When you are a hardened internet professional, spending large amounts of time online, and consistently advising and educating customers on best practice, you think you’ve seen it all.  And you think you’re hardened to the worst excesses of the web.  But there’s always something that knocks you out when you think you’re impervious to any blow.

Firetrap is a fashion brand aimed at 18 – 30 year olds, featuring jeans, tops and accessories.  I had the misfortune of landing on their website during the month, whilst doing some market research for a client and came away completely depressed.  My depression wasn’t just driven by the fact that I am no longer in their target demographic, but was more related to encountering a brand so in love with itself that it is in danger of eating itself.

I was greeted with the following message “The site requires a minimum of Macromedia Flash Player 8.  Java Script must also be enabled.  Please visit our help page for more information.”  The text was displayed circa point size 6, white on a black background.  The links to Macromedia Flash Player 8 and Java Script (and help, ironically) were in a royal blue.  Royal blue point six Arial font on black background will give the most ardent teetotaller a bad hangover.

Morbid curiosity alone drove me to download the newest version of Flash and only a matter of five to ten minutes later my machine was fully armed with the tools required to view further this display of narcissism.  I watched in disbelief as a timepiece symbol filled with a yellow liquid until such times as the entire site was downloaded for my viewing “pleasure”.  The crowning glory was the site home page boasting the slogan “Vanity of the Manor Bourne” with absolutely no sense of irony whatsoever.

So why the depression?  Well, I thought we’d all come further in our web journey.  Sure the first ten years of the web’s existence have been a learning curve for all of us, as we’ve sought to get to grips with what works and what doesn’t.  We’ve got past the bevelled backgrounds, we’ve got past the flash intros, heck we’ve even got past the amateur Java Script.  But the fact that a Marketing Director somewhere in Firetrap signed off their site made me wonder if we’ve come very far at all.

Would that same Director have signed off a brochure which was all black and contained nothing but an instruction to go to further effort before you were allowed to view the brochure?  Would they have put in detailed instructions into a magazine advert about the printing process which the reader needs to work out before reading?  Would they have signed off the opening of a Firetrap clothing store so unusable that it was impossible to buy a pair of jeans?  Of course they wouldn’t!  So why is it OK to do it on the web!

Is it a marketing coup to have a barely readable navigation menu?  Is it trendy to have a site that cannot be indexed by search engines?  Is it wonderfully cool to have a home page which can only be accessed after minutes of downloading and fumbling around?  I’ve seen how teenagers use the web and I can confirm that there is nothing cool or trendy about wasting their time.

Before you rationalise my ranting as the last gasp raging against the machine of a 30 something out of touch with today’s youth, contrast Firetrap’s self indulgence with other youth online hangout areas like Bebo and MySpace.  Sure, these sites are full of content of questionable quality, but there is no denying that they put their users (teenagers primarily) fully in charge.  No plug–ins required, no lengthy downloads, just lots of quick, easily accessible, easily searched content, shown in a fun and relevant fashion.  Every page has easily accessible next steps so that getting around is a stroll, a really simple journey.

So my depression was driven by the fact that I had thought that ten years on the industry was really driving commercially focussed websites, and Firetrap challenged all that.  Happily our brothers and sisters at Firetrap are the exception rather than the rule, and slowly but surely we are coming out of our growing pains.  If you’re looking for inspiration when building your own website, make sure you model your site on others whose sites assist, rather than annoy, their customers.