Over at TechCrunch today, Michael Arrington shared his findings on the messed up WalMart Video Download Store on Firefox. Although from the comments it seems that the problem can be fixed with a hard refresh on Firefox, for my case, every single page needs to be hard refreshed! Its not going to work this way.
So it seems WalMart is not doing their work to make sure the pages load nicely in both IE and Firefox!
Here is the screenshot in IE:
And here is the mess in Firefox!
To tell the truth – I wouldn’t believe they were the exact same site! Come to think of it, its not an easy task to pull off, this one! How did they get the sites to look so different between browsers?
I think this really serves as a reminder for us to always test across browsers – and IMO, at least on IE, Firefox, and Opera (and even better with Safari). Like one commenter said
when your site looks like this, expect them to never come back.
This also reminds us about usability in optimization – some of us are so caught up in the SEO process that we neglect the aesthetic appeal. I think ultimately, there must be a good balance between optimizing for humans verses search engine bots. That, I think, is what a true SEO expert capable of.
If it works after a “hard refresh” the culprit is usually the CSS file.
So simplicity in website design is also important. 🙂
Definitely, the simpler the code, the faster it takes for spiders to read and understand – in fact, I would say that would be one of the factors why “Google loves blogs” – blogs have a very plain site HTML structure most of the time.
Hi Kian Ann,
I agreed with you, but for those who are technically challenge there will be a problem. But Blog can save their life if this is a problem to them!
John
http://www.JohnTanBlog.com
That’s true too John – I think default blog templates do help, especially for the less tech savvy.
Well – to make matters worse – I tried the service yesterday and after waiting some 15 – 20 minutes after having paid (this is also announced after you have paid in all fairness) – the video started downloading.
After completing the download – it refuses to play – in the “Media Usage Rights Acquisition” window the Wallmart video homepage is loading and nothing else happens.
I could not find any link to complain..!
omg… what’s up with WalMart? They really ought to do more consumer testing before they release a product the next round… and they’d better get this video store issue done up and well!
Here is a bit more details on my experience:
http://macseason.com/2007/02/15/the-walmart-experience/
Thanks MacSeason for sharing! 🙂