StepFront

Today, we plan to review the website of one of the top and widely watched TV channels from Pakistan, ARY Digital.

Ary Digital is one of the channels of ARY Group.

Website Review:
For a long time I wanted to review the website of ARY. Every time i went there, I found a blank splash page and thought, why the hell is ARY not putting up their website! To my utter dismay, very recently I found out that the reason why I always found a blank page. It was because of the bloody firefox browser that I use. What a shame and pitty! With more than 16% of the Internet population now using FireFox, did no one in the organization pointed them out that their website is broken! . Anyway, I swallowed my agony and thought to review the website in IE. I opened up the first page, and found this FLASH SPLASH. I am always putt off by Splash pages, there are SO ninteys now. The splash page provided the option to choose any one of the four ARY Digital Websites which are

1. ARY Digital UK and Europe
2. ARY Digital Asia
3. ARY Digital Middle East
4. ARY Digital USA

I chose one of the options, obviously it was ARY Asia and landed on the homepage. (ARY Tried to open a pop-up for its website www.sahulatbazaar.co.uk, which the browser blocked) The homepage of ARY’s Website seemed run of the mill, but decent. It’s divided into boxes, where programs are featured by flash based banners again. The developers of ARY websites are IN LOVE with Flash. (remember ninteys again?) The site is then further divided into the various sections which are Profile, Programs, Schedule, How to get ARY, Contact Us and Downloads. Fine till here but wait.. what’s this annoying music running in the background… is there way to pause this music? Sorry no option, you can either switch off your speakers or stick some cotton in your ears while you do the browsing.. or else , how long am I supposed to listen to their background music? I opted to switch my speakers off (no cotton here).

Two of the links, schedules and programs don’t work. Amazing right? When you click the programs link, you are shown the promo banners again, yet clicking on those banners takes you nowhere. Whereas the schedule link is plain not working. Remember everything is in FLASH and I am just LOVING this website. How to get ARY provides technical info about the frequencies and all, and the contact link provides, well the contact information. Then the download section is there with some outdated content.

That’s about it. Oh yes, I almost forgot, right at the splash page, there is link named ARY TIMES. I was like, WOHA, what the hell is this, and clicked. It’s a PDF 14MB in size and comprises of interviews and program profiles.

My suggestions would be to provide a option to watch ARY LIVE on the web. Also to get rid of this excessive use of flash, make the website browser compatible, block those pop-up windows and put in some content.

related:
Ary One World News Website Review
The Musik Channel Website Review
QTV Pakistan Online Website Review
FTV Pakistan Online Website Review