Surely this could be simpler...

[uncle tom]

Whilst I was away in the far east recently, I sought to find out what wine sales Sothebys were having in London this autumn.

Attempting to access their site on my notebook was a nightmare - images were appearing over text, including links. I managed to establish that there was a London sale on the 18th, but couldn't get into the catalogue.

- Do Sothebys web-designers test their work on anything other than a desktop PC? - perhaps not..

My internet connection was also not the fastest, (although fast enough to stream video) and navigation was horribly slow.

- But then no-one in the far east buys wine from Sothebys, do they? Oh hang on...

So, I'm trying again, now back in blighty, and on my office PC. The site loads fast enough, but then confronts me with an untidy menu bar in pointlessly varying fonts.

Should I click on 'Auction' [singular] or 'Departments'? On my notebook, a title called 'Preferred access' overlaid other menu items and did nothing when I clicked it.

I try 'departments', followed by 'wine' followed by 'upcoming auctions'

'Upcoming auctions' is not endowed with a link, but next to it are the words 'View all'

A list of sales appears - first up is 'Alexander Calder: Works on paper from 1930-1976'

- Was Mr Calder also a great wine buff? Who knows - or cares..

I persevere, and scroll down.

I find the sale on the 18th at the bottom of the page, and hooray! The link to 'browse catalogue' is visible - on my notebook it was off the page edge with no scroll bar to reach it, or reason to know that it was there.

The catalogue appears as 1-12 of 659 - I try the option of 'view all', which takes a long time to load

I scroll down ”“ there are no photos.

Now you might think that one owc looks much the same as any other, but the appearance of owcs can yield a few clues as to how well it’s been looked after.

There is also no word on provenenace.

- But of course, providing photos and provenence information is such a chore. Surely no-one would be concerned about such matters when shelling out a mere £11k for eight bottles of Haut Brion ’61? And of course, think of the workload ”“ Sothebys will only be making about £3000 from selling that lot.

The HB 61 was lot 381 ”“ after clicking to look at the details, I hit the back button only to find myself back at lot 1, in 12 items to the page mode again.

This is very irritating.

Is there a PDF of the catalogue? There is no link on the front page, but there is a link called ‘details’ ”“ which leads me to links to a PDF catalogue and separate one for the index.

This is good, but why aren’t these links on the page before?

The title of the sale includes the words ‘Featuring the collection of the Dowager Countess Rothermere’ which I take to mean including other items as well ”“ yes/no? But if there are other provenenced items, there is no clarity as to where the one finishes and the others commence, rendering this piece of provenence info worthless.

The catalogue contains a number of photos, but they are taken to be pretty, rather than informative.

There is just one port lot in the sale ”“ lot 226, a case of Fonseca ‘63

I’m tired now!

[djewesbury]

I have to admit to finding it not quite as troublesome to navigate... I'm looking at it on a Macbook, I went to Auction, then clicked on London, Wine, and the Rothermere auction came up. yes, the first page with the 12-item view, no details, and no pictures is pretty useless. And a more prominent link to the PDF catalogue would be good (the 'details' tab is pretty nondescript and not immediately obvious on launching the page).

But the lack of information is something I've become used to in auction catalogues - they can't be bothered, generally, and will only supply provenance or condition information on request. This is frustrating but I don't think Sotheby's are the only culprits, nor the worst....

[Andy Velebil]

I find most auction houses have horrible websites. Heritage, Sotheby's, Aker, and the like are simply a pain to try and navigate and use on a computer. Good luck on a mobile device.

With all the money they make you would think they would develop a user friendly site across various formats.

[LGTrotter]

As a died in the wool technophobe I assumed it was just me, (but then isn't it always about me) so I am relieved to hear others struggle too. Christies I find equally lugubrious, it often seems that the provincial auction houses having not so much to spend on bells and whistles are easier to navigate and load faster.

[g-man]

use a supported browser like the latest IE or opera

fixes most problems

[uncle tom]

use a supported browser like the latest IE or opera

fixes most problems

I strongly suspect that most fine wine buyers have only a vague idea of what is meant by 'use a supported browser' and not the slightest idea how to find out whether a given browser is 'supported' or not..

And I'm probably not the only person who has never heard of 'opera'

IT people need to recognise the limitations of those who don't work in IT, and were educated more than two decades ago..

[DRT]

use a supported browser like the latest IE or opera

The internet is supposed to be universally available to those who wish to use it. Web designers who are lazy enough to only design sites for a limited audience are just plain lazy.

