Regular peeps at NL would remember when globalcom had a job vacancy for a web designer/developer, and our responses (search the forum for the thread)

And now, check out [gloworld dot com] and see for yourself.

My opinion? seeing how they have redesigned their site, I'm impressed. More importantly, I believe it sends a stronger message (from a major nigerian company) to the entire Naija web community on the importance of stepping your game up in quality work. Every site like this (or aspiring) is a nail in the coffin for "chop & clean mouth" websites that still plague our industry.

So, what do you think? Comments are welcome

I had to go searching for the original post so as to see whether or not I should eat my boots before posting a response: https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-331671.0.html - it would be nice to know if a fellow nairalander (be it solo or in collabaration with someone else or a company) got the deal.

Having read all the posts:
1) Site looks better than it did before. Of course it is still suffering from the Nigeria-specific animation mania but in a way, I can overlook that, to a point

2) I like the fact that the background image is randomly displayed

3) The site seems to use ajax to display content. I wonder if they tested the site on cell phones (after all, glo is a cell phone company, right?). I pulled up the site on my blackberry and got a blank page. Just to be sure, I pulled up cnn's website and it came up within seconds.

4) I played the part of a typical visitor and pretended I wanted to contact them. i was expecting the standard "contact us" verbiage on the site but couldn't find it (forgive me but I have a slow brain). I finally found an envelope image and decided to click that to see if that was it (it had no alt or title tag). Clicking it brought up a very cool lightbox-type form. It seems to validate but when it highlights an error, there is no label to tell you what you need to fill out).

5) The glo ambassadors page could have been done differently. I didn't notice the other thumbnails at the bottom.

6) Maybe I missed it but again, being a cell phone company, I was expecting to find a place where I could register on the site and more importantly, where I could pay my bills/add to my available credit.

I will stop here to avoid getting flagged by the bot. Overall though, the site is way better than it was prior to the redesign and like the OP, I hope and pray that their competition is looking to at least be on par with them. The site could use some improvements, especially with respect to #3 and #4 though but hey, which site is 100% perfect.

I'm saying this from a Software Engineer's point of view.
I don't think any Quality tests were done on this site and its very unprofessional to come up with a site for a company such as GLO that has one of its pages looking like this
http://www.gloworld.com/Nigeria/Content/Details/110
http://www.gloworld.com/Nigeria/Content/Details/111
http://www.gloworld.com/Nigeria/Content/Details/112

Its a complete turn off for me to continue checking the site out.
How in the world was that cleared for public access if quality analysis and testing was carried out?

How would i know what that little envelope on the right does when it doesn't even have a tool tip? This is still under quality assurance and testing because you have to make sure everything on your system is safe for the user at all times. That envelope could be a bomb meant for those who wonno commit suicide, lol. Me i dont wonno kill myself and i am about to click that envelope. Its unsafe cuz there's nothing telling me wat it is.

In proposals I write among other things, there is Quality Analysis and Testing and its within the range of 10k to 20k naira and for a duration of 4 to 5 days.

From a web designers point of view, dang I love the graphics and the expert collabo'ing of css and html

From a coder's view, clean codes with comments to help pipz like me who steal bits of codes from everywhere and come up with one perfect block

don't know how the site looked previously, here is what I know now:

- no redirect (gloworld dot com gives you a time out), who types w w w these days?

- no online community

- on the About Us page, there are 4 "About Us" headers, redundant (noticed this on other pages too)

- headers are too big, I know the page I clicked, dont need a big font reminding of which page i am

-  navigational menu is across and also at the left sidebar, what is the use of 2 ?

following up on yawa's comment:

- please remove all the big headers and have "Contact Us" as a big header instead, rather than just put an envelope, there is nothing more important than
providing a conspicuous means customers communication with you guys

- it'd be cool to be able to register and view/pay your bills, make plan analysis and view your reports/call logs, keep in mind you are not designing this site for yourselves, its there for your customers and intending ones

- very important to have an application where registered users can chat with your staffs (this will draw traffic to your site and save customers time of waiting to speak with your representative endlessly on the phone) - It should also create an automated response for questions customers might have

