info [ AT ] redcardinal [ DOT ] ie
Moviestar.ie
Moviestar.ie are the proud winners of the ‘Best Website Launched in 2006′ Golden Spider award.
The following is taken from a press release from Movistar.ie’s Public Relations firm Thinkhouse PR:
“Best Website Launched in 2006! We are absolutely thrilled,” said Gavin McConnon of moviestar.ie. “We spent a lot of time researching and trialling the website ensuring that it was designed in a browser-friendly way.”
The press release goes on to say:
Beating off stiff competition from sites such as callcosts.ie; sellityourself.ie; the Golden Spider was awarded to Moviestar.ie for its performance, as a functioning site in addition to design, innovation, content, navigation, technology, interactivity and ease of use.
An apology
I try very hard to not be subjective. I feel the quality of what I write here is dependent on being as objective as possible. The next line is purely my subjective belief:
If the above is correct, and the judges did indeed award a Golden Spider to Moviestar.ie (the site has been updated since the GS awards) for “its performance, as a functioning site in addition to design, innovation, content, navigation, technology, interactivity and ease of use“, I think they should hang their heads in shame.
As a business I think Moviestar.ie may well be exceptional. As a website it most certainly is (was) not. Had the award been for the ‘Best New Internet Business in 2006′ I would have little or no complaint.
Moviestar.ie currently ‘owns’ the top 10 Google.com positions for the search phrase ‘moviestar.ie’.
Before I leave my rant, where did you get:
“Moviestar.ie currently ‘owns’ the top 10 Google.com positions for the search phrase ‘moviestar.ie’.”
from?
Comment by Dave Davis — November 29, 2006 @ 10:09 am
Do a search for ‘moviestar.ie’ – all very positive results, mainly their own press releases. (‘owns’ probably overstates my meaning :grin:)
Comment by Richard Hearne — November 29, 2006 @ 10:18 am
OK, “navigation”. It was awarded for it’s navigation. I guessing they won it because they think visually impaired people don’t really need movies.
Interactivity? A link to videodetective?
Will I go on?
I’m getting tired of bitching. I’m going to submit myself for an award next year.
Comment by Dave Davis — November 29, 2006 @ 10:33 am
I can absolutely promise never to mention GS again. Just that the PR really got my gut.
Comment by Richard Hearne — November 29, 2006 @ 10:40 am
Until next year
Comment by Dave Davis — November 29, 2006 @ 10:42 am
What is actually wrong with the Moviestar website, apart from a coding point of view?
Compare it to Sceenclick’s website, a direct competitor, and you can see it’s infinitely better at getting accross the idea of the product:
http://www.screenclick.com/Default.aspx
It’s got very little content on the homepage, it’s got a few core messages to get accross which is very important with a new service. It’s also visually attractive and gives a positive impression of the brand.
It is a damn good website. It may not be coded well and it may have accessibility issues but that doesn’t detract from the fact that for 99% of the audience, it’s a well executed website which is well targeted and useful.
Comment by Kevin Cannon — November 29, 2006 @ 10:45 am
Kevin
Thanks for your comment.
The site has been updated – the current site is not the site that won the prize. I might have a screen-shot somewhere, but it wasn’t too pretty.
The new homepage is quite good actually (IMO).
As I said, it’s only my subjective belief and as a business I am not faulting moviestar.ie, but to say that it is (was – the previous iteration won the award) the best website launched in 2006 is unjust.
Again, I apologise for letting subjective belief come into the conversation, but this award just sends the wrong message IMHO.
Comment by Richard Hearne — November 29, 2006 @ 10:55 am
I’d also just like to point out that their description meta tag is the default meta description tag of the script/software they use to run the site.
“IdeGP DRS – the most powerful Online Rental Software for Renting DVDs, CDs, Video Games, Adult DVDs, and Books over the web. With Streaming Video on Demand available now! A 100% Web-based customizable software solution to start your online business or expand your existing business to compete successfully with NetFlix and Blockbuster. Easy to launch! Allows organizing a warehouse at the lowest cost! No technical skills required for warehouse team. Price attractive. Personal approach to every client. Rental business Franchise”
With all due respect, is purchasing a script and setting up a “Franchise” all I need to do to win a GS?
Comment by Dave Davis — November 29, 2006 @ 1:02 pm
Richard – That make’s an awful lot more sense, haven’t seen the old site, so can’t comment. Thanks for the clarification!
Dave – I don’t really think the underlying CMS is very important in judging a site, that would be a bit like slagging off a site just because they use WordPress. Their business model is based on Netflix sure, but it’s not a franchise. It’s great model and i’m glad it’s been introduced to Ireland.
