Comments on: Enterprise Ireland Doesn’t Look Too Good

By: Better Websites | Search Engine Optimisation Ireland .:. Red Cardinal

Better Websites | Search Engine Optimisation Ireland .:. Red Cardinal — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 10:43:49 +0000

[...] If you would like to see an excellent example of what can happen when a web site works only in one browser take a glimpse at what happened Enterprise Ireland. [...]

By: Richard Hearne

Richard Hearne — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 15:27:27 +0000

EI have fixed the site – see the update at the top of the post.

By: Richard Hearne

Richard Hearne — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 12:19:03 +0000

It appears changes are afoot over at EI.

I’m not quite sure why they have migrated these particular changes into production however – the pages still do not render 100% correctly.

Not to detract too much though – it is a welcome sign that they are actively working to resolve the issues

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 23:31:53 +0000

thanks for the reply. Yes, it was either outsourced somewhere where they didn’t care about the basics or the tender was awarded to some company that their sales skills far outweighted their actual development skills and ethics.

Oh well, maybe one of our comapnies will get to do it….properly.

As I mentioned earlier, it has been like this for a long time and I contacted them about 7 months ago about the issue. They don’t seem to see that this is a problem.

By: Richard Hearne

Richard Hearne — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 19:55:32 +0000

Hi Dave

I have a feeling what you have here is a classic example of outsourcing the design/development and in-sourcing the maintenance.

I’m sure it wont stay like this for too much longer

Thanks for posting

Rgds

Richard.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 19:36:17 +0000

This has been like this forever. I actually left the site many times because of this.

“As the baton carrier for Irish business around the globe I think Enterprise Ireland need to conduct some serious compatibility and usability tests on their website.”

Agreed. It’s a shame that companies that produce work like that actually get awarded the tenders in the first place. Hopefully, as the world becomes more educated on standards and accessibility, flagship websites like this will be a thing of the past.

By: danger

danger — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 20:34:40 +0000

Good work Richard!

By: Richard Hearne

Richard Hearne — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 17:17:13 +0000

Well as I received no response from EI to my email I gave them a call today.

They took my details and fair enough I did later receive an email from Mary Cloak (On-line Marketing Manager) to let me know they are redesiging the website.

By: Richard Hearne

Richard Hearne — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 20:03:30 +0000

Just read the page and I see that they state that they delivered the pages over to EI.

Sorry – thought you might have been an insider

By: Buzz

Buzz — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 19:51:24 +0000

A google search for ” ‘enterprise ireland’ ‘web design’ ” (without the outer quotes) returned the page I linked to on the first page, and I got all the info there.

By: Richard Hearne

Richard Hearne — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 19:45:11 +0000

Hello again Mr. Lightyear

If you pop back in I would love to know where you are sourcing your information.

Best rgds

Richard.

By: Buzz

Buzz — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 19:27:31 +0000

Perhaps we should be careful blaming arekibo. As I said, they are a fairly reputable company. They say they handed templates over to the internal content management system in EI, perhaps something happened them there?

Just in case!

By: Richard Hearne

Richard Hearne — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 17:33:23 +0000

Hi Buzz

Well surprise, surprise they also provide the ‘Information Management System’ for none other than Funda.ie.

See here.

I see they also do usability studies.

Nice find Buzz

Thanks for posting

Rgds

Richard.

By: Buzz

Buzz — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 17:18:10 +0000

Is this the culprit? Seems like a reputable firm. Horrid URLs on their site though.

http://tinyurl.com/onc22

By: Richard Hearne

Richard Hearne — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 14:29:03 +0000

I’m curious to discover whether the development was internal or outsourced?

Actually I really just hope that they fix it. It portrays a poor image of Ireland at the moment – IT hub of Europe and we can’t even build a website.

By: danger

danger — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 14:24:44 +0000

Broken on ie7…safari 2.0 on mac…all versions of firefox. Looks like all it does work on are ie6 and lower.

By: Richard Hearne

Richard Hearne — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 13:19:47 +0000

Thanks for that danger

When people who are using the web every day are failing to see the mailto links it makes you wonder how the average visitor is going to get on.

Will wait for browsershots to do its thing and hopefully post a screenie from IE7 later today.

Rgds

Richard.

By: danger

danger — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 13:01:50 +0000

No I didn’t report it, I looked briefly for a webmaster email address, and didn’t catch the link you spotted at the bottom of the email form.

As for your question on IE7, I logged the enterprise ireland website on browsershots, and the results should be available from here within 30 mins:

http://v03.browsershots.org/website/…eland.com/#success

Cheers!

By: Enterprise Ireland Broken - Michele Neylon :: Pensieri

Enterprise Ireland Broken - Michele Neylon :: Pensieri — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 12:28:33 +0000

[...] Richard goes into depth to explain its issues, so I won’t bother Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]

By: Richard Hearne

Richard Hearne — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 11:40:34 +0000

Hi danger

So I presume you didn’t manage to report the problem to them directly?

I have a feeling that if their site development is out-sourced they may need to rethink the contract.

Thanks for posting.

Rgds

Richard

By: danger

danger — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 11:09:17 +0000

I went through a very similar thought process when I noticed the same problem a few weeks ago and went through the same process to try and get an email address but stopped short of how far you got. It is very surprising to see it, especially a problem that is so obvious when you open it in such a popular browser.