Many industries have access to generic software solutions that allow individual businesses to present their users with user friendly solutions without having to re-invent the wheel. Hotel booking, train tickets, flight tickets, insurance products, library systems, phpBB, Wordpress etc are all examples of such software. Perhaps there is an opportunity for someone to create a generic solution for auction houses?

[LGTrotter]

use a supported browser like the latest IE or opera

fixes most problems

Looks like you touched a nerve there.

[jdaw1]

Tom has described above, in the words of somebody trying to use the hateful software, quire how hateful it is. Perhaps others could write their own descriptions of others’ websites, and then I’ll write a polite email to the webmasters inviting them to pay attention.

For my taste, what I want is a clear and easy to find link saying ‟PDF”. It might be that the auctioneers’ websites hide the PDF, and are deliberately awful, in order to sell catalogues.

[djewesbury]

Christie's have an iPhone app (not easy to link from within Tapatalk, sorry) which I find better than the website, generally. But the problems re unstated provenance etc are the same.

[g-man]

use a supported browser like the latest IE or opera

The internet is supposed to be universally available to those who wish to use it. Web designers who are lazy enough to only design sites for a limited audience are just plain lazy.

Many industries have access to generic software solutions that allow individual businesses to present their users with user friendly solutions without having to re-invent the wheel. Hotel booking, train tickets, flight tickets, insurance products, library systems, phpBB, Wordpress etc are all examples of such software. Perhaps there is an opportunity for someone to create a generic solution for auction houses?

the problems that uncle tom highlighted clearly sound like his browser doesn't support the new html5 features that have bullheaded their way into alot of the more "fashionable" websites.

As such christie is not a development house and they probably bought some off teh shelf packaging/ hired someone to do their webpage with them.

Though it begs the question, if I were a big auction house trying to differentiate myself from all the other auction houses, would I be okay with a generic software package?

[jdaw1]

Though it begs the question, if I were a big auction house trying to differentiate myself from all the other auction houses, would I be okay with a generic software package?

Generic that works versus in-house that doesn’t: easy choice.

[g-man]

Though it begs the question, if I were a big auction house trying to differentiate myself from all the other auction houses, would I be okay with a generic software package?

Generic that works versus in-house that doesn’t: easy choice.

I guess the question posed would be this:

Is the user saavy enough to use our website for orders
or is our user going to be the traditional guy that either calls in the phone or attends in person (in which case we've mailed out our very expensive printed catalog for perusal)

if the user is saavy enough to use the website the assumption is:

Do they have internet explorer that came with any operating system after windows vista or have they've installed anything version of internet explorer > 7 on their own.
(I don't know the metrics of users who are sitll on windows xp using IE 7 or below btw)
or if they use a mac, are they on the newest mac os (which comes with the Opera browser)
or if they're using the latest version of firefox or google chrome.

any of those renders the website properly.

now to get extra fancy I'm sure there are some of you out that that turn off scripts/restrict java scripts.

That would potentially break this website too.

referring to Tom's specific
i'd guess '/etc/designs/redesigns/sothebys/redesignlibs/source/js/vendor/modernizr-2.6.2.min.js' might be the culprit =) this modernizr isn't modernizing properly!

btw sotheby's does have a very slow loading website, and in that case yea, piss poor coders

[jdaw1]

or if they use a mac, are they on the newest mac os (which comes with the Opera browser)

Comes with Safari.

now to get extra fancy I'm sure there are some of you out that that turn off scripts/restrict java scripts.

Me.

[g-man]

or if they use a mac, are they on the newest mac os (which comes with the Opera browser)

Comes with Safari.

ah yes!

i stand corrected!!!

i wonder where i got Opera from.

NEED MORE PORT!

[Glenn E.]

i wonder where i got Opera from.

Probably from your phone.

NEED MORE PORT!

Yes.

[DRT]

Though it begs the question, if I were a big auction house trying to differentiate myself from all the other auction houses, would I be okay with a generic software package?

Generic that works versus in-house that doesn’t: easy choice.

Pick ten airlines at random and go through their individually branded flight booking process. Then do a similar thing with ten car insurance providers. Then with ten hotel booking services. Then come back and tell us how many of them you think built their own search engines.

Please remember to stop each experiment before submitting your credit card details

[g-man]

and compare those 10 airlines with a private jet company

tell me if they're using the same search engine.