Comment by Kevin Cannon — November 29, 2006 @ 2:39 pm
Sorry, maybe I should have clarified a bit more. While I am happy a service like netflix has been introduced into Ireland (I will most certainly use it) the award was for “innovation” and “technology” (Among others). I assumed that would be for originality and a new way to use an existing technology or even a new technology.
If someone launched an amazon AWS store and packaged it nicely, would that be innovative? Would that really be “the best website launched in 2006″
Comment by Dave Davis — November 29, 2006 @ 3:56 pm
C’mon now, it’s much more than an Amazon AWS store.
Also, it won the award for website launch, there’s a seperate category for innovation.
And finally it’s the Golden Spiders!!
Comment by Kevin Cannon — November 29, 2006 @ 4:21 pm
Ok ok, I recede
I’m just jealous. Seriously, I admire them for having the gumption.
Comment by Dave Davis — November 29, 2006 @ 4:26 pm
Tables used for layout, spacer gif’s. There are simply no redeeming features for best practice other than the absence of font tags. The GS judges don’t understand web standards. So, eh, why are they judging the Irish Internet ‘Oscars’?
Comment by Mojo — November 29, 2006 @ 7:24 pm
Oh well, that didn’t take too long…
http://www.google.com/search?q=moviestar.ie
And who said that META description wasn’t useful anymore
Comment by Richard Hearne — December 1, 2006 @ 1:20 pm
Am I missing something? Perhaps you got a short little Google Honeymoon for the post.
Comment by Dave Davis — December 1, 2006 @ 8:03 pm
Well that’s just plain odd – it was #3, now it’s #28.
Never seen a honeymoon that short
Comment by Richard Hearne — December 1, 2006 @ 9:29 pm
I was #3 across most Data Centers two days ago for “SEO tips” for 6 hours. I think G are playing with some new algo tweaks.
Comment by Dave Davis — December 1, 2006 @ 10:19 pm
Weird – the page is no longer even indexed. How it made it to #3 for ‘moviestar.ie’ and then got de-indexed is beyond me?
Tin-hat time.
Comment by Richard Hearne — December 2, 2006 @ 1:24 pm
Thinking about it, it makes sense. When you want the latest news on something, do you search Google? Nope. One of biggest problem with the index right now is that it’s old (In internet terms). Think about that. It’s in Googles interest to index fresh news and boost it. Fast.
I don’t know if their ranking algo is that good yet to avoid abuse of this.
Oh well, something to keep an eye on.
Comment by Dave Davis — December 2, 2006 @ 3:51 pm
Not sure Dave – if a new page appears in the index and soon after gets de-indexed it looks to me like there is some problem.
I can understand relegation in the SERPs but not removal from the index.
Comment by Richard Hearne — December 2, 2006 @ 5:53 pm
Oh, it was completely removed? OK, I stand corrected. My page was indexed, then dropped a few hundred places.
Now that I check again, it has been removed from the index on all DCs.
Weird. I guess we’ll find out in the coming weeks.
Comment by Dave Davis — December 2, 2006 @ 6:04 pm
[...] Now call me paranoid, and perhaps on that occasion it was just coincidence, but I find it very curious that my post about moviestar.ie was crawled, indexed and ranked #3 for a Google search on ‘moviestar.ie’, but very shortly after was completely de-indexed from Google (site:, cache:). [...]
Pingback by What’s Up with Google and Thinkhouse PR? | Search Engine Optimisation Ireland .:. Red Cardinal — December 3, 2006 @ 12:45 pm
Interesting comments on Moviestar. My own feeling, more as a website user than coder, is who cares about ‘best practice’ and ‘web standards’? As far as I’m concerned, all that matters is the user experience. There’s far too much attention paid to the technologies and the quality of the underlining code, in software as well website design. If it works, looks, and feels good, then to my mind, it is good.
The current Moviestar site is by far the best DVD rental site in Ireland. I hesitated about joining after reading all the bad press about the brothers Mac, and their goings on across the pond, but so far I have no complaints, and like most people out there who are reasonably honest with themselves, couldn’t care less if the DVDs come with a NOT FOR RENTAL stamp.
Comment by Bill — December 3, 2006 @ 4:17 pm
Hi Bill
I cant knock the service.
If the site does what it says on the tin then happy-go-merry. I agree with you wholeheartedly.
However, the site that won the Golden Spider is not the site that you see today (well certainly the homepage has changed appreciably).
Thanks for your comment
Comment by Richard Hearne — December 3, 2006 @ 4:51 pm
“My own feeling, more as a website user than coder, is who cares about ‘best practice’ and ‘web standards’?”
Lots of people – including millions upon millions of Web users (like yourself) around the world. Not to mention search engines. And let’s not forget those pioneering the future of the web – who want to ensure we don’t experience another dot.com crash.
