India Post Carrying Ugly Face in Cyber World

Every time when I see the website of India Post, my mind will be filled with so many questions and concerns.  The first question will be “Why Department of Post is not utilizing its website effectively?”  Now the websites are the face of an institution in the Cyber world and people give significant importance to the quality of the website when they assess an organisation.  But in case of DOP, this face is not all an attractive one.

As you all know, India Post is on the way of sophistication in all the fields including technology and operations.  But without building a quality website, how India Post can say that they are on the way of technological renovation.

You may think that I am wrong on this subject because the present website of India Post may be good and sufficient according to your opinion. I respect your opinion, but after reading this article you have to think whether I was correct or not.

The definition of websites has changed a lot; once it was a place for mere presentation of information.  But now the websites are the part of online branding.  Since my areas of expertise are online brand building and SEO, I can give you a clear cut review of India Post website.

Instead of going for more technical, I shall make a review on the basis of visible elements which is more understandable for non-technical persons too.

1.  Template Width and Overall Look

The overall look of the present India Post website is very basic. There is no doubt in this even for person having basic knowledge in web world.  This type out dated templates are not using in any of the standard websites at present.

This is an era of High Definition (HD) visuals and resolutions of the gadgets are increasing day by day.  So a trendy website must be in a full width template and it should have a sufficient space for showing information in legible letters.  Big fonts and large banners are the specialty of the modern websites.

2. Responsive Template

This is the ability of the website template to change the style according to the size and resolution of the screen through which it is watching.  In simple words, you can enjoy the website in all size of screens without any difficulty. The user experience is same in the computer monitors or in the Tablet or in the smartphones.  The content and style will get adjusted according to the size of the screen.

In the recent years, the web traffic from mobile gadgets like tablets and smartphones are increasing drastically. But keeping separate template for mobile device is not advisable in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) perspective.  Making the website responsive should be the motive of every webmaster now days for exploring the benefits of SEO.

While coming to India Post website, it is not at all a responsive one and it is not optimized for mobile devices.  Through the following picture you can see the difference in the mobile view of www.speakpost.com and India Post website.

3.  Social media URLs and Plugins

Social media pages are vital part of an Institution and it is the presence of an organisation in the social media.  As the name indicates social media Vanity ULR is the major attraction in the social media presence.  Vanity URL or Custom URL is the easy identifiable or easy memorable URL of a social media business page.  In order to get a vanity URL, certain condition should be satisfied in some social media sites like Facebook and Google Plus.

India Post is a complete failure in this field.  They don’t have a custom URL even in Facebook or Google Plus, two most popular social media sites in India.  The higher authorities of India Post are actually unaware of effectiveness of social media marketing.   So they have not given any extra attention to this part.

A small initiative taken by Postal Directorate through their order No.11-01/2015-BD&MD was actually amateurish.  Instead of obtaining a custom URL they simply circulated the default complex Facebook URL.  Same URL is updated in the India Post website.  This is against all branding concepts.

A well planned brand will have social media page with vanity URL as its brand name.  See the custom URL of SPEAK POST below.

Google.com/+Speakpost

Facebook.com/Speakpost

Twitter.com/Speakpost

Youtube.com/c/Speakpost

Pinterest.com/Speakpost

While coming to social plugins, India Post never attempted to add such plugins into its website.  Plugins in the form of Share, Recommend and Like buttons will increase the presence of websites in the social media.

4.  Quality of Slider and Images

Quality of the images used in the website plays a vital role in the overall look of the site especially when it uses in the sliders.  And at the same time clumsy animation should be avoided. 

In order to make website more appealing, separate banners or slider images should be designed with the help of professional graphic designer.  Wording on the banner should be minimum and in legible large sized fonts.

The images used in the India Post website are of substandard quality.  Most of the pictures used in the site were not designed for website.  Banners and images designed for some other advertisement or campaigns have been taken as part of the website.  If you analyse the images in the India Post website you can see the logo in all banners.  That means the images were taken from some other brochures.  Actually there is no need to place India Post logo in all banners which are used in a website because this will place the website in a lower level.

From the following picture you can understand that the banners used in the India Post website are not professionally designed.

5.  Browser Friendly

A standard website will load in almost all web browsers without any issue and gives same user experience.   India Post website is purely version specific and it will not give same user experience in all platforms.

6.  Standardization of Margins and Padding

If you analyse a beautiful website, you can see that one of main reasons for the attractiveness of that webpage was due to its standardized margin or padding.  A professionally designed template surely will have uniformity in margins or padding.  Padding means space between content elements and its border.

The developers of the India Post website have not given any significance for the margins and paddings.  This carelessness placed the website into a next lower level. 

See the image below to understand the mistakes in padding or margin.

7.  Colour Theme and Arrangements

You cannot apply all colours into one website if you are looking for stylish website.  You have to select two or three colours as the base colour and can apply different shades of these colours when needed.  Avoid contrast colours from template and images for standard looking.

Arrangement of gadgets or different element of content is as very important as colour theme.  Arranging appropriate item in the appropriate place is the main challenge in this process.  Most wanted or items to which more attention is needed should be displayed in the prominent place above the fold.  Least important item should not occupy more space from home page.

Style should not be affected while arranging elements in the website.  Arranging more elements in single page and putting un-even white space will reduce the beauty of the site.

India Post website is violating all the above said rules.  The developers have arranged the elements without any style conscious.  Arrangement in the home page is very clumsy and childish.  Unnecessary white space is another fault from webmaster.

8.  Multi lingual versions

Killing process of India Post website has been completed with the addition of translation widget.  This facility is good but it will not blend in all templates.  You have to consider so many factors before adding such widgets.  Fist is whether important section of the webpage is translatable or not. Second is whether web page contains more images another is whether the size of the translated texts will blend with the original template or not.

While coming to India Post website, even after translating to some other language, the website stands as somewhat same as its English version.  Even Header and Menu heads, most important elements in a website are not in a translatable format.  I think it is in image form.   And at the same time latest news section is showing in English format even after translation.  In short there is no impact in the home page after translation. And at the same time the translation widget is not blending with the template in any way.

Conclusion

In my opinion India Post has not explored the possibility of its website.  If it uses the heavy traffic of India Post website wisely, it will be another potential area of business.  I shall write a separate post on this subject later.  Many other points are there to be highlighted but stopping with this much and expecting a beautiful face in near future itself.