[BigNuts]

as an online marketer that actually creates revenue as opposed to 95% of HN readers that have unprofitable startups. These sites arent bad at all. Just because they arent resposive and dont have jquery or whatever junk dosent make them bad.

[whyleyc]

Just because a site makes money doesn't make it good. Think about how much more they could make if they actually invested in a half-decent web presence.

My housemate used this site recently to try and order some stuff and was almost reduced to tears !

[tnai]

On the contrary: Just because a website doesn't look good, doesn't make it bad. To me, the website presents all the information it needs to: the products they stock, their price and where to get them.

Not every business wants to become internet only. Or, for that note, even have a website in the first place. There are plenty of perfectly profitable businesses that don't. Both staff and customers often value the human interactions a physical store brings. They may make more money with a "half-decent web presence" (might not!) but their business will be reduced to one of simple order fulfilment and lose the what makes running the business enjoyable in the first place. Fabricland has a shop in the town we live. My (non internet using) wife goes there often and appreciates their great service. If they went internet only she would lose this and have to go elsewhere, though I don't know where.

By the way, for your housemate, ordering instructions are there on the front page: "TO ORDER PLEASE CALL US WITH YOUR CREDIT/ SWITCH/ DEBIT CARD DETAILS, WE ARE WAITING TO TAKE YOUR CALL! [...] NO SHOPPING BASKET, JUST CALL PLEASE" It's not as convenient as clicking an item into your shopping basket and paying by paypal, granted, but it's not too difficult either (though does involve talking to someone).

[whyleyc]

I'm not suggesting that they should go internet-only, just that they may want to consider making their website ... consistent and readable ?

I don't care that they don't have shopping carts, or "buy now" buttons, or online payments, or shipping calculators, or modern web technologies, or nice image carousels.

I do care that I can't read some of their pages, that there are basic spelling errors on the homepage, that they have no search box, that products are hard to find, and that certain image thumbnails are so small and badly shot as to render them useless.

It's great that they are running a business they enjoy, and promoting face-to-face contact with customers (more should), but it's not an excuse for incompetency.

Whether they like it or not the website is an advert for their business, and in it's current state it looks like they're advertising a half-digested pizza, vomitted onto the pavement by a demented baboon.