Comment by Mojo — December 3, 2006 @ 8:01 pm
“I hesitated about joining after reading all the bad press about the brothers Mac, and their goings on across the pond, but so far I have no complaints, and like most people out there who are reasonably honest with themselves, couldn’t care less if the DVDs come with a NOT FOR RENTAL stamp”
ONLY IN IRELAND would you find such a post!
I am writing from Screenclick. We have already reported Moviestar and busybeedvd for renting RETAIL new release product which costs a fraction of what they should be buying! Would you compare buying a E5 DVD at a market to buying from PLAY.com????
If you receive a DVD from either of these companies with a second sticker covering up the “NOT FOR RENTAL” warning you should report them to the studios or http://www.rentalrightsprotection.org. Check out the web site for prosecutuions they have already carried out in Ireland.
Comment by Screenclick — December 22, 2006 @ 9:37 pm
loose dtd, tables for layout, javascript, inaccessibility.. the mind boggles.
“best website”?
nae danger.
Comment by erigena — January 17, 2007 @ 4:27 pm
Hi erigena
Hence why the GS is an completely discredited entity at this stage…
Let’s hope that next year they either revamp or retire.
Comment by Richard Hearne — January 18, 2007 @ 3:26 am
[...] I swore that I wouldn’t mention those awards again (see, I kept my word ), but this post has led to a rather large amount of traffic. [...]
Pingback by Who Said META Tag Optimization Was Dead? | Search Engine Optimisation Ireland .:. Red Cardinal — January 18, 2007 @ 3:44 pm
Hey Dave and Richard, I don’t know if you have checked lately but this page is #3 in Google for “moviestar.ie” search. I have experienced the same events quite often. My pages get indexed and stay among the first results for some time(usually a few days), then get deindexed for some time (again a fiew days) and then get indexed again and take their previous positions. This used to seem sooooo strange for me but I got used to it. Nobody can just guess Google’s algorithm and way of work and thank God for that
!
About moviestar.ie – I don’t like their redesigned site so I cannot imagine how possibly I could have liked their previous. I mean, “best” is quite a demanding word to be used so freely when giving awards!
Comment by Bourse — March 20, 2007 @ 1:29 pm
It seems to be that the crawler sticks the pages into the index and then he index engine comes along and throw them out until they have been sufficiently chewed up by any counter-spam filters. It doesn’t seem to always happen, so I think there must be some signal that sets off this behaviour.
Rgds
Richard
Comment by Richard Hearne — March 20, 2007 @ 2:37 pm
Moviestar.ie web site is ok but they could have a easier way of selecting your choices in your queue s for example if i wanted number 20 in my queue moved up to say 18 it changes all my selection and totally messes up my queue.if they had arrows s you could move them up or down 1 at a time until you got your film to the selected number in your queue it would be better.
Also if you get a lot of dvd’s in a month they get slow in snding them out. These are the tactics thye use.
They say they did not receive your dvd back say for up to anything like 4 days and blame An Post when An Post deliver most of their post next day delivery in Ireland but not to Moviestar.
They only send out 1 or 2 dvd’s when in fact you should be getting 3 if you have paid for 3 dvd’s to be sent at a time.
They say they post a dvd or dvd’s to you and you do not receive them the next day and they again blame An Post and it could take anything normally up to 3 days for you to get a dvd from them.
They do not send you ANY new releases that yo may have in your top 20 or anywhere on your list if you are a high user they just send you rubbish that you dont really want but just put stuff on your list to fill it up as they recommend that you have 50+ in your list for you to always recieve dvd’s.
Basically it looks like they do everything they can to stop you getting more dvd’s when they think that you have enough got for the month so basicaly when they say unlimited they DO NOT mean unlimited.
An Post should be made aware of Moviestar.ie blaiming them of the delays when it is quiet obvious what they are up to.
Comment by Jimmy — October 20, 2007 @ 9:29 am
Jimmy
Vote with your feet and sign up somewhere else!
Rgds
Richard
Comment by Richard Hearne — October 24, 2007 @ 8:01 pm
Jimmy… Wish there WAS “somewhere else.” Moviestar is giving me fits. But Screenclick was far worse. Do you have another place for my feets to vote, down here in Baja Munster?
Comment by DB Ashton — November 9, 2007 @ 12:01 pm
My experience with Moviestar.ie has not been at all positive and I was very disappointed to have to cancel my account. In practise it was fantastic but their business practices are suspect. They do not set up direct debit payments but instead make a laser transaction each month. In order to cancel my account I had to cancel my laser card.
Moreover they took 3 unauthorised payments for a package I did not select! Unfortunately I had recommended them to everyone I know and am now busy retracting! Just be warned!
Comment by AGeoghegan — March 5, 2008 @ 3:31 pm