Feb 17, 2009

CMS Suggestion

Trying to find out if the London office of ePrize is open or closed, I've come to the conclusion that ePrize would really do itself a favor by instituting a CMS across their various sites. ePrize has a lot of pokers in the fire these days -- "The Power of e", the ePrize Blog, eprize.com, eprize.net, etc -- and it would be smart to give these sites a bit of a cohesive look as well as consistent content.

That would probably help prevent differences in the footer from one site to another. For example -- the "Power of e" site still has London in the footer:

An update to the ePrize.com site, overall, is desperately needed. The back end may not run on the same technology (ASP) but it's still a crappy table-based layout with graphical text. Worse, it's the same antiquated front end interface from 2003. Meanwhile, the few updates that are visible leave a lot to be desire. I'm still harping on the slipshod RSS feeds on pages like the portfolio feed which is sorted alphabetically rather than historically, invalidating the whole RSS idea of updates. If anything, there should be a CMS in place for easy updates of news, promotions, contact information, etc. with a simple transform that could make sections into RSS feeds where applicable. Likewise, the blog and other sites could be folded into one umbrella with a cohesive look and codebase.

Regardless... what happened to the London office?

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

When you visit www.eprize.co.uk the contact details are either fax or email, which can easily be redirected to the US office. When you click directions to the office it offers a phone number; Directions to ePrize London:
Greater London House - Hampstead Road - London, NW17QP, England -
Direct: +44 (0)20 7611 6106
Fax: +44 (0)20 7611 6931


When you call the number you get a security guard, he told me Eprize does not have an office there. Looks like they have vacated.Hope this helps in your search.

Anonymous said...

No one works in the London office anymore - safe to say its been shut down. The sales guy was laid off shortly after revealing he was very ill. The AE was laid off maybe 6 months later. Typical ePrize.

Anonymous said...

Let's see... we had a chronically underperforming sales guy and an AE that sold nothing either. They never met a single goal, and didn't bring revenue into the company so the leadership team made a change as opposed to flushing good money after bad. Sure sounds like bad business to me. "Typical ePrize" I guess.

Anonymous said...

I think that it's typical eprize to set up an office just to brag, "We're in Europe!" and then not support it properly.

Let's see, who can we send over to this London office? How about the most emotionally crippled AE we have. If the move doesn't paralyze her, the idea of her having to survive on her own in a different country definitely will.

And, I think you got the "chronic" right but not "underperforming".

It's typical ePrize to set up people for failure rather than success.

Anonymous said...

eprize.co.uk -- yet another URL that ePrize should be redirecting, just like eprize.net.

Hello... web hosting department?

Anonymous said...

Most companies could benefit from using a CMS. I'd recommend they look at ExpressionEngine which will handle multiple sites, you can create custom fields, supports PHP/MySQL and will let you write standards based XHTML and CSS. I'd be happy to build out the sites doing so.

I'd also recommend that ePrize look into microformats especially with all the forms they create for their sweepstakes. I'd be happy to consult on those matters too!

Anonymous said...

I have heard there is a new site in the works. Just FYI- so when it's finally done, you can't claim that they're always taking your suggestions and acting on them because of this blog.

I agree, however, that it is long overdue.

This blog post makes me wonder, though- what exactly is the mission of the blog? What do you hope to accomplish? Why do you spend so much time trying to offer suggestions for improvements and pointing out problems and issues within the company? I don't have a problem with it- I'm just curious why you waste your time. Curious why you have so much hate for the company.

Unknown said...

>>you can't claim that they're always taking your suggestions and acting on them because of this blog.<<

Oh, don't worry, I will anyway.

Unknown said...

BTW, it's fairly obvious that ePrize isn't reading this blog... otherwise maybe that mistake on the Power of E site might have been fixed over the last two+ weeks.

Unknown said...

Months later... error is still there.

Anonymous said...

The London office has been shut down now for over a year - though the London 'CEO' Paul Shalet still has it as his job title on his LinkedIn profile.