Cluttered websites, too many fonts/colours and generally over-"busy"

[Zeyneb]

Almost all Chinese websites are pretty much a waste of time, except maybe PCB Way. Most of these manufacturers have no idea that a well designed and informative website that provides value-add will help their marketing enormously. China has a long way to go.

I'm wondering how chinese target audience would think about that. Does it bother them to a degree to decline doing business with a company which has a website like that? Maybe some of our chinese members can share their opinion about that?

You forgot www.ibm.com. Full of marketing verbal diarrhoea, severely lacking in content.

Alright IBM too. But for my own well-being I try to forget about those marketing diarrhoea experiences.  I don't think we do need IBM IT services right? I know some small dutch webshop where the owner put on his website something along "If you don't like what we are offering, take your business elsewhere!" But you know he does add meaningful specification to the products he is offering. I love that.

[Rick Law]

The entire webpage is loaded in 800 ms. Impressive these days.

This looks like a "brain dump" by folks wanting to share knowledge/information - focused on substance and not appearance.  More like pages of notes rather than pages from text books.  In notes, only the important point with illustration needs would warrant a quick sketch, the rest are scribbles.  Want better pictures?  Go to the million-page text book and hunt.

In my opinion, the cited webpage is not bad at all.  It lacks just one thing: a better way to identify "Lesson" (main topic). 

Right now, the header for the lessons use similar font as sections under the lesson, so one has to look for the words "Lesson P..." in something like "Lesson P4 - Bitmap Functions on the Atari Lynx" to be able to identify it as start of lesson.  It would make lesson start a lot more distinctive if they use a different color for it.  Once one realizes "Lesson P..." starts a lesson, it became less of an issue but an issue still.  A "Lesson List" right at the top of page would remedy that, and making that list active with links to the appropriate line would be great.

The speed made up for a lot of faults.  One could scroll very quickly to scan up or down for the topic (lesson).  It is easy to miss but the speed made up for it - largely but not totally.

I prefer this over the overly active pages.  Substance vs Appearance, for me, substance wins.

[magic]

too many fonts/colours and generally over-"busy"

Just have Asperger's instead of photoepilepsy, problem solved

But the menus should be on the left.

[floobydust]

Digikey's website is cluttered and busy, but it works a treat [...]

Digikey's website is terrible, it's slow and bloated, full of analytics and buggy programming.
Here (pic) it's sorted by ascending capacitance, seeing anything stupid? It's doing a Radix sort or something. Sometimes it returns no hits yet I know the part exists and can find it.

When I complain to Digikey,  the response is "have you tried clearing the browser's cache?", "have you tried another browser?". I tell them this isn't a browser issue but they don't understand.
Also, the top 25% of my screen is a wasted flymenu that never seems to work/display properly or be good for anything. I could go on with bugs and gripes, but I think this is a better example of what OP is upset about.

It's getting worse at mega-corporations because their web developers are clueless about the content and just keep adding shit to justify their existence. I'm sad Digikey's website is going backwards as far as customer experience, it used to be a killer website.

[Rick Law]

Digikey's website is cluttered and busy, but it works a treat [...]

Digikey's website is terrible, it's slow and bloated, full of analytics and buggy programming.
...
...

Buggy website makes me worry about their security.  With a commerce sites where you have payment info, for me that is a cause for concern.

[floobydust]

Digi-Key's TOS allows them to share a lot with third-parties. Tell me your interpretation of snippets:

"We may disclose your personal information to the following categories of recipients:
- to our related companies and third party suppliers, partners and services providers (for example, to support the delivery or drop shipment of products ordered, provide functionality on, or help to enhance the security of our website, or for order fulfilment or market research purposes), or who otherwise process personal information for purposes that are described in this Privacy Notice or notified to you when we collect your personal information. For example, we utilize services provided by our third party partners to enable the detection of devices connected with fraud and other types of information security vulnerabilities to enhance security on our website and other pages on the internet.
- to any competent law enforcement body, regulatory body, government agency, court or other third party where we believe disclosure is necessary (i) as a matter of applicable law or regulation, (ii) to exercise, establish or defend our legal rights, (iii) as part of a lawsuit or investigation, or (iv) to protect your vital interests or those of any other person;
- to credit reference agencies for the purposes of identity and credit checking when placing an order, and periodically if you have an open account with us;"

"...These third party sources may include, but are not limited to, suppliers, third party web analytics services and social media platforms, such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. The types of information we may receive from these third parties includes information on your web activity about how you interact with our website and their services and aggregated analytics. We use this information to help improve our website, provide information and advertising, and to be able to analyze aggregate click statistics and trends."

I don't see hope for security or privacy. It's like Zuckerberg is doing their website design to make more profit.

[VK3DRB]

Digikey's website is terrible, it's slow and bloated, full of analytics and buggy programming.
Here (pic) it's sorted by ascending capacitance, seeing anything stupid? It's doing a Radix sort or something. Sometimes it returns no hits yet I know the part exists and can find it...

