My title at work is Web Usability Manager and despite the fact that there are some really unusable sites out there, I don’t often rag on a site for it’s lack of usability here on daddyo. But tonight before ordering some pizza for the kids and myself, I stopped by Hungryhowies.com to see what specials they have and I just have to vent.
On the homepage there is a link to the specials. I click on the link and – nothing, just a blank browser window. I try again, and again nothing.
Strike 1: Turns out the link is to a PDF and I don’t have Acrobat installed on this machine. If you’re gonna link to a PDF, and especially on a homepage, let people know you need Acrobat to see the page.
Okay, so I decide it’s time to install Acrobat. I got through the tedious process of installing it. Now it’s installed and I click the link and…. nothing.
Strike 2: The page will only open using IE (note: on Daddyo.com, almost 30% of my traffic is with non-IE browsers).
Having gone this far I have to see the bloody PDF so I open IE (sigh) and bring up Hungryhowies.com and click on the link, and bingo, the PDF is loading in a new browser window, and loading and loading…
Strike 3: The damn PDF takes so long to load because it’s 3 stinkin’ MB in size. The stupid PDF has finally loaded, and what do I get with my 3MB PDF file? A one page version of a paper flier.
A 3MB one page PDF linked from their homepage – UNUSABLE. What is the matter with these people? Who designed that site? I honestly don’t understand what people are thinking when they design a site with those kinds of flaws. I guess they are targeting their site for users of Internet 2.
