We’ve been working on a social media listening platform in recent weeks and as a result we’re increasingly in tune with what people are saying about web design in the UK. We couldn’t help but notice that Birmingham City Council have been taking some flak over their recently launched website. Not surprising when you consider the fact it finally crawled over the finishing line 6 months behind schedule and seriously over budget at £2.8 million. I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s an incredible sum of money for a website.
Aside from the fact this website cost significantly more than it needed to, it’s also a website that doesn’t do what it’s supposed to. It doesn’t contain links to council meetings and agendas, the only way to find the information is through a search, which yesterday directed users to a broken link. Glyn Evans, director of business transformation at the council and the man with overall responsibility for the project, defended the lack of a link saying,
“How many of our residents are actually interested in council meetings?”
We’re no experts in councils here at Fluid, but simple common sense tells us that having a decent display of council meetings and agendas would be a fairly important section of a £2.8 million website for a local council.
“They are interested in finding out about what events are on and big issues like the library. These big items are of critical importance to our residents” he added.
If the library is a critical issue for the residents of Birmingham then they are ill served by the service on the new website. After two clicks from the main page we were taken to a less than convenient and memorable link:
http://birmingham.gov.uk/cs/Satellite/learningwithlibraries?packedargs=website%3D1&rendermode=live
Or if we had built the site:
Not only does the URL fail in being user friendly, demonstrating that no thought has been given to usability or SEO, once you get to your destination you are faced with an ugly block of text, bad graphics, grammar mistakes, and are left wondering, “where is the library service?” The page randomly contains “Please use font style sheet instead” half way through the already poorly written content.
Moving away from the catastrophe of the library portal, choose at random any topic on the left and examine how confusing the navigation system becomes. Topics randomly highlight in dark blue, leaving you clueless as to where you are or how you got there. Once you are there, wherever ‘there’ might be, you’re faced with stock option blue links, bullet points, and ugly fonts. Blue links stopped being acceptable in 1999 and here we are ten years later and Birmingham residents have been charged through the roof to have them on their website.
To add to the list of poor design woes there’s white space everywhere, no thought has been given to standardising layouts, images have no borders, icons are blurry, and don’t get us started on the code. View the source of any page you like, there’s more white space in it than a disused American refrigerator. Oh we’re yet to find a single RSS feed anywhere on the site, you can draw your own conclusions from that.
There’s a possibility we’re beginning to be pedantic, but it’s sites like this that really grind our gears. Such a senseless waste of money on a project that could have delivered wonderful and worthwhile results. We’re not alone in our critique of the site, Jake Grimley, managing director of Birmingham web designers Made Media, described the website as an “abomination”
“The website is absolutely littered with beginner’s mistakes. And content from the old website appears to just have been cut and pasted in with no quality checking whatsoever.”
Clive Reeves, PR Director at Ward Lovett in Birmingham described it as“an expensive disappointment”
“This looks like a project that’s been controlled by a committee made up of people who don’t quite know what they’re looking for, what’s achievable or even what they really want.”
If we set aside the horrendous structure, layout, navigation, content, and usability you’re left with the visual design. Show the logo to a designer and they’re far from impressed. When I demonstrated the site to our designers I was met with responses like ‘why the horrible blue background?…Why has it been drawn in crayon?…Blue and pink do not go…’ A few minutes after ‘polluting their eyes’ by showing them the website they sent me an email. If only they’d have come to Fluid.
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