And instead hunting down people that tell them the truth they should concentrate on making a better product (in my opinion anyway). I guess that they prefer not to know what are the issues for their customers in using their product. That doesn’t seem to be a very smart move, but sadly its true.

Just the zillions of folks who like this cool product and who do not like looking like a pasty slug

(a) Intelligent – the web server at the other end notices you are using a mobile device, and gives you a special low bandwidth, low screen resolution version of the site.
(b) Flexible – the website is designed to scale well to most conceivable screen sizes, and is designed for relatively low bandwidth requirements in the first place.
(c) At least you can see it – The website is not optimised or designed for mobile devices, but it sends the same information it would to an ordinary computer and you can view it.
(d) Really really dumb – The web server looks at your details and sends you an error message telling you that your screen is too small and/or you are using a browser it doesn’t recognise. (The more hilarious examples of this then redirect you to the Internet Explorer page at Microsoft so you can “upgrade” to a compatible browser).

Of these, (a) and (b) are both fine. (c) demonstrates designers who have probably not thought anything through, as there are proxy sites that can convert a (c) site to something resembling a (b) before anything is actually transmitted over the airwaves. (The Opera mobile and Opera mini browsers use one automatically – they are very clever). People responsible for (d) need to be taken out and shot though. It is again this idea that if you are not using the hardware they are thinking of or the internet in exactly the way they think you should, then the fault is yours. This really improves my respect for a company, obviously.

There seems little connection between the size or type of company and which category they fall into. (The BBC is an (a) and Time magazine is a (d), for instance. While I utterly detest the BBC, this means that it is my main news source when I travel.

You can force colours, fonts, layouts all easily within IE, if you’re willing to mess with FireFox extensions you can do far more.

At some point I expect someone to say we need a way to slave the browser to the server. Encrypting the source on the host so only the browser (and not user) can read it – and forcing the browser to render the page as directed by server (Out goes add blocking software!).

Always worth having a quick look at the source of any noteworthy page – so much information gets left in that does not get displayed.

But, Fake Tan – Don’t see the point! Who wants to look like they’ve been got by the Daystar?

Disabling active scripting in IE security settings will stop the Java Script on the page interupting the right click menu.

You can also use View -> Source in IE and grab the text from the HTML.

Flash websites and lifting text from inside images can be tricky, but it’s allways doable.

The topic of corporate websites which totally disregard the aims of the customer (aka ‘user’ – I’m a beauty addict, not a smack addict, thankyouverymuch) is one dear to our hearts at Jack & Hill. The people green-lighting these sites (I’m convinced much of the stupidity is down to agencies showing clients very slick sites where they control all look and functionality, and the client thinking that’s great, and totally ignoring the customer) seemingly have no idea how evangelism-proof they are making their brands. As I blogged on one occasion, “Make it as easy as possible for women like us to spend money on your products, to spread the word about them, and to help build your brand without you having to spend a penny. Now, it’s easier than ever. Ignorance is no excuse; it’s shameful.”

We have blogged many pleas to companies, begging them to show one ounce of sensibility when using the web to communicate with customers. Time and again, they screw themselves quite unnecessarily with customer-hostile technology (like disabling right-click functionality, or holding pertinent information hostage in PDFs). If you’re interested, here is just a tiny sample of brands we’ve blogged about whose websites show that they need some serious schooling in the most basic of skills: having empathy and consideration for those who pay their wages.

Proctor & Gamble (and ThisWorks)

L’Oreal

Lacoste

Lancome

If you dig deeper into our archives, you can also find us railing against the evangelism-proof sites of Frederick Fekkai, Pierre Michel, A+ Skin Care, and many others. Sooner or later, these brands are going to get hit – hard – with a clue-by-four about what the internet is actually about.

Again, thanks for leading me to Holiday Skin! My friends and mother-in-law thank you too.

As a user of a minority platform I’m accustomed to working around webmaster foolishness but, you’re correct of course, this is indeed an own-goal by J&J.