A friend told me about Jolly Time popcorn today, and mentioned that they had a new healthy version available. I think he sent me a link, but like a lot of people, I just Googled it instead of spending time hunting for the email.
The front page of their site has a huge Flash movie devoted to Healthy Pop, the product I wanted. Kudos to them for the real estate, but not sure why it was necessary to use Flash just to put an animation of the box dropping into view on a continuous loop. I suppose someone felt that just making it the most prominent image on the entire screen wasn’t enough, we needed the 2009 version of the <blink> tag to really drive the point home.
It’s completely distracting, and makes it annoying to look at any other navigation on the page, but that’s ok, because I’m just here for that product anyway, right? Alright, then, I’ll just click on the giant box of popcorn to see it, and…
Nothing.
Click again. Nothing. It’s not a link.
Now I have to figure out where I can go to see more about Healthy Pop, and it’s really not clear. While I try to look, I’m being hassled by the flying popcorn boxes, and there’s no other link on the page that says “Healthy Pop.”
There’s a link to “Products & Flavors,” which could be it, or another link to “Promotions,” which might be better, since they seem to be promoting Healthy Pop right now. There’s also a subtle search box hidden tucked away up in the corner, where typing “Healthy Pop” might be useful.
What am I really going to do, though? Do I really want to devote my time to searching through their site, when I’ve got work to do and a million things competing for my attention? Not really. I’m going to do the same thing countless other potential customers are probably doing right now, which is to shrug my shoulders and close the window. Sorry, Jiffy Pop, your new product just isn’t important enough for me to go on safari through your site to find.
You could have had me with just one click.
