Pushing Away Customers: Bossy Site is Bossy

[jesse_the_k]

I'm looking for a handful of iddly-fiddly products (camera case, iPod case, batteries) for one shipping charge. I was pleased to see Newegg.com on a Google search, cause I know they've been in business for more than 10 years. Leap on over to their site and I encounter this:



[above is screen grab of upper corner of Newegg.com site window, where bright red letters say For optimal viewing, please lower your browser's text size setting]

Yes, I know it takes more time to design a fluid layout, where I can size my text up to something, y'know, readable.

But in return I will buy your stuff! With real US money! If you hadn't said anything, I would have used Mac OS X's built-in zoom feature and opened my wallet. But, no way, you had to boss your way into my user experience and demand I change my font size!

Comments

[gloss]

Bossy site is really freakin' OBNOXIOUS. That's just unforgivable.

[maevele]

for optimal viewing, please make it more difficult to read the text?

[amadi]

Wow, striking them right off of the list of places that will get my $$.

[ex_rising236]

Not to even mention that bright red text in such quantities can in and of itself cause viewing difficulties for many people? Wow.

[pauamma]

<hr width="90%">
For best viewing, please set your browser window to the width of the ruler above.

[treeowl]

Riiiight. Because obviously customers tend to increase their text size for no reason at all, and will happily decrease it when asked. I have normal vision (with glasses), but tons of sites start wonking out on me when I make the fonts large enough to read comfortably.

[stewardess]

what the HELL. I haven't come across that. If I did, I'd hit the back button instantly. It could have been easily phrased better, something like, "warning: our shitty coding is incompatible with larger font sizes." Or "at larger font sizes, our pages may not render as intended by marketing hacks." *head desk*

[dogstar]

Actually, I'd recommend emailing them and complaining. They've been really responsive for me on other issues.