Update Your Website - Goldman Sachs
Following on from my Website Design Classics comes the other side, those sites that are either awful (to come) or those that have got complacent and failed to develop. I don’t intend on knocking the local Hotel or Restaurant, but the big guys. The ones who have big budgets but seem to think the web doesn’t matter.
Today’s review is of that most profitable Investment Bank, Goldman Sachs. Goldman is one of the elite of the financial world, as successful a firm as one could hope for. I expected greatness from Goldman but they didn’t deliver. Their website is a poor reflection on the company. When the average employee salary is in excess of $500,000/yr you would expect the greatest design known to man.
What I dislike most about the Goldman Sachs website is how stale it is. There is very little to suggest that anything is happening on the website and having visited this site 4 years ago I know this to be the case - nothing has changed. The images are still corporate, but they are not the most obviously corporate you will see but they are not good enough to waste most of the good space on the screen.
The Immunization program image is too public. An obvious public relations effort to suggest that what they do is not evil. While it is great to support that charity, you would prefer it to be more discrete.
There is evidence that this is an older site with DHTML images for navigation. Obviously SEO doesn’t matter a dime to you if you are pulling in millions per day but for the sake of accessibility big corporations really do need to set a good example for budgetary matters are not a consideration. Furthermore the use of “search” as link rather than provide a search box is pretty bad usability, given that there is no shortage of space.
Conclusions
This is far from the worst site in the world but obviously a bit stale. Given the company for whom this is their public face, it really is a let down. A bit more information, some new images and some textual links would go a long way.
October 22nd, 2007 at 4:00 pm
[…] I stated with regard to Goldman Sachs, I’m only concerned with highlighting the sites that really should know better. Today’s […]