audio and speaker web sites

I am curios about your experience interpreting those web sites, the quality, content and aesthetics. Should it matter? Does it indicate the quality of their research and product, and their standards?

There is the logic that they don’t spend their money and time on the web site to focus on the product and keep their prices reasonable.

In some cases, that certainly seems true.

My own standards are very basic for e.g. speakers:

Things I like:

- a gallery of all the speakers

- link to reviews

- how to videos

- a price list

- a simple list, ranked by something (one-click navigation)

- clear categorization of the speakers such as home, high-end, studio. or whatever. Believe me, it won’t hurt your brand. Being utterly obscure won’t help either. I feel that after reading 100s of descriptions of speakers and now being able to rank them by at least 2 aspects (not from the web site hierarchy but by a long learning and interpreting process), I deserve a diploma.

Things that confuse me:

- the nested/cascading dropdowns of e.g. 12 speakers. How would I know which way is up, what is the best, cheapest, bookshelf vs floorstanding verison of obscure Greek God names inspired model names? Do I need to click every single one to read about every single one and write down the prices if they are not ranked?

- meaningless images, e.g. no image of the back but a side image from an impossible angle

- meaningless blurbs - if one speaker is awesome and another speaker is even better, don’t describe them like one is a dream and the other is masterpiece, and ultimate [] and only for the enthusiast, these will not help me rank them

- the color choices linked to a bigger square of the color. Show me the speaker in that color!

- the meaningless and result-less 45 minutes "where to buy" experience. Please! Is it that hard to post a list of stores by country? I can scroll. I know Crtl+F. These maps - that show some locations - maybe - and then I have to click on 12 store home pages and their product lists - ARE NOT helpful only to find out that maybe one of 3 carries the brand and one of 10 carries the model. Have a simple matrix with a few columns: authorized retailer/independent retailer/carries the brand/carries the model/can order in 4 weeks/good luck/etc.. Panning the map forever may have been fun in 2001 but now I just want that dot without 5 clicks of querying and filtering.

- 15 minute research for prices. I understand it varies, just post the local suggested MSRP and I will lookup the currency,

to be respectful, I will avoid examples