Every GardenSMART episode is supplemented by Quick Tips which are short video segments viewers are encouraged to visit the web site to watch. James went to view his Quick Tips when they became available and immediately emailed me for help because they would not play for him. Was there a problem with his computer? His browser? A plugin?

I visited the Quick Tips page and quickly diagnosed the problem. The page was attempting to play a QuickTime .mov file in Windows Media Player, which does not work! From the source code I collected the links to the .mov files for James so he could visit the files directly. Of course this does not solve the problem for everyone so I also emailed GardenSMART to let them know they used the wrong video file and/or template for the River Farms Quick Tip pages. The reply was:

“Works for us.
Thanks for watching GardenSMART,
GS”

I replied back with a more technical email explaining the issue, the solution, and the fact that I tested the page on 2 operating systems with four major browsers (Firefox, IE, Safari, Chrome) and it did not work.

This second email was ignored and the page remained unfixed.

James then emailed the producer asking him to fix the site, since not only are friends and family interested but I’m sure the AHS would like to be able to direct their 21,000 members to the videos. James received the response:

“They all work for me.”

The ball was back in my court when James asked me why it would work for them and not him. My answer is that it doesn’t.  They aren’t actually looking at the pages and this a terrible display of site visitor service. If James did not have someone with advanced technical skills to help him understand what was going on and give him links to the .mov files what would he do?

If you are a web master and someone emails you saying they have a problem viewing content on your site,  “It works for us.”  is not an acceptable response. There is either a problem with your site or there is an issue with the viewer’s machine. Either way you need do some troubleshooting.

One of the most challenging web sites I ever maintained was a high traffic site that streamed and podcast media. Occasionally I screwed up and posted incorrect links to the media files. Sometimes there were user issues and I had to help visitors set up iTunes or install a plugin. User issues were tedious to solve, sometimes it took days with emails going back and forth as I tried to figure out the problem and walk the user through the solution but I saw it as part of my job and my efforts were always appreciated.

Every web master’s rule should be to never, ever ignored a visitor with an issue. The visitor is a real person, with a real problem and they want the information you produced badly enough to ask for help. What do you think, maybe 1 person in 20? 50? 100? having a problem will email for help. We should consider ourselves lucky someone is emailing us with issues, because if a site is broken and remains broken because we don’t know about it, how many audience members are we losing?

Apparently GardenSMART feels their audience is big enough, they can afford to start letting it thin out and it will since they are currently repeating their mistake on other pages. The Quick Tips for the latest episode on Mt. Vernon are posted using the same template as the videos for River Farms, creating another set of useless pages.

Before I end this post, if you are interested in viewing the Quick Tips for the River Farms and seeing James in action, you may click the links below. The links will take you directly to the .mov files, you will need QuickTime installed to view them. Enjoy!

Small Scale Meadow Garden
American Horticulture Society
Fall Color
Fall Plantings

In the meantime… check out the results for A List Apart’s 2007 Web Deisgn Survey. This was the first survey ever conducted asking web professionals about the industry in the U.S. and worldwide. 37 questions were answered by 33,000 web professionals and the results are eye opening to say the least. The survey was conducted again in 2008 but the results are not out yet.

Adobe will be showing off Creative Suite 4 during a special web broadcast Sept 23, 2008. Sign yourself up to attend at http://adobe.istreamplanet.com/.

POKE! POKE! It’s only 6 days away so do it now!