When Marketing Attacks...
A Website Design

Like a puppy passing his favorite tree, the impulse is too hard to pass up. So it is, at times, with Marketing and service branding. The need to mark one's territory is just part of their DNA. And sometimes they just don't know when to say "when".

I'm sure that when the designers of the new Network Solutions website set out to redesign that mammoth service platform they didn't plan on making navigating more difficult. As a matter of fact, I'm sure that they fought tooth and nail to make it clean and simple. That's what good designers do.

However, somewhere along the way to website design nirvana, Marketing got involved and decided that Network Solutions didn't have enough ownership of the various departments.

First, let me say I'm a BIG fan of the redesign. I love the colors, styles, and graphics. The reorganization of content, from a user standpoint is a welcome improvement. Even the style of navigation (tabs) is very appropriate for a massive utility web service like NetSol. But again, the labeling of extremely important departments (e.g., Mail, Hosting, Web Address) are made much harder to find because everything has been branded nsMail, nsHosting, nsWeb Address. Are you kidding me... nsWeb Address?

Just take a look at the nicely designed drop-down panel above, and tell me what value the branding plays here.

Wait, it gets worse. Now that these critical areas have been made virtually illegible to the customer, don't you think Marketing would back down and let the designer use the natural name? Nope. Their solution is to add (extra labels) under the branded labels, so the folks paying for the service can both feel better about something they've already purchased, AND be able to find that utility when they need it!

I ask you, as a web designer, "Whats more important to the success of a website than navigation?". My sincere sympathy for the design team. In their moment of web design triumph, the flag of victory was stolen from them by the branding police.

Isn't it funny how Marketing decided to stop the branding short of nsHelp!