Patriots web site blows

[pats1]

Guys, voice your complaints to Jana Gauthier at [email protected]. I had some problems with it and Firefox last summer, and she fixed most of it for me and listened to most of my suggestions.

 

[JR4]

AdBlock Plus will block the videos from playing though.

Doesn't mine. I have all adds blocked and see all videos clips without any problem.
Check your filter list. There may be something added that is causing the
problem.
The only filter I have is:
'http://ads.thekraftgroup.com/ad.cfc?method=display&sid=16&key=homepage&typeId=9'
Works great.

 

[FrontSeven]

Well.... I'll take the crappy website for great team over the great website for crappy team combo any day of the week (and twice on Sunday).

And what have those two things got to do with each other, oh, Obie Wan Ka Dopie?

 

[JR4]

Doesn't mine. I have all adds blocked and see all videos clips without any problem.
Check your filter list. There may be something added that is causing the
problem.
The only filter I have is:
'http://ads.thekraftgroup.com/ad.cfc?method=display&sid=16&key=homepage&typeId=9'
Works great.

Actually the filter

"http://ads.thekraftgroup.com/*" (quotes not part of filter)

works fine also. The '*' is like a wild card and matches anything
after the last '/'

 

[FrontSeven]

It's quite clear to me that the current iteration of Patriots.com is supposed to be a multimedia hub of Patriots stuff, not a static website built on text (although there is plenty of that too).

Doesn't matter how the content is built, text or visual/audio, doesn't matter if it's not navigable and has ads crawling all over it. If you can't find slick multimedia content then it's no good to anybody.

 

[sebman2112]

I'm not talking about the content, but the design.

First, go to:
http://www.patriots.com

Excited for some good content? Too bad: your eyeballs are slapped with a bunch of ads, and you are invited to 'Jump to the Patriots.com homepage.' What the hell is up with that.

Then, once you are at the damned page:
http://www.patriots.com/homepage/

You are treated to a browser halting flash-heavy page with an ad that creeps over half the page if you accidentally put your mouse cursor over it. It takes so much of your processor that it takes three hours to switch to a new tab in your browser. If you click on half the links they bring you to a new page, rather than staying on that page. The video player isn't particularly reliable. If you accidentally go over a menu item the menu pops up and doesn't go away unless you stop the video. Then when you do click a menu item you often have to work through a labyrinthe of links to get to the content you actually want.

All around a huge steamy pile of horse dung.

The Dolphins have a better site. The DOLPHINS. Yes, the same crappy flash (they all use this awful format probably NFL hired one company and they used the same crappy-design infrastructure for all of them). But the video is better, no creeping black plague ads.

Example of a great Pats-related site other than this one? The all things Bill Belichick site:
http://www.allthingsbillbelichick.com/
Now THAT guy knows how to make a web site.

A weekend without a game...here is something that has been stuck in my craw for a long time now.

Suggestions: switch to anything else. Drupal, Ruby, basic CSS. At least make it W3C compliant! Take out the stupid flesh-eating ad. Make patriots.com the home page. Nobody is going to patriots.com to get a link to the Pats home page: they want to get to the dam home page!!! Make the menu system more intuitive.

You can tell me your PC is fast, but if that website truly acts as you've described than your PC is likely slow and in need of upgrade, and you might be running dialup?

I'm running a personally built 64 bit PC with a decent amount of memory, processor speed, fast HD's, a decent GPU, and highspeed cable internet.
The Patriots website works perfectly fine for me (has for a long time), and their video player has always seemed to work fine, as well. The only think I have complained about is that Toyota ad, but once you know it's there you should be able to avoid it.

Edit: I don't particularly like their most recent design. I thought the design used last year was fine though.

 

[Pats_Webmaster]

I read the string of comments regarding the website. We started the splash page years ago during big events to divert users to high traffic areas and alleviate the crush on the home page. We've kept it because it is a good way to draw attention to content and promotions that we want people to see right away (we are a business, too, after all).

Check out the splash page (www.patriots.com) tonight at 6:00pm mountain time (8:00 eastern time) and you'll see a use of it that you have never seen before. Hint: Make sure you have the latest version of Flash downloaded to your computer.

I understand that sometimes our heavy use of flash can be hard for some people on slower connections, but that's kind of the way of the world right now. Believe it or not, on our old version of the site we would receive criticsm that we didn't have enough bells and whistles. Go figure!

Just know that our whole mission is to make Patriots.com the best team website in the sports world and we appreciate your comments good or bad.

 

[neuronet]

Re: Patriots web site needs a little help

I read the string of comments regarding the website. We started the splash page years ago during big events to divert users to high traffic areas and alleviate the crush on the home page. We've kept it because it is a good way to draw attention to content and promotions that we want people to see right away (we are a business, too, after all).

Check out the splash page (www.patriots.com) tonight at 6:00pm mountain time (8:00 eastern time) and you'll see a use of it that you have never seen before. Hint: Make sure you have the latest version of Flash downloaded to your computer.

I understand that sometimes our heavy use of flash can be hard for some people on slower connections, but that's kind of the way of the world right now. Believe it or not, on our old version of the site we would receive criticsm that we didn't have enough bells and whistles. Go figure!

Just know that our whole mission is to make Patriots.com the best team website in the sports world and we appreciate your comments good or bad.

Thanks for the response. I avoid the site even with my best work computer, but maybe in a few years I'll have a good enough computer to not be annoyed.

