{"id":265,"date":"2013-05-24T14:49:48","date_gmt":"2013-05-24T14:49:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comtechadvisory.com\/?p=265"},"modified":"2013-05-24T14:52:58","modified_gmt":"2013-05-24T14:52:58","slug":"vendor-websites-often-leave-a-lot-to-be-desired","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comtechadvisory.com\/blog\/opinion\/vendor-websites-often-leave-a-lot-to-be-desired\/","title":{"rendered":"Vendor Websites Often Leave a Lot to be Desired."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This last few days I have been visiting a lot of websites. Before anyone should get the wrong idea regarding my browsing habits, I have been reviewing and looking at all of the vendor websites across the CTRM space. Its a good way to catch up and stay in touch and I have contacted a number of vendors right from their contact us areas.<\/p>\n<p>I recall, perhaps 8-years ago, then colleague, Andrew Bruce, got me interested in blogs and blogging. He even wrote an article about the blog and its role in marketing. Well, things have moved on of course and today the blog is supplemented and supported by social media. You know, Facebook pages, LinkedIn groups, Google+ pages and for the more exotic maybe a ptinterest page as well. Blogs also have RSS feeds for ease of access to the information and people can subscribe to your content via the RSS feed or an email version of it.<\/p>\n<p>So. How many vendor websites have a blog do you think? How many vendors have social networking capabilities?<\/p>\n<p>The answer is, to my surprise, just a small proportion. Most vendors are missing out on these relatively easy ways to broaden their reach.<\/p>\n<p>But its worse.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s much worse.<\/p>\n<p>I won&#8217;t point any fingers but I can tell you some of the websites I have visited are appalling. And these are vendors. VENDORS. They are trying to sell something.<\/p>\n<p>Let me give you some examples;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>No news page whatsoever and no news at all. No events. Nothing. Either said vendor wants to keep its news a secret or it doesn&#8217;t have any. Either way, it&#8217;s not good.<\/li>\n<li>No description of the company. Yep &#8211; I found several sites where the company did not describe itself meaning it was pretty difficult to know what the company did or what it stood for. Again &#8211; bizarre!<\/li>\n<li>Almost impossible to find contact details. It&#8217;s one thing keeping your news secret (wouldn&#8217;t want the competition to find out what we were upto) but, its totally unforgivable for a company to bury its contact details. I always had thought the whole point to a website was so people could find you and contact you? Maybe I was wrong.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>There were lots of other issues with many of the sites I visited. Some actually didn&#8217;t work properly (on my browser perhaps but still), others contained spelling and basic grammatical mistake (not heard of proof reading?) and others were built in technologies so far out of date you had to wonder if the company was actually still around.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, there were also many excellent full featured websites too but surely, this is what you would expect across the board from software vendors&#8230; right?<\/p>\n<p>After reviewing these websites. ComTech Advisory is offering another service &#8211; website reviews and audits. Yes, contact me discreetly if you need some help but I&#8217;m sure we can help you put together a good web layout&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This last few days I have been visiting a lot of websites. Before anyone should get the wrong idea regarding my browsing habits, I have been reviewing and looking at all of the vendor websites across the CTRM space. Its a good way to catch up and stay in touch and I have contacted a number of vendors right from their contact us areas. I recall, perhaps 8-years ago, then colleague, Andrew Bruce, got me interested in blogs and blogging. He even wrote an article about the blog and its role in marketing. Well, things have moved on of course and today the blog is supplemented and supported by social media. You know, Facebook pages, LinkedIn groups, Google+ pages and for the more exotic maybe a ptinterest page as well. Blogs also have RSS feeds for ease of access to the information and people can subscribe to your content via the RSS feed or an email version of it. So. How many vendor websites have a blog do you think? How many vendors have social networking capabilities? The answer is, to my surprise, just a small proportion. Most vendors are missing out on these relatively easy ways to broaden their<a class=\"moretag\" target=\"_parent\" href=\"https:\/\/www.comtechadvisory.com\/blog\/opinion\/vendor-websites-often-leave-a-lot-to-be-desired\/\"> &#8230; continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[455,26,457,456],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Vendor Websites Often Leave a Lot to be Desired. | Commodity Technology Advisory<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This last few days I have been visiting a lot of websites. 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Before anyone should get the wrong idea regarding my browsing habits, I have been reviewing and\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.comtechadvisory.com\/blog\/opinion\/vendor-websites-often-leave-a-lot-to-be-desired\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Commodity Technology Advisory\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/CommodityTechnologyAdvisory\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-05-24T14:49:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-05-24T14:52:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.comtechadvisory.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/social-square-logo.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"700\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"700\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Gary Vasey\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@comtechadvisory\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@comtechadvisory\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Gary Vasey\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.comtechadvisory.com\/blog\/opinion\/vendor-websites-often-leave-a-lot-to-be-desired\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.comtechadvisory.com\/blog\/opinion\/vendor-websites-often-leave-a-lot-to-be-desired\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Gary Vasey\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.comtechadvisory.com\/#\/schema\/person\/7bbe28e59e09a076a043cc6838fcedb4\"},\"headline\":\"Vendor Websites Often Leave a Lot to be Desired.\",\"datePublished\":\"2013-05-24T14:49:48+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-05-24T14:52:58+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.comtechadvisory.com\/blog\/opinion\/vendor-websites-often-leave-a-lot-to-be-desired\/\"},\"wordCount\":512,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.comtechadvisory.com\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"Andrew Bruce\",\"CTRM\",\"RSS\",\"VENDORS\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Opinion\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.comtechadvisory.com\/blog\/opinion\/vendor-websites-often-leave-a-lot-to-be-desired\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.comtechadvisory.com\/blog\/opinion\/vendor-websites-often-leave-a-lot-to-be-desired\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.comtechadvisory.com\/blog\/opinion\/vendor-websites-often-leave-a-lot-to-be-desired\/\",\"name\":\"Vendor Websites Often Leave a Lot to be Desired. | Commodity Technology Advisory\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.comtechadvisory.com\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2013-05-24T14:49:48+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-05-24T14:52:58+00:00\",\"description\":\"This last few days I have been visiting a lot of websites. 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