The Frustration of Broken Websites

 

Companies, if you want authors to sign up for your service, let them actually sign up for your service!

I found an interesting, free site that can supposedly help drive traffic to my website (I know; that's a losing battle, but still...), but when I tried to sign up for an account, it just sat there, telling me to validate my email. I went on the hunt for a validation email—nope, nothing. Nothing in my spam folder, nothing when I refreshed my gmail over and over.

"Clear your cache and delete your cookies." No, I'm not going to do it. I understand that for security reasons and blah, blah blah, one should regularly clear their cookies, but I don't want to have to remember all my logins—whether they have a capital letter or a special symbol or whether I used my cat's name or my dog's name for a certain site. The sites I visit regularly simply take me there. I don't have to memorize whatever stupid password I came up with on the spur of the moment.

"Well, Firefox isn't the best. Try Chrome." Yes, fine. Despite Firefox being around since 2002, it's apparently some mysterious browser that no company has heard of. And Chrome? Does anyone actually use Chrome? Have you seen it? It's the worst. I do use Edge as a backup browser for certain websites, but its search function is awful. (It's a Microsoft product, same as Chrome. Need I say more?) If I open a new tab in Edge and type my query into its "search the web" field, it takes me to Bing, of all places. Then if I'm in a hurry and just go with Bing, I'll click on one of the search results and it opens a whole new window. I'm not up for that kind of aggravation.

"If all fails, send an email to support@dumbasswebsite.com." Sigh. Okay. Oh, look—an automated response. "The site you're trying to reach doesn't exist."

I've given up on more than a few sites because they were impossible to interact with. And I'm no quitter. But after trying continually, sometimes on consecutive days, they just weren't worth the frustration.  

It's as bad as trying to reach a company by phone. Once, I sat on hold with my pharmacy for 42 minutes, with the automated voice sporadically breaking in to tell me there was "one caller ahead of you". That must have been some long-winded caller. Maybe they were lonely and just looking for someone to chat with. 

 

Or the AI voice gives me five options to choose from, none of which pertain to my issue. "Representative!" I yell. "I understand you want to speak to a representative, but I need to know your question in order to direct your call. Please choose from one of the five..."

It's a reasonable assumption that all websites have a webmaster of some sort. I guess I'm my own webmaster, but as little as I know about IT, I still made sure my site was accessible on all browsers and on mobile. Especially if you're specializing in commerce, that might be an important component to verify.

As for that site I've been unable to access, if I receive an email response, great. If not, I'll just move on.