Virtu Ferries Website Fail
Today, while searching for prices to take my car from Malta to Sicily on the ferry, I was confronted by the above gem from a website that time forgot.
OK, Virtu Ferries, let me educate you for a moment…
- I am not using Mozilla. See that little Google logo at the top right?
- My browser version is not unknown. It’s 4.1.249.1064.
- The browser I use has approximately 8% market share worldwide.
I thought the practice of sniffing a browser’s name and version in order to determine how to display a site went out with flares and mohicans. Sadly it looks like the company that designed this rubbish, who apparently rejoice under the name of Intercomp Softweb Ltd, haven’t realised it’s the 21st century.
Let’s see what happens if we use Firefox (which has approximately 31% worldwide market share).
Yes, that’s right folks, they’ll kindly let you proceed, but not without telling you that you should really only be using Internet Explorer 7 (you know, the one that was replaced by Internet Explorer 8). Not only that, as you can see the icing on the cake is a loading message – another throwback from – well, whenever it was that loading messages were acceptable.
And the pièce de résistance? Opening it using Internet Explorer 8 (the newest and presumably better version of the browser they recommend) brings up the same display as Firefox. That’s right folks, in order to get the best experience from this website, you should not only avoid all non-Microsoft browsers, but you should also downgrade your browser to an obsolete version. There is absolutely no excuse for this.
You will have gathered two things by now; firstly, that I am holding this website up as an example of very bad practice, and secondly, that I sometimes tend towards sarcasm. But can you blame me, when I see the web profession failing its customers so spectacularly? Users neither need nor appreciate these limitations on their browsing, and it’s probably a good job that Virtu Ferries have a monopoly on the Malta-Sicily ferry route, because annoyed or confused website visitors tend to hit the back button.
25 May 2010
Browsers, Opinion, Usability
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As a postscript, when I finally checked out the prices (using a different website – I have my pride), it turns out that 2 people + car going to Sicily for a 5 day break costs over €500 using the ferry – significantly more than twice the cost of taking 2 cheap flights and renting a small car.
Instances like these are really annoying! Businesses should cater to people or the customers and not customers catering to the business! Customers are always right.
I got a screen similar to that one while checking the site on Safari. It says:
This website cannot be viewed using Safari 531.22
It works from Firefox 3.6.3 running on an Apple. Pretty funny though how you can’t view it on all browsers and optimal viewing is on IE7!
The site actually looks half way decent. Too bad they’re loosing so many customers from browser negligence.
That would annoy me too but it’s their loss.
I’ll tell you what irritates me aswell are the websites that get on their high horse about Firefox. I do use Firefox but sometimes switch to IE (when it crashes). I dislike the “smug little messages” some websites will leave for you if you browse them in IE.
“Please upgrade your browser to Firefox” and usually something like…”because it’s better
”
The webmasters should optimize the sites for all browsers which is not impossible to do these days. I understand that some apps work better in one browser but with all the different options out there today, it’s a smart business move to make browser compatibility at the top of their priority list.
Customers are always right to a point. We must guide them to help them make better decisions. That is why they hire us.
I agree with you all. It is really unacceptable to have such silly messages. IE8 is supposed to be better than IE7, afterall isn’t that the point of upgrading. I can’t honestly believe that they would want you to downgrade. Someone needs to do a better job creating that site.
I use Firefox, sometimes Chrome, but very rarely IE. Now, my default browser is Firefox, but I have ran into a number of sites where I had to switch the browser. But, when you have a site of the company like this, this is just crazy. They probably don’t know about browser statistics.
Sites like this is just embarrassing considering which year this is. I wonder if they realise how much money they’re losing because of it?
I agree that businesses need to keep their sites up-to-date and accessible with the latest browsers. I’ve found that some business owners don’t really consider their website to be their first line of business/service and tend to ignore their sites after they’re initially built. All you can do is try to educate people, I guess. Congratulations on doing that, by the way.
That is ridiculous in this day and age. IE is on its way out with Chrome and Firefox taking over.
Its one thing to have your site display slightly different across multiple browsers but a whole other animal to refuse them to view the sight for using a different browser. With CS3 and all the advancements that continue to take place, it would be relatively simple to make your site viewable and functional across all browsers.
Ronald makes a good point, they must be losing a small fortune if this still has not been fixed.