Queensland Racing website disaster

As an enthusiastic Queensland Racing supporter, horse owner, and race goer, I have for years anticipated the day on which Queensland Racing decided to spend a minimal amount of money and upgrade their site to an acceptable industry standard Web site.  I didn’t anticipate much…interesting content, reasonable site navigation, accessible(not only for me, but my visually impaired punting mate),  refreshed design, mobile access to content at current mobile standards, cutting edge news articles, trainer information, horse search information, dynamic content, industry statistics, a few classic race videos and searchable content.  So, today when I went to check recent nominations, I had a little bit of excited anticipation when I noticed a new header on the website.  But..

Ok, maybe I’m not a normal horse enthusiast/user of the Queensland Racing site, but I expect a certain standard of Web Site Development from industry peers, particularly from one with significant cash resources and one in which Marketing and Reputation has significant result driven performance and industry expectations.

So, I have decided to do a review, primarily from a website technical perspective, but because I am a racing enthusiast, not ignoring the every day user

Domain Name/Search

• the name has changed from queenslandracing to racingqueensland, and trots and greyhounds have been incorporated… but no metadata, keywords, descriptions, titles have changed – so search engines can’t find content, and therefore neither can the public
• so the content should be searchable-  titles, headings, and content important in indexing of information.. unfortunately content needs to be improved…or exist for top level navigation..http://www.racingqueensland.com.au/thoroughbreds.aspx – no content…http://www.racingqueensland.com.au/greyhounds.aspx – no content…http://www.racingqueensland.com.au/i-want-to.aspx – no content…http://www.racingqueensland.com.au/services.aspx – no content
• why is there no redirect from the old address, a simple implementation
• Greyhounds, harness and multiple pages have the description or keywords “horse, racing, betting, queensland”…excusable for a mum n dad homepage, for an industry website – incompetent
• Greyhounds home page – has no content – what, don’t they have any interesting  information??
• “I want to” as primary navigation…”I” want to never have to visit this site again…but yet again there is no content on this page???
• Services..for the industry…empty again.. quite appropriate given the rest of the site

Navigation

• never, ever in every site that I have visited, observed, used or reviewed when I clicked on side navigation was I given a secondary level of side navigation to click on again…in a day where jquery, mootoools, javascript and basic CSS allow interesting interactive side navigation, How Could This Possibly Occur!
• no user testing could possibly have been conducted on any aspect of the site

Design/Accessibility

• perhaps one of the most recognisable, professional industry standard aspects of the previous site…The Logo, has been removed and replaced with a scribble
• the top level navigation selected, red on black text fails color contrast…and as up to 20% of Australian users face some type of visual impairment or disability, this is unacceptable
• “pdf” is not an acceptable addition to a link, size of file should be included, PDF is the industry standard, and some attachments do not have any assistive information
• Partners, do not seem to exist as no links work, no coloured graphics exist, and grey seems the dominant colour
• a home link in the top right.. well that’s a first, possibly Queensland Racing think they can lead the industry in site navigation, and user expectation? possibly another mistake?

Links

• 1593 broken links, found by running an open source link check program…did anyone check anything??

Information/Content

• as the links indicate, finding content is quite a challenge, although to be fair, as multiple pages link to http://www.racingqueensland.com.au/annual-reports.aspx and the jquery file, and they are broken, then the links could quite easily be fixed
• in an industry where races, videos of these races are the core of the industry…where is the dynamic content
• the content of the site is written for print media, not the web…web content is meant to be able to be scanned, have links to important content, also haeheadings, interactive content and interesting features
• we are in the midst of a social networking revolution, and QR has not a single instance of current social networking or interactive content
• why are the youth not coming to the races, it is specifically because sites like this fail to interest or understand the youth market, and have no comprehension of the significance of Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr in the their daily lives

I initially did not set up to portray a negative perspective on an industry centre piece, but it disappointed at too many levels.

And finally, you know what really disappointed me, my final search for the Grey Flash…nothing, for Monashee Dancer…nothing(ok he only won 4 city races this year), but the great Apache Cat…nothing,  the legendary Takeover Target…nothing, Rough Habit…zip, Melbourne Cup winner Shocking…nope, the champ Campaign King…nothing…and as I attempted to give feedback http://www.racingqueensland.com.au/about-rql/contacts/complaints.aspx but it doesn’t exist!