[DRT]

Sorry, I didn't realise that all of the most popular auction houses of the world required their customers to be in the market for a private jet. My mistake.

[g-man]

Sorry, I didn't realise that all of the most popular auction houses of the world required their customers to be in the market for a private jet. My mistake.

Sorry, i didn't realize that the most popular auction houses sold something that anybody in the world can easily afford.

it's a luxury good and it's an auction house for some very expensive luxury goods. Sotheby's and Christies are not your run of the mill run small auction house.

it's not trying to capture rich from everyone else like your examples, it's trying to capture teh rich from the really rich to the dirty rich. You would most certainly customize alot of it yourself.

[DRT]

I think you are completely missing the point.

These auction houses do not only sell to the super-rich. They sell to you, me and everyone else here. I haven't seen any of our fellow forumites driving Ferraris, wearing Rolex watches or covered with naked girls at Stringfellows.

The target audience for these companies is us, plus a smaller number of rich people. The rich people have other people who buy their luxuries for them, or they take the luxury catalogue, browse it whilst covered in naked girls at Stringy's and then ask one of their people to get on the phone to Sotheby's. They don't piss around on websites looking for a bargain.

It would be perfectly sensible for auctioneers to have software that allows potential buyers to identify their goods and bid for them with confidence that they knew what they were bidding for. Applying a branded skin to the underlying functionality is child's play. Building the underlying functionality is a specialist skill. That is why you use a Mac with your own choice of desktop image and screensaver and don't use something you built in your garage.

[g-man]

I think you are completely missing the point.

These auction houses do not only sell to the super-rich. They sell to you, me and everyone else here. I haven't seen any of our fellow forumites driving Ferraris, wearing Rolex watches or covered with naked girls at Stringfellows.

probably because we spend so much on wine.

The target audience for these companies is us, plus a smaller number of rich people. The rich people have other people who buy their luxuries for them, or they take the luxury catalogue, browse it whilst covered in naked girls at Stringy's and then ask one of their people to get on the phone to Sotheby's. They don't piss around on websites looking for a bargain.

that is completely the point right?

i'm saying they are targeting that audience and it's the one they care about which IS why uncle tom sees the difficulty he does when browsing their sites.

It would be perfectly sensible for auctioneers to have software that allows potential buyers to identify their goods and bid for them with confidence that they knew what they were bidding for. Applying a branded skin to the underlying functionality is child's play. Building the underlying functionality is a specialist skill. That is why you use a Mac with your own choice of desktop image and screensaver and don't use something you built in your garage.

so yes, we would all agree to that.

[DRT]

So to summarise:

>> auction houses have a wide target audience

>> their current websites are designed to look flashy but are completely useless

>> upgrading your browser isn't the solution

>> auction houses using technology that is helpful to their sales is the solution

Is that where we got to?

[g-man]

oh nm i read what i wrote previous.



yes you are correct.

[DRT]

[djewesbury]

Anyone fancy a tasting in Stringfellow's? I'm in town leaving the Ferrari in for repairs next week, Doreen, Maureen and Noreen are meeting me there...

[DRT]

a tasting in Stringfellow's?

Form what I understand that is a different sort of event than we are accustomed to here.

[djewesbury]

a tasting in Stringfellow's?

Form what I understand that is a different sort of event than we are accustomed to here.

Doreen, Maureen and Noreen are very keen to learn more about VP... and they have string (sorry, strong) views on browser functionality too...

[PhilW]

I think you are completely missing the point. ...
I haven't seen any of our fellow forumites ... covered with naked girls at Stringfellows.

Perhaps you were distracted?

[g-man]

a tasting in Stringfellow's?

Form what I understand that is a different sort of event than we are accustomed to here.

Doreen, Maureen and Noreen are very keen to learn more about VP... and they have string (sorry, strong) views on browser functionality too...

maximize the click thrus

[djewesbury]

a tasting in Stringfellow's?

Form what I understand that is a different sort of event than we are accustomed to here.

Doreen, Maureen and Noreen are very keen to learn more about VP... and they have string (sorry, strong) views on browser functionality too...

maximize the click thrus

Did I just hear somebody think something about getting the pointers moving..? No, okay..

[jdaw1]

Part of the purpose of this thread is to show it to the webmasters. For which reason specific criticisms would be most welcome.

I'll give mine again: your website is rubbish. Allow me to open a PDF on my computer, wherein command-F can do its wonders.