Chili's web site is poo.

My fiance' doesn't have internet access at her job, but she has e-mail so she asked me to e-mail her the menu for Chili's.

So I go to google.com and search for "Chilies Restaurant" (I didn't know it was spelled Chili's). I couldn't find their site... I got a bunch of other mexican restaurants instead. Finally I tried different spellings and found out that it is spelled Chili's and found their site.

*They should have put common misspellings of their name in the keywords of their site, so that you could find it even if you misspelled their name. Mistake number one.*

So I come to the front page and I see a bunch of catchy phrases to click on. I was looking for "Menu" or something like that. But of course that just isn't cool enough, so they put "Off the Grill" instead. I didn't know what I was clicking on, but guessed that might be the menu. There was no alt-text to describe where I was actually going.

*They should use plain english words to describe the sections of the site. Not catchy phrases from the marketing department that think they are clever.*

So anyway I found the menu area, and then I find that it is divided up into frames, and there are about 25 different sections of the menu. So if I wanted to send it to my fiance' thru e-mail, I'd have to copy/paste each section into an e-mail and type in the headings of those sections like "appetizers" and "sandwiches" because on the site they are all images with no alt-text, which of course don't copy/paste.

*They should have just put the whole menu on one page with only plain text, or only use pictures for pictures of the food, not for the headings of the menu sections. They could have also had a PDF file to download and print if they wanted it to look like the menu in the actual store. But plain HTML menu marked up with CSS would have been the best way to do it.*

Since their 'menu' was useless to me, I decided to write them an e-mail telling them that their site is useless. I did so, and when I tried to submit the form, it said that my e-mail address wasn't valid. I checked my e-mail and it was correct. [email]d@undergradscentral.com[/email]. I then figured their verification script was just stupid so I put [email]derek@undergradscentral.com[/email], and then it let me send the e-mail.

*They need to use a better validation script. One letter e-mail addresses are completely valid, and I don't know what their problem was. Even if they didn't do that they should have said specifically why the address didn't validate. Like I forgot the @ sign or the .com/net/org or something like that.*

The entire site uses frames, which makes it impossible to bookmark a page. Including the menu. So not only can you not easily download or print the menu, you can't even bookmark it to find it easier the next time you have to go to their site just to see the stupid menu!

*They should not use frames. And at the very least supply the menu on its own easily printable, bookmarkable and savable page.*

Overall the site is poo.

http://www.chilis.com

1) I think Pank should set up an area on the TeamPS main page for "Deker's weekly bashing of a corporate site", and put it right beside SOTW. (Remember Fuji Film's site)

2) But seriously, I understand Dek, I went there and I found it to be completely un-navigable. I looked for a "contact" button, but to no avail....instead....guess what it was....."Let's Talk"...how stupid is that!?

Email sent!

I'm just sick of all these huge companies having such crappy web sites. I mean I'm sure they are paying the web developers tens of thousands of dollars for these sites, and they all suck! They need to be shown that they are getting screwed, and then hire me instead!

Got a reply from Chili's via email:

February 01, 2002

Dear Mr. xxxxxxx,

Thank you for taking the time to send us comments regarding Chili's web site. We
appreciate your business.

We will gladly forward your comment along to our marketing department who works
closely with our web site team.

Guest feedback is vital to our success. We appreciate your comments as we can only
improve based on feedback. We hope you will continue to frequent Chili's.

L. Kelly
Guest Relations