I was trying to find out more about a company today and in doing so clicked on a link taking me to their website. Which was as useful as a wet fart.

They are the UK contact for a flashy brand of bicycle component. I know this because the component manufacturer’s website tells me that. In fact I know more about them from that site than their own. The only thing I found out from their site is that if I hit the “contact us” link then I’ll send an email to someone with the same name as one of the big bike brands.

It’s this sort of thing that really infuriates me. Do businesses really care or value the internet so little that it’s too much trouble to even put up a basic, functional site?

Of course tomorrow I’ll find that this was a “holding page” while they were getting their site redone. It still doesn’t excuse it in my book. Out-of-date content is bad, but no content is worse.

How much trouble is it to put up a single page giving your email contact plus postal and phone details alongside a brief summary of what your business does? After all, most of the ones I’ve ever encountered seem to have been able to afford a logo and a hosting deal.

It really defies belief that any business thinks it can afford not to have a decent online proposition when so many first contacts are likely to come through that route. Are these businesses really unaware of this?

There are so many tools out there that allow you to build a basic site without resorting the the sort of comic sans hell that blighted the first generation of self-build that I can’t see why anyone wouldn’t want to spend a day or two getting to grips with them.

Please tell me I’m not alone in feeling like this every time I find myself clicking into a link that is, to all intents, dead. I’m going to stop now before I even start to think about the full horror of flash holding pages and ridiculous De Mille-style epic flash intro movies.