SAB NewsMember insights on Using the Internet to Learn about New ProductsPosted 2/12/2007  In a recent SAB study done on using the Internet to learn about new products members were asked this bonus question: What do you find MOST annoying about using Supplier's Web site to find out information about a product and/or service and why? See member comments broken down by supplier below:
Affymetrix: "Big list, because sometimes it takes too much time to browse the list." -Dohun, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "For some detailed information you have to click your way through too many pages." -Peter, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "It is a very heavy website which can be busy at some specific times of the day. But overall I always find the information needed..." - Marc, Production/Manufacturing, Europe "It is impossible to get price information and that is it." - Rajiv, Staff Scientist, Europe "It is very difficult to navigate the software download area. It is not clear which software can be downloaded freely and for which software I need to use a link for the account manager. Also"It is very hard to understand which updates, library files, etc I need to download for a particular program." - Dimitri, Principal Investigator, North America "It requires a lot of computer resources, something I don't like at all. The best web-site is one that loads fast and requires no prerequisites." - Christoph, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Europe "It takes forever to find the annotation for genechip arrays." - Dirk-Jan, Principal Investigator, Europe "New generations of GeneChips are launched, but lack of clear description of limitations or flaws, especially of related kit products. Future perspective: replacement of existing generation or optional addition?" - Guido, Principal Investigator, Europe "Required registration to download annotation files. A company which is a leader in the microarray filed should make annotation files easily available, preferably via ftp sites." - Marcel, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Europe "The Affymetrix Web site is very easy and clear to use, but once I received a newsletter about new products and I didn't find them on their Web site, so I had to wait (many days) for product details." - Pasquale, Principal Investigator, Europe "The pages are to crowded with small boxes of text"That hides the important messages." - Vidar, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Europe "Their website is too busy with too many links listed on the left and right columns. Product pages should focus on product info and reduce the clutter of links surrounding it." - Hareesh, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, North America Agilent Technologies: "Layout. Sometimes it feels as though you are looking at a random topic page." - Paul, Principal Investigator, Europe "Not being able to access product costs. This makes it difficult to estimate precise budgets and leaves an impression that the cost is flexible based on the account manager's perception of the customer. This is not particular to Agilent but to supply overall in the UK. I am often forced to access US websites if I am trying to get a ball park figure for products." - Jennifer, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "Sometimes you really have to 'hunt' for part schematics of specific instruments." - Kerry, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, North America "When I click on microarrays it take me to data analysis software page"I get confused as I don't see very often no link to microarrays , so very often I use the search option. If am searching its good to have related products appear as links on the same page, but in Agilent's page its an overkill with too much information on other things I don't want , interfering with what I am looking for." - Albin, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Asia "You have to click too many different links to finally find the information page you are looking to." - Claudia, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe Ambion: "As Ambion and Applied Biosystems have merged and Applied Biosystem's web portal is notoriously difficult to use"I find it very frustrating when I must link out of Ambion's site and into ABI's." - Brian, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, North America "Having to click multiple links to find pages I have visited before (but forgotten the location of) because the headings are too vague." - Dave, Principal Investigator, Europe "I sometimes use the Ambion website as a resource for RNA technology information, even if I am not using nor looking to use an Ambion kit. Their Technical Resources page is a quite comprehensive database! But it should be a lot easier to navigate.. it is really annoying the completely subjective names of the sections! Stuff like 'The Basics', 'Reading Room' and 'Appendix' are far from being straightforward. How about real names with some scientific meaning?" - Lyza, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "Layout of site containing the manuals. Its harder to find the needed manual." - Frank, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Europe "Not having prices next to their products!" - Ray, Professor/Teacher, Australasia/Pacific "Sometimes the search function pulls up irrelevant information." - Esra, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "The layout. Bigger fonts and use of images. Make it more web 2.0." - Matthildi, Laboratory Technician, North America "They should be designed with the scientist in mind and not used a large scale advertisement by the company." - -Andrew, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "To many things on the same web page." - Christine, Principal Investigator, Europe "Using the search function. When it does not return an exact match that it does not provide almost matching alternatives." - Alex, Principal Investigator, Europe Applied Biosystems: "I am working with ABI products since 2000 and don't find anything annoying on ABI web site. It is very easy to operate it and to find what I need." -Dimitar, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Europe "I find it annoying that if something has more than one established name (e.g. adenylyl cyclase, AC, adenylate cyclase)"If I use a name different than the one used on the website"It does not prompt me to use that name e.g. as in a paper catalogue such as Sigma we are given a prompt (see other name) under the alternative name." - Jennie, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Europe "I need a lot of clicks on his web to find the information I need. It's time consuming." - Joan, Principal Investigator, Europe "It's difficult to find exactly what you are looking for; I often have to spend a lot of time navigating the site in order to find the information that I need. The first hits after a search are often not what I'm looking for." - Lynne, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, North America "Maybe too much info? Sometimes a search will give too many results and much of the time is spent looking for the one piece of info that you actually want." -Jamie, Principal Investigator, North America "No good overview." -Patrick, Principal Investigator, Europe "No list pricing on the web site." -Cindy, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, North America "None. But in many other suppliers"The information is provided little and a link, however"When the link is clicked you continue to get in circle. When that happens or they ask to sign or log in"I leave the page and am not interested in wasting time to retrieve any information." -Arun, Staff Scientist, North America "Often"My use of a suppliers web site is to get information for grant applications, often for budgeting purposes. Because ABI is heavily contract based (i.e. specific prices negotiated with specific institutions or"In my case, with the State) getting catalog price information can be challenging and often requires contacting our rep. I like to be able to simply get budget placeholder info on my own schedule without having to chase someone on the phone and/or wait for them to get back to me." -Brien, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, North America "Slowness." -Giovanni, Principal Investigator, Europe "Sometimes it is quite difficult to navigate through the huge quantity of applications and products just because of the vast content." -Sergi, Principal Investigator, Europe "Sometimes the information is buried on the page and it is hard to find what you are looking for quickly. Also the topics are to intertwined." -Tricia, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "Staring to the flying Microsoft explorer flag in the upper right corner of the explorer window while waiting for access to a particular Applied Biosystems WWW page." -Marc, Staff Scientist, Europe "The search function for literature doest not return PDF documents in an easy to download format. Also Manuals are really difficult to download." -Raghu, Staff Scientist, North America "There are so many information and it is technically superb but there is something wrong about its design (it is not charming) because it doesn't look easily as NIH web site when I need immediately search something fast. So"I don't have any desire to use it but I have to use it. So"I use it." -Hakan, Professor/Teacher, Europe "They have links to resources to software and databases that aid you in interpreting and analyzing your results obtained from using their products." -Loleta, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "Too commercial." -Juergen, Principal Investigator, Australasia/Pacific BD Biosciences: "Cryptic message with no mention of a product." -Friday, Professor/Teacher, Africa "Having to navigate through the opening page ("where are you from?")." -Paul, Principal Investigator, North America "I hate the troubles to find the products. You have to go through many lays to find the information you need." -Yusen, Principal Investigator, North America "I like the BD Biosciences' Web site and I am very calm. I haven't never annoyed when I used it." -Lidia, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Europe "I like the easy links to product literature and the overall web page design. The drop down boxes on the left side narrow my area of interest quickly. My on-line experience has been as enjoyable as talking with one of your knowledgeable account reps." -Stewart, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, North America "Price or at least an approximate range of price. I have to call the company to find out the price that sometimes I postpone my desire to purchase or follow later. The reason is that to order a product we should write the price (approximately)on our form, otherwise we can not submit the order." -Feridoun, Staff Scientist, North America "That it is not possible to get prices from the web site you have to ring up to ask them what the price is. This issue has now to a certain extend been over come as my institute now have a link so that we can purchase directly from BD - but it still requires putting things into a shopping basket before I can get a price." -Rebecca, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "The difficulty in obtaining prices without registering or phoning in I don't have time to register and retrieve passwords for all the website I need to visit." -Mara, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "The pages are a little too crowded and packed with information (good info, but way too much) so it's a sensory overload