SiriusAddict.com

A while ago, I commented on XM Satellite Radio’s website and did a whole project on it for one of my classes (Note: this is about XM Satellite Radio’s website and not a review of Sirius’ website as it has a few issues too). The link, issues, and design flaws can be found in the final post or the preliminary post.

Well, a month or so ago XM Satellite Radio redesigned their website for the worse. Although the site is now compatible with Macs (assuming you run Adobe Flash) in the Listener Care portion of the website, it still is entirely cluttered, too heavy, and too promotional. I’m all for promotion, don’t get me wrong, but it seems like everywhere you go on the site there’s an advertisement for a product to buy, their store, etc. It’s annoying as a customer to see this repeated over and over ad-nauseum.

Now, onto the redesign. It’s horrible. That pretty much sums it up. To start, you NEVER design a site in all Flash because 1) not everyone has Flash installed or wants to use it, 2) it completely disregards 508 usability rules which are ESSENTIAL for creating accessible websites for the disabled who use computers, and 3) it took them over a year and 3 failed promises that Mac support was coming (one of which was a support ticket promising me that it would be available the middle of July and it platform was finally “supported” in late November). It’s completely unacceptable and their web designer should be fired or at least come up to web standards. They should take a look at XM Satellite Radio Canada’s website which offers the site in two languages (fully offers the site, not just snippets of the site) and an HTML version of both sites, if desired.

But what about Sirius Satellite Radio? Turn off Flash and I guarantee you’ll see an HTML version of the pages. With XM Satellite Radio, you won’t even see content displayed, that is of course assuming you can use their website and aren’t disabled, which I’m surprised no one has mentioned or complained about yet since I am positive there are a few subscribers to XM Satellite Radio that have special needs to use the computer and need a 508 accessible website which XM Satellite Radio has yet to provide.

In addition to the Flash issues, they use a “cutesy” naming convention with all of their websites ending in .xmc or .xm, which isn’t even a valid file extension. It’s not cute and frankly, it’s annoying because most websites end in .asp, .html, etc. So it’s one more thing for a user to remember when attempting to go to a portion of their website, i.e. it’s not consistent with the millions of other websites worldwide. It’s a hassle to the user and not user-friendly or “standard” though there aren’t many thoughts on usability in this area. Still, it doesn’t fit with the other websites worldwide and their extensions if a user wanted to memorize the exact URL.

On the Listener Care site, the navigation bar (the gray bar at the top of the page) contains no content/navigation and the same can be said of the new activations site. This leaves the user to utilizing the browser’s back button or starting over from the beginning if the user is a notice user. Confusing the website users is one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a web designer. People have a very low tolerance for nuisances like this online and will simply leave the site in some cases.

New to the site is a “Sponsors” page that subscribers “asked for”, which I find hard to believe. Contained there is nothing useful to the average listener and you shouldn’t lie to customers, which is an assumption on my part, that your customers “wanted” a sponsors page but rather you were required to give advertising to those sponsors, or it just “looked good” according to the web designer which is a HUGE no-no in web design. Just because it looks good to you or you want it this way does NOT mean that the customers and users of the site want it that way!

Although the Listen Online portion of the site did not change, it should have to be consistent with the look-and-feel of the site. Instead, the “Listen Online” page remains in the old style with the exception of the header. It violates consistency across all pages on the site.

Another portion of the site that needs a complete overhaul and serious work is the Spanish version of XM Satellite Radio’s website. It only lists the Spanish stations and doesn’t give links to any programs, the XM Shop, or anything. It’s so bare to view and truly disappointing to those who speak Spanish fluently and have English as a second language. Even if XM Satellite Radio caters to the “American” demographic and English-speaking demographic, they chose to put up a Spanish site probably due to demand and the availability of Spanish channels on their network. They should keep it updated and as content-heavy as necessary and as their regular site, in my opinion. Otherwise, it’s a waste of time to even create a separate portion of the site in Spanish if it’s going to go stale and not provide any detailed or useful information.

XM Satellite Radio’s website is also known for being redundant which is just unnecessary and clutters the screen often times causing the website to fall below the fold (below the status bar and causing vertical scrolling which should be avoided if all possible but not too strict of a standard). In the redesigned site, you will see in the bottom right corner there’s a “Quick Links” box that is redundant and contains a second link to 4 items already on the the main website. That’s pretty much overkill, although the site has become a bit better with that aspect.

Overall, the redesign is horrible and still unusable. While I am pleased (not satisfied, though) that the site is now Mac compatible and doesn’t contain the error message about having to upgrade to some browser that doesn’t exist for the Mac platform, XM Satellite Radio’s website needs a real web designer who understands web design standards, usability, and not to use Flash exclusively. The site continues to have many flaws that just astound me in this day and age. It’s not representative of professional websites and it shows to the trained eye.