All too often during my hours of performing daily web tasks do I uncover great examples of anti-usability, but they’re usually not to the extent of what I’m about to show you.
One would imagine that such a large company as Vodafone, claiming to hold 200 million proportionate customers in 27 markets across 5 continents would at least provide a human-usable experience for a common user path. But alas, they seem to have failed… and not too gracefully.
When I am sent a Picture Message (MMS) on my mobile phone, instead of receiving the image itself, I get a SMS message with a link to download my MMS from the Vodafone website. Now, as irritating as this is, this isn’t actually what my post is about. You see, apon visiting this URL in my web browser I am presented with the following.
When viewing the aforementioned page at full resolution, my focus is drawn to the absurd flash movie (which actually serves as a menu, unbeknownst to the user) rather than the navigation at the top of the page. After a couple of double-takes and head scratching, I (the average user) finally can avert my gaze from the pretty colours in the middle of screen and make use of the actual navigation bar to get that one step closer to my goal of collecting my “PXT”.
Upon further investigation, it turns out that the flash “thing” in the center is actually a navigation menu itself. But, the user can only find out this by hovering over each picture to see what link it holds. On top of that, not every picture is a link, and it feels like a “lucky draw” to get the one you want.
Due to the top menu utilizing some sort of whacky Javascript navigation technique, with scripts disabled it simply doesn’t work! Even though Javascript is quite commonly enabled for most users, there still are a number who either don’t use a browser that supports it, choose to disable it or have it disabled by their antivirus application. The only other navigational alternative to this is the little Flash movie, which also could be hidden to those users without the Flash Plugin.
So, a certain percentage of this page’s visitors won’t even be able to get to their destination, and even the ones that have all the plugins enabled will still spend more time than they should trying to figure out how to use the thing!
When I visit this page, I’m confused as to its purpose. I should be given exactly what I’m looking for, ready to be used. Instead I’m given this convoluted, confusing and unusable page.
In summary, if I were to be tasked to redesign/realign this page, I would probably do the following:
- Focus on the typical user path. Provide a clear focused link to “Collect your PXT”. As well as the other actions.
- Completely trash the pointless flash animation.
- Use a hover state on the navigation, to let the user know that it’s actually clickable.
- Use real links, rather than Javascript tomfoolery, to allow for direct linking to the proper page and accessibility for those with JS disabled.
- Ditch the annoying “TXT Speak” (”Collect yr PXT” - what a joke!). It’s insulting to the user’s intelligence.
- Instead of sending the user to a “splash page”, get them straight to the form they are looking for. The user shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to get their image
Every web designer should learn the basics of accessibility. I totally agree with everything you would change.
They should only use javascript as a experience enhancer. If the user doesn’t have javascript enabled they should still be able to use the links.
I can’t believe this actually. This is really basic stuff.
holy cow wow thanks I thought i was just retarded trying to figure this out, been trying to ‘collect my pxt’ from a friend in oz for the past 2.5 hours now and getting nowhere! the link I was sent to retrieve it doesn’t exist and others don’t work or give me a big page of bright red with the vodafone symbol on it and nowhere to go. think I’ll abandon the quest and move on to other things. grrrrr!!
Completely agree, cannot get into website, like it doesn’t exist, absolutely ridiculous. We are in the 21st Century now aren’t we?
this is fuked lol u cant find it wat waste of time braz lol
Oh I thought it was just me! Totally useless. Had to phone my sender in Australia to find out what the content was.Still haven’t seen it!!
i have been trying for a week to see apic od my gr8 grandson sent to me from a mobile phone via pxt. i don;t even know what that is lol. but i had 3 tries at getting it up friend succeeded eventually but it seems i have to sign in somewhere or join up to get the pic
I give up!
at least i am not alone TG
I have been trying for over 30 minutes to view a VodaphonePXT message without success. it shouldn’t be that hard. I will advise the sender not to bother again. AM
This is absolutely ridiculous. What the hell does invalid key mean? I mean honestly…I was sent a message from Italy. I didn’t even get a website just a message in Italian telling me to go to vodafone.it and get my message using this pass code. When you go to the website all it says is register…login etc etc. Well I live in the US I obviously don’t have that service. You go to MMS and it wants you to sign in. Then I found this site and thought oh…how stupid they don’t even have a link. It says “invalid key”…whatever that means. So, I told them to either email it to me or just forget it. VODAFONE SUCKS!!! Honestly, I know how much they charge people, the service sucks, at least make your SITES user friendly and break on into the REAL WORLD!!
lol jesus christ i thot it was just me and then i read this, i recieved a PXT from someone i live in england and im on O2 the txt i got from vodafone gave me a temp password but it had not username or nething telling me how to logg in and i was sitting for hours trying to figure out to how to let me logg in and its failed for the past 3 hours so basically i give up lol its bloody useless