that they went there to find - HP.com is notorious for doing this - you look for a manual and you end up on their selling site asking you if you want that delivered to you business and what credit card to use when looking for the manual to configure the IP on a printer port. And their are not alone - Epson.com does this a lot too.

 

Thus these companies are being blocked as a tech resource since they want to have a "one company look and feel" for everything and everything on a single site. This also makes it MUCH harder for a person to know where things are on their site - everything looks alike.

 

So the next time you try and get a manual and the site comes up blocked thank a cyber person and some marketing "expert" who told the company that you want the whole company web site to be one seamless look for branding reasons and to push everyone to the checkout line regardless of what they are looking for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A reason to NEVER have a unified single web style for all aspects of a business

One of my long time reasons / complaints to firms about trying to have a SINGLE look and feel for all different aspects of their web sites is exemplified by what has happened / been caused by Best Buy as shown in this eWEEK quote (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2100885,00.asp)

 

"As it tries to navigate the minefield that today's multichannel retail strategies have become, Best Buy officials are conceding that "human error" and employee "confusion" were the reasons customers were shown a site displaying higher brick-and-mortar prices while incorrectly being told that the displayed site was showing online prices.

The confusion stems from two visually identical sites that Best Buy employees can show customers. The sites have only a handful of minor functionality differences, with the key difference being that the prices are sometimes different, said Chap Achen, director of order management for Best Buy. "

If they has NOT pursued a unified look i.e. so called "experts" telling them that all their sites must look and act identical so that people always see the exact same view even if they bounce around 2 to 50 different logical web sites - the workers would have NEVER shown people the wrong site.

 

A completely different color scheme - or yes a completely differently designed site all together - they would have never make this type of mistake at all - EVER.

 

A pure web store has different needs to be met ways to operate than a walk-in store. By buying into the mantra of marketing people wanting to have a uniform look and feel these mistakes will ALWAYS happen.

 

How many times you go to a site and want to find reference material for a product yet you end up on a page asking you to PURCHASE something? This happens all the time on HP.com site - and unless you REALLY pay attention you could buy it without knowing (especially if you use automated fill-in programs at checkout.) Then you have to forcefully navigate back to the tech support area - and you cannot tell where you are on the site since EVERYTHING LOOKS THE SAME from domain to domain.

 

Talk about usability problems! The people have NO CLUE where they are at since everything looks the same!

 

 

How OnPoint Credit Union - and soon others -- will earn money automatically

OnPoint Credit Union  (Portland Oregon) has a new policy in place - if they send you a statement after you have moved, and you have NOT yet gotten around to tell them your new address - they charge you $3.00. Each and every statement they send.

This is done since they have their statements set up to NEVER be forwarded by the post office and have it set up to always be returned to them - so you will ALWAYS be charged the $3.00.

So if there are a million people in their membership (I have no idea) and the average person moves every 5 years, they will get $600,000 in fees a year from people based on the known fact that you cannot remember to tell everyone before some statements come in - and a CU is usually way down on the list of people you notify as a priority.

And since people often move at the END of the month - and statements come out after that - it is an almost assured revenue stream.

And they do NOT update their database at all even when it is returned.

I'm waiting for all the OTHER businesses in the world - especially the credit card people - to jump onto the same revenue stream.

 

Personal Responsibility in the Modern USA

I definitely think that if the Federal Government - and States - REALLY wanted people to take personal responsibility for their actions then all laws that hold secondary people / firms responsible would never have been created.  

 

We have changed the liability of personal mistakes away from an individual person and have gone with the popular mental and emotional  reassignment of blame to a nebulous deep pocket company for lapses in person judgment and ability. The "It's not my fault" mode allows a person to feel good about their stupidity through the politically popular laws passed by legislatures which shift responsibility away from the PERSON.

 

This is not the same as true product liability laws - knowingly putting out a product that can cause death or injury. But when they have to put onto a hair dryer "Do not use while soaking in a bathtub" it means that somewhere along the line someone DID use it and since there was no warning label for them NOT to use they sued and WON. 

 

The Darwin Awards exist since there really are going to be stupid people and it is impossible to protect them from their own stupidity. You just cannot teach every person about all the dangers in the world, and some people are just incapable of learning no matter how many millions is spent on them. (A basic 1 to 12 education in Oregon means spending $130,000 per student in constant dollars. "Special education" student quadruples that cost for extra services mandated for them.)

 

Taking a logical example of DUI the state should be always be assigned 80% liability for a person who crashes a car while drunk - the state ISSUED a driver license to a person whom it knew - or should have known - would drive drunk.  The layers have sued the bars who gave a drink to a person - but how would they know that person would drive - yet the state ISSUED a license to a person who lacks judgment so should not the STATE be held liable letting that person drive when under the influence of any drug? 

 

The Democratic Party Progressive Tax System

The Democratic Party likes the "progressive" tax system.  

 Their definition is of course they keep progressively taxing your income until you have no more money left to send in. Once at that point, it has at last "progressed" enough.