A New Website, A Software Upgrade Question
Two items of interest today. First, I had an idea for a new website last night (okay, actually it's an old idea that I finally got around to building).Please Don't Visit This Website
This website is my tongue in cheek way of pointing out very silly mistakes people make when designing websites. It's a really ugly site.
Second. I want your opinions. Let's suppose that, about 7 years ago you purchased a software product. We'll call it "Product Q2". (2 because it's version 2) Product Q lists at $500. Now, seven years later, you discover that Product Q won't run on your new computer. So you visit the company website to find out about upgrades.
They now have Product Q5, which also lists at $500. They also have Product SuperQ5, which is kind of like the deluxe version of Product Q, and Product SuperQ5 lists at $1300. In addition, there is Product ExtraSuperQ5, which lists at $2100. (and there's also ExtraSuperDuperQ5 which lists at $3800)
You can't find information on upgrade prices, so you contact the company and say "What's the upgrade price from Q2 to Q5?"
Their reply: "Oh, we're sorry. You can't upgrade from Q2 to Q5. But you can upgrade from Q2 to SuperQ5."
Say WHAT??
Yeah. Your choices are: pay the full price for Q5 (as though you had never purchased any version of the product), or upgrade not just the version, but also go from the standard to the deluxe version.
It would be one thing if the product Q had been discontinued, and was no longer available for sale; but the product is right there on the website. But I can't get it without paying the full price.
Does this make sense to you? Has anyone seen companies operate like this? This is a completely new one for me.
Of course, it makes me wonder, if I upgrade to SuperQ5, five years down the road will they tell me "Oh, you can't upgrade from SuperQ5 to SuperQ8, you'll have to upgrade from SuperQ5 to ExtraSuperQ8."
Posted On Jan 11, 2006 at 1:45 PM
On Jan 11, 2006 Laura wrote: Thanks for not using any of my previous websites as your examples ;-) And on the subject of bad navigation, not only is it annoying when the navigation fluctuates between vertical and horizontal, but it's worse when the entire page is simply covered in navigation links, with no scheme or organization whatsoever. I remember a page like that once, which also had terrible colors, but I don't know if I could find it again...
Doug Replied: Quote:
| Thanks for not using any of my previous websites as your examples ;-) |
What? I would never do that!
On Jan 12, 2006 Beth wrote: I had no idea that there were differences in downloading time with different image formats. I'll keep that in mind from now on. Maybe I'll have fun tonight and see if I could do all seven of those steps to my blog.
Doug Replied: Oh boy, I'm never visiting your blog again!
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