Hey marketing and website design people.. wake the heck up and stop making websites worse

I’ve been browsing many equipment and technology websites lately, and I have to say I’m really disappointed a lot of the website redesigns.

It never ceases to amaze me when equipment dealers and other Ag businesses spend tens of thousands of dollars to “modernize” their web sites and they end up with a barely functional website which looks like some kind of cross between Facebook and a crappy photo gallery.

 

Things that suck about “modern” equipment / Ag company websites…

1. Website has less information than before the redesign
   WTH is the point of a website if it doesn’t have the information I’m looking for?… are you people intentionally hiding basic contact information like phone / email / address? .. and for the folks who still send fax
2. Menus here, menus there, symbols and graphics without text everywhere
   I don’t want to have to hover over a GD button to figure out what the hell it is.. PUT TEXT ON EVERYTHING, even if it’s tiny in size

   Worse yet, I can’t hover over a menu or button on a tablet, smartphone, or anything else with a touchscreen

   Multiple horizontal and vertical menus are confusing enough for me, imagine how frustrated less technologically proficient people must feel

3. Pages load slow, or not at all
   Do you city slickers with your fiber internet connections not realize we are lucky to have 3-10 mbps internet connection in the country.. and that’s on a good clear day before the kids and 9-5 people get home to stream music, YouTube, and Netflix
4. The search function sucks
   If your search function isn’t the equivalent of google in terms of accuracy and power, you might as well not have one
5. Used equipment section hard to find and sorting features have been degraded or hardly exist
   There’s still a huge glut of used equipment.. don’t you want to promote used, make it easy to find, and easy to sort/filter?
6. No “view full desktop site” option
   This drives me nuts… slightly less info on a mobile website is fine, but at least give me the option of viewing the full website on a mobile device.
7. Weird redirects
   If I click the back button, I want to go back one step… I shouldn’t have to click it multiple times, or end up multiple steps backwards… And along with this, I-Frames or other inline websites that don’t allow me to link to a particular page or listing
8. Tiny pictures
   If I have to take a screenshot of a picture just to zoom in, you’re doing it wrong.. full screen should always be an option.. and for video too
9. No directory or sitemap
   No better way to get pointed in the right direction, especially for technology or product support information
10. Not quickly answering “contact us” forms
    Self-explanatory here.. And by the way, look at what consumer tech and automotive comp’s are doing.. online chat is really the future
11. No clear option to print / or printing doesn’t work right
    Some folks still like to use paper you know
12. No pricing
    Why list anything at all?.. and Ag technology companies, you may have recognized (or not) by now farmers don’t like paying $xx.xx per acre for something they can’t physically touch, but hiding pricing isn’t going to make that situation any better