-provide a call back app - customer service drives success

-are your store locations phone-less ? please provide numbers for the store locations

-newsletter sign up section where customers can get updates in their mail

-users are skeptical about downloading documents from websites (except if its a bill or something similar), you can have a flash showing us your coverage areas, download should be an option

- check the margins in your footer please

Dual Core:

How would i know what that little envelope on the right does when it doesn't even have a tool tip? This is still under quality assurance and testing because you have to make sure everything on your system is safe for the user at all times. That envelope could be a bomb meant for those who wonno commit suicide, lol. Me i dont wonno kill myself and i am about to click that envelope. Its unsafe cuz there's nothing telling me wat it is.

That envelope is absolutely useless - send to a friend? - like i dont have an email address

Dual Core:

I'm saying this from a Software Engineer's point of view.
I don't think any Quality tests were done on this site and its very unprofessional to come up with a site for a company such as GLO that has one of its pages looking like this
http://www.gloworld.com/Nigeria/Content/Details/110
http://www.gloworld.com/Nigeria/Content/Details/111
http://www.gloworld.com/Nigeria/Content/Details/112

Its a complete turn off for me to continue checking the site out.
How in the world was that cleared for public access if quality analysis and testing was carried out?

If the problem you're talking about is that it doesn't load the targeted page, then I'm sure they could have thrown an alert on failing, stating that the page doesn't exist, or to put it more softly, "The content can't be loaded at this time". Seeing that they used jQuery on the site, I suppose there's no excuse for not having this (software engineer wise of course).

All in all, its a good starting point overall.

WebMonk:

All in all, its a good starting point overall.

I don't see this as a good start. GLO is a big company and it is expected they should pay the right people the right amount of money to get it done the right way.

WebMonk:

If the problem you're talking about is that it doesn't load the targeted page, then I'm sure they could have thrown an alert on failing, stating that the page doesn't exist, or to put it more softly, "The content can't be loaded at this time". Seeing that they used jQuery on the site, I suppose there's no excuse for not having this (software engineer wise of course).

When the pages load, scroll down to the end and see.

well, am sure that the website is done outside the country.
Mind you the Headers are too big .
The layout and design is perfect.

Dual Core:

I don't see this as a good start. GLO is  a big company and it is expected they should pay the right people the right amount of money to get it done the right way.

What I am trying to say is "it could have been much worse"

We have seen redesigns of websites that made us cringe more than the first version. If anything, what is "expected" & what actually happens are still two very different things in this country. So on that note, I maintain that its a good start, though as you have rightfully said, it can be much better.

Now there is some real stepping up from Glo. the last site was orrible IMHO and i knew the guys involved.

This one is at least 70% better than the previous one in looks and technology employed. but there is a bit of tweaking and optimization to be done at the Ajax end of things. i usually open vaunted sites with my UGO to see how the site works on ultra-slow internet links

on the whole, swell job to whoever built it.

taye007:

well,  am sure that the website is done outside the country.
Mind you the Headers are too big .
The layout and design is perfect.

How can you be sure the site was designed outside the country?

- in the Latest NEWS section, I dont see why "NEWS" should be uppercase, also the header "Latest NEWS" doesnt need to rotate with the rest of the content, same goes for Read more button.

- still on the latest NEWS section, it will be cool to have the title of the news listed out as links, since we are still going to click for more anyways.
example:
Latest News
.glo rules
.glo is for Naija
.glo wins
.glo is now 4g
.more glo
this would make for a neat layout rather than have too many rotating stuff on the front page

-in the sections beneath the rotating images, have all the texts on 3 lines, some are on 4 lines while some 3 lines, make these lines consistent - and since all the "Find out more" links leads to same page, why dont you just have a single "Find out more" link? or create different pages - I also see no reason for the use of an iframe to load a text page

-no reason to take users hostage with Terms and Conditions, when I click it, I cant do anything on the page anymore, make this a standalone pop up instead, so i can scroll through the terms while simultaneously scrolling through the main page

I like the look and feel of the website, good work guys