Published in L’Express on the 27th of November 2008
Michael Anseline, 24 ans, est chef d’entreprise. Il est un des fondateurs de la firme Fantasmédia qui est dans la création de site web, l’événementiel ou encore la modération.
«La création d’un site web peut prendre une semaine à trois mois. Notre rôle est de proposer des solutions aux clients», explique-t-il. Ses clients sont des français. «Ils se rendent compte que Maurice est une destination pas chère et de qualité en ce qu’il s’agit d’informatique», dit-il.
Avec le boum des BPO, les gens pense que c’est la seule filière liée à l’informatique, mais la programmation est également une avenue intéressante pour le jeune chef d’entreprise. Comme Michael, les autres intervenants pensent que le secteur informatique peut connaître un développement majeur à Maurice, que ce soit pour la création de sites web ou pour la programmation pure.
Once again, quite a lot of bragging about Mauritian web design. For me, the first thing to do when you have to get close to a web design company is to visit their website. Why? Because if they have a great website, standards compliant, flexible with optimised and really interesting content they are convincing the prospective client that they’ll be selling the same type of website to them. Others will base themselves on highly graphical elements just to sell the eye-candy and skip everything else. The eveything being the essence of the web: standards, css and content.
So let’s have a look at Fantas Média’s “high quality” website. Ok, they haven’t really got one, but the one online for the time being tells quite a lot. Ok, first things first. Say “Hi!” to Mr.Flash Page. Bad idea: no indexation, non standards-compliant, bandwidth gobbler (remember we’re in Mauritius guys), difficult to update, and these are just examples. Along with that is that annoying music loop! Here are some great articles to learn about UX (user experience), standards and quality
- How to Convince a Client (and maybe yourself) their Site Doesn’t Need Music?
- Forget the Flash splash.
Ok, let’s have a look at the code now.
What do we have then? Beautiful example of keyword spamming. An advice: try a Google search on basic SEO techniques, it’ll help, I guarantee. It might even incite you to remove the “référencement” keyword from your business model.
In page CSS, true enough, the animation is already killing the bandwidth so why bother about an external CSS file. Using upper case HTML, ok no standards then and the code confirms it. Wonderful onClick="window.open(this.href); return false;". You’re a user without Javascript activated and you don’t have Flash installed, too bad, looks like Fantas Média is telling you that you’re SCREWED!
We might give Fantas Média the benefit of doubt, their portfolio is not online. Yes but Google is. Here’s a sample of their work, or might it be a part of their new website. Their previous portfolio itself is a huge flash animation. So no alternative for accessible browsers, no alternative for standards compliant browsers and no way to get this indexed in search engines because of the keyword spamming added to the horrible use of English and French. Even the keyword spamming is incorrectly done as the portfolio shows (supposed) English text while the keywords are in French.
Dear Fantas Média, please employ a copywriter who’ll tell you that “multimedia” doesn’t have and accent in English, “massif” is a geology term and cannot be used in a phrase like “massif image resizing” or “positivism” is a scientific knowledge theory where you might have used “positivity”. Just like “concept” is a “concept” and not a “conception”!
Here is an example of how standards are completely absent in Mauritius and the quality of the work really poor. This is what Mauritian web designers should not be doing as it reduces the value of Mauritian web design. The same persons will be saying that they are doing quality work while being completely oblivious of the core concepts of web design. Their new site should be online soon, I’m really waiting for it and hope that they’ll prove me wrong.