I use cable modem at home, T1 at job, this is the only site in my bookmarks that acts like this. I just avoid it now and go to allthingsbillbelichick, or something unless there is exclusive content.

My boss hired a design company that switched our work to a flash page with a splash page, and I just don't understand it. It's just annoying. At least with the Pats page I can understand if it diverts traffic or whatever. None of the other NFL teams do it, and it sucks, but at least they are trying to get money from us. My boss has no such excuse.

 

[JustWinBrady]

We started the splash page years ago during big events to divert users to high traffic areas and alleviate the crush on the home page.

Here is some constructive criticism...

If the site was designed right you wouldn't have to alleviate the crush to the home page. Do you see any other high traffic web site have splash pages to alleviate crushes? It’s just not done, nor is it needed.

To the left of your home page and subsequent pages that are viewed, there are graphics of players and coaches that take up 1/8 of the content area. This is wasted space.

On the right hand side you have two columns of advertising that seems to take up 1/4 of the entire page, again wasted space. You have 6 columns in your content area which just makes everything so convoluted and hard to digest. You are leaving less than 1/3 of the page for actual content. That is the main reason they are visiting patriots.com, for the content.

I understand you generate revenue with sponsors, but it appears you have 3 columns dedicated to such and you actually do them a disservice to them because they all look the same and it’s hard to distinguish one ad from another. Your whole advertising model needs to be re-thought.

The site it actually gives me a headache the more time on it, which is not good because you actually want return visitors to spend longer time on it.

As your site grows and there is more and more content and such, you seem to just jam everything into the existing framework which just makes everything worse. Your framework and navigation model needs lots of work.

Just as the Patriots Football team does every off-season, the web team needs to take a step back and re-evaluate everything to determine what areas you can improve on. There are areas where significant improvement will make the user’s experience more compelling and user friendly.

 

[NovaScotiaPatsFan]

I'm not a huge fan either, I use firefox and flash has it's uses but it is waaaaaaaaaaaaay too overused on some sites. Look at one of the most successful sites on the net today: Google. Simple and powerful.

 

[Fahrenhype]

I don't have a problem viewing it but I just get all the media stuff through iTunes.

 

[RayClay]

I read the string of comments regarding the website. We started the splash page years ago during big events to divert users to high traffic areas and alleviate the crush on the home page. We've kept it because it is a good way to draw attention to content and promotions that we want people to see right away (we are a business, too, after all).

Check out the splash page (www.patriots.com) tonight at 6:00pm mountain time (8:00 eastern time) and you'll see a use of it that you have never seen before. Hint: Make sure you have the latest version of Flash downloaded to your computer.

I understand that sometimes our heavy use of flash can be hard for some people on slower connections, but that's kind of the way of the world right now. Believe it or not, on our old version of the site we would receive criticsm that we didn't have enough bells and whistles. Go figure!

Just know that our whole mission is to make Patriots.com the best team website in the sports world and we appreciate your comments good or bad.

While I appreciate the response, I don't care for any of the changes or at least can't find those I might be in favor of. I've already sent an email and received a response.

I've found bookmarking the media center page gives a page of video thumbnails with hyperlinks to most of the content and that will be my solution.

As NFL.com has gone to a much worse page than previously, this might be a trend some people prefer. Unfortunately, their slow loading, innacurate links with missing categories (no YPC for running backs in box scores?) doesn't lend itself to ameliorization.

I would ask if you Would make all videos expandable, I don't desire to watch any in postage stamp size.

 

[patsox23]

I'm not sure why anyone would complain about that site. It is BY FAR the most advanced, content-filled, specific, resourceful TEAM SITE in any sport. It has its own radio show that is better than any other radio I listen to here in L.A. or on the internet.

As for the look of the homepage, doesn't seem bad to me at all. What's wrong with it? You can't figure out how to navigate? REALLY? Are you TEN years old or EIGHTY, 'cause it's gotta be one of those.

 

[shmessy]

I have none of the problems many of the folks here have with that site. The media stuff is unparalelled and they are getting 4-5 almost real-time vids per day in there. incredible.

Media Day was the first time I've ever seen a website put up 5 live cameras on the same screen and allow the viewer to be his/her own director and up the volume on the screen desired.

Unbelievable. This was also mentioned in the media as the first time a website has ever done that.

The one thing I do not like, however, and I agree with many of the folks here is that fake homepage thing. That is a bit annoying.

That being said, the Press Esc label stays up on my screen for 5 seconds and the expand actually expands the vid to my entire screen, so, I think much of this is probably more the user's computer than the site's issue.

 

[RayClay]

I'm not sure why anyone would complain about that site. It is BY FAR the most advanced, content-filled, specific, resourceful TEAM SITE in any sport. It has its own radio show that is better than any other radio I listen to here in L.A. or on the internet.

As for the look of the homepage, doesn't seem bad to me at all. What's wrong with it? You can't figure out how to navigate? REALLY? Are you TEN years old or EIGHTY, 'cause it's gotta be one of those.

Do you think everyone likes the same things you do?

I shouldn't have to "figure out" how to navigate, it should be intuitive. Web page design 101.

 

[neuronet]

I shouldn't have to "figure out" how to navigate, it should be intuitive. Web page design 101.

Exactly. That was the giveaway. That someone defending the site would even say you can "figure out" where stuff is is a good confirmation of what I've been saying.

First principle of good web design:
Don't make me think!