Peter Schoenster wrote:
> I think that most websites don't make it easy to buy. Most of
> them don't make it easy
> to do anything. I was just at the HP website in search of some
> drivers for my HP 694C.
> Forget it. What a joke.
I've also searched for drivers at the HP site, around 6 months ago, and
remember having a hard time finding what I needed. However, I decided to
take a look and see what the site's like now.
First, as part of the test, I wrote down what I thought would be a logical
way to find the drivers for my printer:
home page
click drivers
click the printer I have
click the OS
download the driver
I was very surprised to find that the sequence I went through was almost
exactly what I had anticipated:
home page
click drivers
select printers from a list
select the line of printers
select the exact printer
click download
select language and OS
download
I think the extra steps come from me just forgetting how many other products
HP has.
Now, the site used DHTML and Javascript (rather cleanly, I must add) to
guide me to the driver I needed. So I tested it on NS 3, which has no DHTML
capabilites. For that browser I got the same sequence of events, but got new
pages instead of in/visible DHTML layers.
So, I'm wondering where you think HP went astray in the navigation scheme.
To my surprise, it worked like I thought it would. I'm curious what steps
you took to try to locate your driver.
Oh, by the way, I found no Linux driver for my printer. Whaaa. ;(
> And there was no email address to
> complain to. They had a
> form that did not include a textarea and you have to include your
> dog's middle name to
> submit.
Would have been interesting to send it and see how long it took to get a
response...and how good the response was.
> Forget it. It wasn't just as simple as inputting the
> name of my O/S and HP
> printer. No, oh no, they have a search engine. What a joke.
>
> I can't recall the last good website that I liked. I do like
> Amazon; I like reading reader
> reviews and seeing what other books other people bought.
One of my favorites is http://www.winespectator.com . If you are into wine,
it is an amazing resource...and I don't use the word amazing lightly.
They've setup some very nice conveniences for their users: personal wine
lists, review notes, _great_ search tools for a huge catalog of wine
reviews, etc. The benefits are increased if you "signup", but there are many
cool things about it even if you don't sign up. One thing missing from
winespectator.com is the ability to buy wine, but then perhaps that would be
seen as a conflict of interests, since they specialize in reviewing wine, or
maybe they just don't want to be in that business.
> I can almost like imdb.com but they just have too many options
> for me (I have ot tell
> them what country I am in - should be automatic). I just like to
> see reviews, reader
> reviews and the vote section and it is always a bit of a chore to
> get there. But I was
> really happy to see that someone had reviewed on of my all-time
> favorite movies
> (Harakiri). I wish I could have seen what other movies this person liked.
>
> My point is that most companies are not using the web in a smart
> way. And I don't see
> it getting better. I see more and more web sites defined by use
> of software rather than
> knowledge.
The sites I visit _most_ seem to be doing all the things seasoned web geeks
should do: reducing graphic glut, providing fast loading pages, making it
easier to find info, adding scripts and databases to increases usefulness,
using alt tags and image dimensions, expanding content and making old
content accessable, clean layout, less geegaws, etc. I see most of the sites
I visit _regularly_ growing and getting better.
Now, on the other side of the coin there are still zillions of rotten sites.
Most of them I don't return to after the first experience. The sites that I
do return to often seem to be getting better, IMO. The key phrase here is "r
eturn to often".
I'm not sure I follow you on seeing "more web site defined by use of
software". Do you mean like "Gif Spitter Outer...makes gifs for your site
automatically when you turn on your computer?" and stuff like that? Do you
mean sites obviously made by self-indulgent artists who know how to make
cool big gifs? Sites that use canned templates?
I think you're saying that you aren't seeing as many creative solutions as
you wish you could. ??? Is that what you mean? One thing I think to take
into consideration is that there may very well be a good deal of interesting
intranet work going on that you don't see, since an intranet environment
often lets people do things that they can't do for internet users. Then
again, maybe there just aren't as many creative solutions as you wish there
were. Sorta like I feel when I look at the movie section in the paper.
Jack
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