Avonmore - Form over function

— Published January 14th, 2004  |  by David Moore

The Avonmore site [http://www.avonmore.ie] is an example of the sort of form-over-function web presences we thought we'd seen the back of around 1999. Entirely Flash-based (with no HTML option at all), it hides a limited amount of content behind a massively overly-complicated navigation system.

Based around a birds-eye view of a small town (you can just see the design team saying something like 'Milk is at the heart of every community, so we'll build a virtual community, yeah?'), different buildings are links to different types of information.

So the doctor's office contains links to health articles, the cinema streaming advertisements and the supermarket offers product information. One problem is that until you roll over a nondescript building, you can't tell what links are available, and another is that not all the buildings are links, so you never know if you've found them all without looking at the site map.

The metaphor is pretty thin to begin with, but it stretches to breaking point when it turns out the bus stop is a link to the farm (you catch the bus to the farm, geddit?), for information about how milk is made. Click on the bus stop, and a bus comes down the street and takes you off to the farm - I'm not making this up.

If the bus stop can stand in for the farm, why is the news section not given a link in the town (instead, it is accessible via a separate icon at the bottom)?

Once you've chosen your selected area, another window launches (just to break some more accessibility and usability guidelines), with each subsection having its own look and feel. Having finally reached some content, most of it is written in bland marketing speak, such as this excerpt from the whipped cream information: 'It¼s as simple as just open the carton and spoon out mmm!'

Some of the health articles offer good material, but there are no dates to show how current it is, and the underlining suggests links that aren't there. In addition, the interface means that it will be very hard to add new content over time.

The childlike (or is that childish?) interface might be justifiable if the site were aimed at children, but the health information and recipes suggest an older audience.

If Avonmore had spent their money on the strategy and content for the site, rather than on the unnecessary and actively distracting Flash interface, they would have created a much more useful and viable presence.

In fact, we'd go so far as to say this could be the worst commercial website in Ireland, or maybe even the world. If you know better, please contact us at icubed@iqcontent.com.

Related Links:

• Avonmore - [http://www.avonmore.ie]