Really bad company websites are organised around a business's internal structure - they reflect what departments the business has (which no one else gives a toss about), as opposed to reflecting what customers want or how they think.
The Ryder Cup site marks a new low in making your website reflect your organisation's internal structure.
For some reason, the first thing you have to do when you get to the official Ryder Cup website is choose to look at Team Europe or Team USA.
And then you're shown completely different content.
So want the news about Friday's fourball pairings? TOUGH if you've chosen Team USA. That's Team Europe news you loser.
See - here's the Team Europe news for today.
Here's the Team USA news for today.
This goes on. Want the official Ryder Cup Guide? That's Team USA information - keep out you cheese eating surrender monkeys.
I could go on. I won't.
Basically, to keep up to date with the Ryder Cup on its official site, you have to trawl round two different websites that reflect the team structure, not what golf fans want to know (Times / Sunday Times people - please pay attention and get rid of the Sunday Times site).
FORE!
Malcolm Coles is Director at Digital Sparkle and a guest blogger for Econsultancy. He also blogs at malcolmcoles.co.uk. You can follow him on Twitter here.
9:08AM on 1st October 2010
I think this is a case of someone having a quirky idea, which on the front of it may sound good, but in reality nobody has thought about how the website is used, Its almost trying to create a tribal; feeling, when the page loads you need to pick sides before you can continue!
I like the idea, i think if it can be more user friendly it would work. Kind of doesn't work for neutrals though
9:42AM on 1st October 2010
Hi Malcolm,
I think you critique seems pretty harsh but fair from a user perspective. Seems like the most obvious thing they have missed is another button on the homepage that says General info/where's it taking place/how to buy tickets etc etc
I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time. Just completely forgot and lost sight of the user....Doh!
Adrian
10:31AM on 1st October 2010
The biggest reason that the Ryder Cup website sucks is that it's got golf on it.
8:47AM on 4th October 2010
Sadly it too often seems that the only way website owners can conceive of tailoring content is to do it from the very top down, rather than offering filtering options at the point that the user has found the type of content they want.
So at the exact time it splits users into Team USA or Team Europe the site also splits users into those who will and won’t return to the site again.
Managing Director at 120 Feet Ltd
2:42PM on 4th October 2010
Got to agree. Poor web site layout and design. 'News' is not sufficiently up to date and lacks detail to keep 'fans' interested. Overall 3 out of 10 which is not good enough given the size of the audience, likely budget and how much time they had to plan the site.
Managing Director at 120 Feet Ltd
3:21PM on 4th October 2010
We all complain and the site crashes :-)