It’s not often that websites that are around today can claim that they’re from the 20th century, Ananzi is one of those.

They’ve put out a press release talking about redesign of their site.

I have a number of rather scattered thoughts about all this, so I’ll try condense them into 2 points - Ananzi’s announcement, and the way they did it.

I’ll tackle the latter first.

Imagine all websites did a press release when they launched a re-design. I feel that press releases are becoming more and more insignificant to the end reader. Who cares that this link was moved here and you can click on this to make this happen? For me, this press release was simply a case of “we’re paying for a press office on Biz-Community, we may as well use it”. The problem is that with this kind of content, Biz-Community’s daily industry newsletter becomes less valuable to me. I think that Biz-Comm should have a section in their newsletter called “Press Releases” where this sort of stuff can go.

Anyway, here’s my own thoughts on the press release and their new look and feel..

The press release’s opening sentence goes like this:

In a successful endeavour to keep up with the ever-changing needs of the online market and trends, Ananzi.co.za, the prominent search engine and web information portal, have redesigned the look-and-feel of their site.

I believe that Ananzi got it right in saying “to keep up” although it is a pity that the once leading portal in SA has now got to the point where they need to “keep up”. I do question the claim “a successful endeavour”, as surely this is too early to claim. Ultimately the user will decide whether or not it was successful.

As far as keeping up with the “trends”, it doesn’t come near to any kind of trend that I’ve seen. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the site looks quite a lot like one of those pages you land on when making a typo when entering a URL, you know, those ones filled with affiliate links, banners, and directory listings? I suppose that is a growing trend (but not in the “trendy” sense).

The homepage customisation options are really not what one would come to expect after spending 5 minutes on Yahoo! or iGoogle (or Pageflakes or Netvibes or…), and to claim that this is keeping up with a trend is perhaps extending it a bit too far.

Claiming that navigation has been improved for users is all well and good, but what about all the animated banner adverts that surround the navigation? If you’re not careful when clicking on a navigation link, you’ll be a client of Outsurance or gambling at Silversands Casino before you know it.

With all that said, I think my biggest disappointment is to see the way they’ve travelled down the digital pathway. In a time where words like social, collaboration, sharing, customisation (REAL customisation that is) are so easily applied to online initiatives, it’s clear that Ananzi have not evolved. Obviously it’s easy to say all this where, in fact, evolution and innovation may not be part of their strategy. And by innovation, I don’t mean looking at what’s on the affiliate program menu, plugging it into the site, and calling it an enhancement. I mean providing tools for end users that add value in a real way.

While I wouldn’t put too much faith in the accuracy of Alexa’s rankings, i think the downward trend in pageviews on Ananzi.co.za is fairly obvious, as well as ominous:

One thing is clear to me, if the site was an aeroplane, it’s losing altitude very quickly. Someone needs to “pull up! pull up!”

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Here’s a little Ananzi retrospective courtesy of the Wayback Machine:

circa 1996:

circa 1997

circa 2001

circa 2004

circa now

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If you were the boss, what would your top 3 suggestions for Ananzi would be?