South African Website Designers Ignore Basic Search Engine Requirements. Clients of These Designers Would Be Really mad If They Knew ...

I wrote this letter to one of the national newspapers after the FutureX show held in May 2004. This show finally convinced me of what I'd always suspected. A great deal of money was being wasted on web sites that frankly could never work (ie attract customers in large numbers using search engines). Most websites were created like beautiful motor cars ... without an engine in the car thereby reducing the value of the beautiful car to zero.

SIR

The four days Futurex show at Sandton last week appears to have been an exceptionally successful marketing event in that it seemed to attract lots of highly targeted visitors... those interested in future trends and the internet and communications world in particular. However I wish I could say the future potential of the vast majority of websites of the exhibiting companies was also as exciting.

By the end of the show it had become obvious to us that most web designers and website owners were unaware of even the basic requirements that mattered in getting a website found on the already crowded internet.

In an effort to try and better comprehend what we seemed to have identified as a major lack of understanding about website design, development and purpose within the communications and information technology areas of South African Industry we looked at the websites of every exhibitor who had published their website address in the show catalogue. We seemed to identify a sorry state of affairs within these "leading" marketing and communications companies' internet capabilities .... anyone interested in wanting to know any details can access the internet directory web page that we have created to see how poorly these sites in the main were set up. Here is the web page address for the directory that was created... http://www.seoza.com/futurexlinks.htm

In taking a look at the link subject and site description text the only question any manager or website owner needs to ask is "Does this directory entry text create excitement about the benefits my company offers to any potential internet customer and based on this are they highly likely to click through to the company website?"

The information in the directory has come from the website concerned without any editing whatsoever. We even struggled to place many websites into appropriate categories so poor was the information on some websites.

We identified a number of serious deficiencies. The deficiencies highlighted were measured against the overriding objective for any website .... Let your website be found by the maximum number of targeted visitors so that future internet marketing efforts can be geared to satisfying the lifetime needs of those potential customers who visited the website.

These are the major points that we identified from this ad hoc "research." We deliberately excluded foreign exhibitors' websites

Of 159 published websites well in excess of 90% were highly unlikely ever to be found on any search engine when important keywords and phrases relating to the particular market sector concerned were entered into the search box of a search engine.
The vast majority of the websites viewed were company-focused and NOT customer-focused.
A large percentage did not tell the reader of the site what the site actually did in a way any normal person could understand. The level of gobbledygook and computer speak was alarming.
The sites were full of Flash design, frames, and other unimportant design approaches that worked against the websites ever being found on South African or any other search engines ... it does appear highly likely that web designers with no internet marketing knowledge INSTEAD OF senior knowledgeable company marketers are being allowed to position many large companies for the future. In our opinion this cannot be correct.

This situation reminds us of the problem, as we perceive it, existing in South Africa around call centres ... what should have been a major step forward in customer service is actually frustrating customers and insulating company management from real problems within a company. It is a kind of abdication of real responsibility.

Of the many people we spoke to at Futurex who had functioning websites hardly any knew how many visitors their sites were attracting
Very few websites actually provided any mechanism to collect information (eg permission-based email addresses) for future marketing efforts.
With only minor exceptions did any site call for any action to be carried out ... like visit our online store now, buy now or download our price list or catalogue now.
Many millions of Rands were spent by the exhibiting companies ... the time has come for the same companies to spend a few hundreds to fix up their future internet marketing efforts or continue to pay to remain lost in cyberspace.

Tony Roocroft

011-454-0105