I was recently browsing through the Guelph Mercury’s website. I was trying to find some contact information and did find it in http://www.guelphmercury.com/contactus as well as other interesting stuff.
As me and my wife are involved with charities and do some work in the non-profit sector, the link to the Guelph Mercury’s Donations page attracted my attention (even though I was there for other purposes). It states the following (this is an exact copy of their page):
“The Guelph Mercury provides non-profit community groups with donations of cash as well as in-kind support. Click here for more details.”
That seems very nice and all for a company like the Mercury, however, if you click on the “click here” link you will find an interesting surprise (that may change in the future, so I have included here a print of the page as it is right now).
So, once you click on more information about getting support or cash donations from the Guelph Mercury you get to a page that shows the picture of an older man who looks rather pale. What could the Guelph Mercury’s intention be? My first reaction to it was to think it is some kind of joke on people asking for money for charities, I assume they get hit with a lot of requests for funding.
And whether it is a joke or not, this kind of “errors” are nothing to laugh about in your business. So, is the Guelph Mercury playing a little joke on Guelph’s charities? I doubt it. However, this lapse is something that shouldn’t have happened at all, specially for an organization as the Guelph Mercury. This is a cautionary tale of web mistakes and blunders.
This is another example of how your IT and web presence should be very well cared for. The devil is in the details they say, and this is just the case. People from programmers to designers need to be very careful of too many details, however, when people think of the web, most only think its a matter of drawings and words. And while the basis is images and text, there is much more to it than just posting and pasting and it can get very complicated for even the simplest details.
Even if your web people are very good, always be very vigilant and review the work. There have been many examples of IT people having funny blunders that affect big companies and even of disgruntled employees who make a mockery of their previous employer while making a very public joke with their web presence.
Update: Mr. Phil Andrews replied to my message about this strange error and he has stated they will get it corrected. Kudos to the Guelph Mercury for reading people’s emails and taking care of business. However, at the end of business today, the error is still there… let’s see how long it takes them to fix it.
Update 2: They have removed the section completely.