Carrier websites: rock or suck?
MTN seem to have recently updated their website. I’m glad to see the layout is much nicer/cleaner. There is better consistency with typefaces. And the banners aren’t as tacky. Also the navigation is now in black as opposite to the horrid metallic grey gradient they use to have. Love love love the greys.
Design: The search box is a little wonky and I really don’t know about the italics, especially for headings and nav sections. The about page links to some server ip address which doesn’t seem to work – http://10.1.205.43/mtnnigeria/index.php/about.html. Going deeper into the site, all the other pages are consistent, maintaining the same 2 col layout and colours.
Semantics: It definitely isn’t 100% accessible. Semantics aren’t so bad but could be much better – everything seems to be a “class” no “ids”? Lets just a blind person wouldn’t like this site much.
Glo World seems to be glo-ing a bit too much it seems. If I had a dollar for every tacky gradient on this site, I’d probably be able to afford an economy ticket to Lagos on the new “Nigerian Eagle”. Gradients rock, but gradients used the wrong suck so hard you’d think they were vampires. The sad part is I do remember the very first Glo website, with lots of circular Glo balls. Where did that go???
Design: Apart from the excessive use of green and the gradients, I’m not sure this can be called design. If there is a layout I can’t see it. If this company so much as has web guidelines I’d be shocked. Oh Glo and I love you so. I spend so much money each month you’d think that alone could afford them a “decent” excuse for a website.
Semantics: This surely looks like the matrix with lots of tables.
Seeing green used with much more subtlely almost seems like heaven. In a country where as Ty Bello put it, the land is “Green” (it really is) the last thing we need is any more green overload. So far Etisalat wins best practices for layout and grid usage. Everything is above the fold and it certainly isn’t over bearing to navigate.
Design: The design is very clean. I like it. The diagonal stripes for the background is a bit dated, very 2005-esque. It works but it could be better and the banner images might need a bit of a face lift. Too many outer-glow effects and drop shadows. Also what is with the third blank white call to action box. Going deeper into the site, all the pages are consistent, great use of whitespace with subtle hints of green. If MTN hadn’t made the overhaul these guys sure would be the winners.
Semantics: My comments are almost exactly the same as with MTN Online, but they do have lots of ids and classes so thats good to see. Albeit for JS usage.
Last but certainly not the least (especially when you have a Glo World in the list) is Zain Nigeria. Their welcome page showing all the regions they cover is nice. All the intentions for a grid are there but they don’t see successful. I do like that they have lots of colours but perhaps a bit too many? It becomes a bit hard to see the hierarchy of information.
Design: Keeping the colours to around four is safe. If you’re going to use more than four (minus additional media) you really need to be careful. Perhaps there are bit too many colours here. That was going to be my only comment until I navigated to another page and so the double scroll areas. That is a no no no. When your web page is already way over the fold, what is the point of having another scrollable area?
Semantics: The amount of tables in this probably give Glo World a run for their money. W3C standards anyone?
All in all MTN wins this one, followed by Etisalat, then Zain and the pityful excuse for a website by Glo World
Gosh… your comments are so on point. Being into web development and all, I’ve always wondered why the telecomms industry in Nigeria does not pay any attention to little design details. Infact, it may be a nationwide phenomenon as most Nigerian sites I have seen seem to have been designed by a colour blind person. Some times minimalistic designs are the best, less is usually more. You really have said all there is to say, I wish more web designers would work at this.
Ps:Love the minimal feel to your site.
Cheers!xoxo
Thanks for the kind words Jae. Glad you like the site. Your twitter username is quite clever
It still remains a bit of mystery to me too but I think the reason is a vicious cycle. The standards are low – the market is used to this, the clients don’t know any better or don’t see the point fo being any better (seeing as the majority of the market wouldnt care regardless). And so its a feast of mediocrity until someone decides to break out of the cycle – and I think that will only come from us the designers putting great work out there.
The cycle is gonna be hard to break out of because good designs come at a cost. I mean, these companies don’t see the fact that brand representation (especially via the web) is part of a global image. On the other hand, designers are usually just under-skilled or under-utilizing their skill.They should take a cue from the T-Mobile website [ http://www.t-mobile.com/I ], which is one I think that delivers both on functionality and usability. I should stop here before I write a whole blog in this commentary section:)
In the spirit of sharing,I see you are equally a design enthusaist and I must say I have bookmarks to envy should you ever need some form of “inspiration”.
[...] in all it is a pretty well rounded website and following our previous post on carrier websites, a second review would surely put Glo right on [...]