the most important thing on the site and it doesn't work

Occasionally I like to listen to a talk radio show by Ian Collins on TalkSPORT. Unfortunately my medium-wave signal is lousy, so I decided to abandon the radio and tune in via their website.

Their page is a bit of a jumble, but I found the link to listen to the show easily enough. I click it.

And find myself on a blank white page.

heh

I click the back button. Try again. Same.

hmm

If I wasn't such a persistent critter, I'd probably have given up right then. But I kept looking and found another link that read 'listen to us'.

Click.

Absolutely no mention of listening on the Internet.

hmm

fig 1: The TalkSPORT website. The 'listen live' link probably works for most people. But what about the people who run into trouble; where do they turn for help? Not the 'listen to us' link, that's for sure.

Eventually I guessed I might be able to load it by opening up Windows Media Player and loading the URL directly. That worked, but it took me about 20 minutes to figure it out. Not good.

Although their site clearly needs some serious work, problems like this are always going to slip through the net.

The only way of discovering these annoyances is to have a strong community feedback loop. Ideally a feedback loop that is published on the site. The transparency will encourage people to use it properly.