I very rarely ever, if at all, sort on capacitance because I know what capacitance I want before I even look up a Digikey search. I generally sort of price and sometimes on qty available, and occasionally other columns.
Yes it looks like a programming bug with the capacitance sorting. Sometimes datasheets are missing or the 3D model links are useless, but they are the exception because Digikey puts a lot of effort into maintaining their databases.

Despite the occasional gripes, Digikey is possibly the most useful website of them all. Used by every man and his dog in the world of electronics. As someone said, if you don't like it you can take you business elsewhere.

[Siwastaja]

Digikey has gone worse with the latest "improvements". Like most of the others. But it could be a lot worse.

Although, coming from Farnell which I somehow managed to endure for a decade before being too traumatized to ever order from them again, even the current Digikey web experience is a breeze.

That sorting-by-capacitance example is interesting. Usually it works, and understands the SI units p, n, µ and so on scaling the numbers correctly for sorting, so clearly they know how to do it right, but just occasionally still fail.

It's sad such services do not accept bug reports and have no ticket system accessible to the actual users. It would be highly important. Obviously, going through the "customer service" does not work, it never does.

[tooki]

Digi-Key's TOS allows them to share a lot with third-parties. Tell me your interpretation of snippets:

"We may disclose your personal information to the following categories of recipients:
- to our related companies and third party suppliers, partners and services providers (for example, to support the delivery or drop shipment of products ordered, provide functionality on, or help to enhance the security of our website, or for order fulfilment or market research purposes), or who otherwise process personal information for purposes that are described in this Privacy Notice or notified to you when we collect your personal information. For example, we utilize services provided by our third party partners to enable the detection of devices connected with fraud and other types of information security vulnerabilities to enhance security on our website and other pages on the internet.
- to any competent law enforcement body, regulatory body, government agency, court or other third party where we believe disclosure is necessary (i) as a matter of applicable law or regulation, (ii) to exercise, establish or defend our legal rights, (iii) as part of a lawsuit or investigation, or (iv) to protect your vital interests or those of any other person;
- to credit reference agencies for the purposes of identity and credit checking when placing an order, and periodically if you have an open account with us;"

"...These third party sources may include, but are not limited to, suppliers, third party web analytics services and social media platforms, such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. The types of information we may receive from these third parties includes information on your web activity about how you interact with our website and their services and aggregated analytics. We use this information to help improve our website, provide information and advertising, and to be able to analyze aggregate click statistics and trends."

I don't see hope for security or privacy. It's like Zuckerberg is doing their website design to make more profit.

Bear in mind that "open account" is a finance/trade term meaning a credit account to pay after delivery by invoice. In such a situation, it makes complete sense that they sync bidirectionally with credit bureaus. If you haven't applied for a credit account, i.e. if you're using any other type of payment, then this won't be happening.

I know that there is terminology ambiguity, since signing up for a login is also called an "account" on their website. But if you log into your Digikey, you'll see that you have your customer number(s), but there's also an "account" field. This field is only populated with an account number if you have a credit account. For example, at my work, we have individual DK logins, but they all share the same account number, because it's the company credit account. The company, at some point, had to apply for a credit account in order to pay by invoice.

[Zeyneb]

It's sad such services do not accept bug reports and have no ticket system accessible to the actual users. It would be highly important. Obviously, going through the "customer service" does not work, it never does.

If you're talking about Digikey. I have to say you're wrong here. On their website click the vertical "Feedback" button on the right. Write a small note that clearly shows them what is wrong. Then they will correct it very fast. I am talking about something in a parameter field that is obviously wrong. You know, that capacitance sorting thing might take longer for them to solve. But Digikey is eager to have their website as accurate and useful as possible.

[Siwastaja]

It's sad such services do not accept bug reports and have no ticket system accessible to the actual users. It would be highly important. Obviously, going through the "customer service" does not work, it never does.

If you're talking about Digikey. I have to say you're wrong here. On their website click the vertical "Feedback" button on the right. Write a small note that clearly shows them what is wrong. Then they will correct it very fast. I am talking about something in a parameter field that is obviously wrong. You know, that capacitance sorting thing might take longer for them to solve. But Digikey is eager to have their website as accurate and useful as possible.

I understand this is for correcting for mistakes in data, not software bugs. The report would go to the sales engineers who look at the datasheets and classify parts they stock. Well, it's already quite remarkable you can report wrong data and it will be fixed, so we should be quite happy with that.

[keith56]

Is it just me, or do you find this website hard to follow?

https://www.chibiakumas.com/6502/platform.php#LessonP1

I find my eyes not knowing what to look at first, and it's SO distracting! I am sure he knows his ASM very well, but perhaps he's not so hot at web design...

I'm glad to see my website is finally getting the attention it deserves!