A few minutes ago a friend called. Seems that Sir Ken Robinson will be speaking in Dallas. I’ve previously blogged about him at http://www.myephemerae.com/do-schools-kill-creativity. So being interested I Googled him  and “Dallas Museum of Arts” and found this page: http://snipurl.com/9bo6m.

(The actual URL is WAY too long to type … http://dallasmuseumofart.org/Dallas_Museum_of_Art/Experience/Arts___Letters_Live/ID_008546 … but let’s just ignore that for now.)

Ignoring the length of the URL for a minute, take a look at the page. Now start the stopwatch. Try to buy a ticket. See how long it takes you to buy a ticket. I haven’t yet figured it out yet. Should be a one-click process … as in “click here to buy a ticket”.

In addition, notice that the page mentions his TED presentation. Why doesn’t it link to it? (See http://snipurl.com/9bo1l and http://snipurl.com/9bo2o) . Doesn’t seem to link to his website either. (http://www.sirkenrobinson.com) Wonder why. It does show a picture of his new book: The Element. But it doesn’t link to that either (http://snipurl.com/9bo46).

But that isn’t all. See here on the same site: http://snipurl.com/9bomo. Look at Jan 20. A nice description. But no link to the other promotional page and no other links either. And still no link to buy a ticket.

No easy way to buy a ticket. No link to the TED talk that might inspire attendance. No link to the book. No cross links within the site. Is it just me, or does that seem wrong?

Update: give credit where it is due. Luby’s heard me when I emailed them. They have made a simple update to their website to correct this error. I salute them. Bravo! You can still click the links below to see what the problem was. But also note Luby’s prompt corrective action.

Frequently, corporate webs have errors. As I encounter these I think about how they happened, and even more, why I am finding them instead of someone else finding them.

Here is one example: over the holiday I went to the web to find the location of Luby’s cafeteria for a meal.

I went here: http://www.lubys.com/LocationDetail.asp?ID=190. I appreciated that Luby’s included a Google map on their site. However, the Google map did not point to the restaurant. It pointed to a bridge over part of Clear Lake where there are no buildings at all.

To figure out what happened I went to Google maps directly and went here http://snipurl.com/6w7h9. It is hard to tell from the MAP but click on Satellite View and you’ll see. The restaurant is not there. Nothing is there. It’s a bridge.

So I changed the search address slightly. I had been searching for “1600 Nasa Road One, Houston,Texas 77058″. Why that address? Because it is the address shown on the Luby’s site. Apparently Google Maps doesn’t handle that address well.

So, I changed it to an equivalent address: “1600 Nasa Parkway, Houston,Texas 77058″. That equivalent address works fine. It comes up here http://snipurl.com/6w7im.

Is the difference significant. YES! These two locations aren’t that close: see here http://snipurl.com/6w7jr.

Ok. Mistakes can happen. And working with street addresses and the variations of road names is always difficult. But someone is supposed to check. Who? How about the store manager. He (or she) would instantly see the error to alert someone to fix it. But either the store manager was not involved in the review process or his (her) protestations were met with indifference or even worse , an explanation that that is just the way it is. Neither is correct. This needs fixing.

(And I’m sure that after I let them know, they will fix it. I’ll post an update here once they do.)

The fix is trivial: change the store address to an address that Google Maps processes correctly. This isn’t hard.

The problem is that a customer found and diagnosed the error. This should not have happened. Luby’s should have found and diagnosed the error. Who? How about the person who would know best: the store manager.

Do your employees look at your corporate site? Do they help proof the corporate site? Are they assigned the task of proofing the corporate site?

Cheryl Wise (starttoweb.com) has alerted me that the Nielsen Norman Group is making their $124 accessibility report, “Beyond ALT Text: Making the Web Easy to Use for Users With Disabilities”, available for free. This report has 75 best practice tips for increasing the usability and accessibility of your website.I do not know how long this will last.

www.nngroup.com/reports/accessibility