Website Annoyances and Suggestions

[wardrop]

Hi Exetel,

I have a few usability issues and suggestions to raise with your website. All of these are relatively easy to address, but will make the website less frustrating to use for members and potential new customers.

Using flash on the home page is unnecessary. It serves no advantage over the "static" HTML page - moving clouds don't really impress anyone these days, and the effect can be achieved in many ways using standard HTML/CSS/JavaScript. Flash is a plugin I block by default with my browser - it's a resource hog, causes browser instability, and is normally the platform of choice for intrusive advertising - as a service that attracts power users, I'd imagine many of your others customers do the same. There's a more fundamental problem I find however, and that is that by using flash, you don't get all the things you get for free with standard HTML. For example, the flash login form for members doesn't submit when you press the enter key, and browser features such as remembered passwords and auto-fill do not work with proprietary flash.

All of the issues in the previous paragraph can be resolved by getting rid of the flash home page in favour of the "static" page.

Another annoyance I face as a member is that the "members" link at the bottom of the home page links to "http://exetel.com.au/login" which is an older login page with a different theme. This link should be updated to "http://exetel.com.au/members", and "/login" should redirect to "/members" as there's no doubt numerous other links incorrectly pointing at "/login".

I'll leave at that for now. Getting rid of the flash home page and fixing that login link shouldn't take more than 15 minutes, but it would resolve annoyances I've had for over a year. I encourage other members to take the opportunity to provide any other website-orientated feedback below.

Cheers,
Tom

[Saliya Pinto]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for your great suggestions. We will inform these suggestions to our development team. Also note that there is already a link located at the bottom of the home page ("Click here for the non-Flash version") which would take you to the non flash version of page.

[jokiin]

I know the flash front page had been mentioned many times before and the suggestion was always to bookmark the non flash version if that's what you prefer, old fashioned as it may be I believe it was that way because John liked it that way, I suspect it has possibly been left that way out of respect

no harm in asking but just providing a bit of background on the issue

the login suggestion makes sense though I feel

[bilby]

One other minor point that could be improved easily. In the detailed ADSL usage page (https://www.exetel.com.au/myexetel/serv ... /xxxxxxxxx), the numbers in the columns are left justified. It would be easier to read and compare the numbers if they were right justified.

Thanks