and "laundry list" that requires some effort to pinpoint what you want to look at." -Ri-Chee, Staff Scientist, North America "The terminology used by BD's web site does not match what I expect to find when navigating their web pages, and it always seems to be a circuitous route to get where I want to go. Additionally, search engines have always been confusing and the searches seem to rarely hit what I was looking for. Despite all of this, we like their reagents and especially their antibodies, but it is often an effort to find them. For some unknown reason"The BD site has always been difficult, even after their attempts at revision." -Edward, Principal Investigator, North America "The website is very slow to use"You have to wait for the pages to load." -Johan, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Europe "Too many hits." -Jim, Staff Scientist, North America "Too many pop-ups." -Helen, Professor/Teacher, North America "When you have to login as a user when actually you just want to see their products! I hate when big brother is watching me!" - Christian, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Europe Beckman Coulter: "Sometime Too many clicks before getting the info. Also using the search function." -Paolo, Medical Technologist, Europe Bio-Rad: "Difficult to access pricing." -Tim, Staff Scientist, Europe "Difficulty of navigation through the site. Difficulty to get to the description of a given product. Web addresses are excessively long. The impossibility to recover information of old products." -Pasquale, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Europe "Having to use their prescribed user name format." -Charlotte, Principal Investigator, North America "Loading the web-page." -Jan, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Europe "Low speed of responding to my "hits", -Krzysztof, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Europe "Not all prices are indicated. Then I have to ask someone !!" - Ivona, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "Not directly give info that I'm searching"Too many sections need to go through." -Kirnpal, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Asia "Pricing not always transparent." -Michelle, Professor/Teacher, North America "Response times to navigate around the site are by covered wagon." -James, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, North America "Slow servers...who has time to wait for web pages to load any more?, Donny, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "Slow to load, complicated images." -David, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "The link to the main page (and all the others as well) are extremely long, and this makes it a bit difficult to navigate based on the URL." -Irene, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "The number of links I have to click until I get to the product info I want." -Lori, Principal Investigator, North America "The site is very, very, very slow and doesn't always work with my preferred browser. The technical information about products is usually less then adequate. Their search engine is crude and inaccurate. It's too bad they have many good products that I often use, so I have to endure all the quirks of their website. They should learn from their peers such as Ambion about making sites about their products that would have great technical information and be fast and accessible." -Oleksandr, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "They tend to heavily promote their newest kit. Sometimes they appear as the "used car salesman" of science suppliers." -Larry, Principal Investigator, North America Calbiochem: "Cannot find nothing annoying. Information is complete, easy to access. Sorry, but no complains." -Corina, Professor/Teacher, Europe "In many cases searching for an item by name does not retrieve the relevant information because it is located within a different category than the one you are in. This leads to a discontinuity within the website that hinders a researcher from gathering all of the relevant resource material together. It may be worth having links from a product to standard protocols (or be able to search for standard procedures) detailing other reagents and conditions needed along with links to them. This would facilitate information gathering and enable a researcher to see all of the relevant products available from Calbiochem for their application." -Jonathan, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "Sometimes it is confusing to find the right reagent for a particular use. Suppliers believe that one is an expert on everything. It might help to have some tips as to why choose a particular item among 10 different reagents with the same name and supposedly quality." -Carlos, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Central/South America "The jump to what country before you can get the info page. Perhaps they could do this up front, so your search is interrupted." -Constance, Staff Scientist, North America "When the server is slow." -Jon, Professor/Teacher, Europe Clontech: "It happens that the vector information I am seeking is not complete. That frustrates me." -Anders, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, North America "Remembering the names of products. Sometimes the name of a product does not relate to the product function and trying to find the product without the name is difficult." -John, Principal Investigator, North America "Retrieving the following in response to a search: "zero hits"; a list of items that are not relevant; being redirected to an unwanted sub site or search site automatically; or requiring an undue amount of time." -Janice, Principal Investigator, North America Dako: "I become extremely annoyed if I type in the name/catalog number of a product and the search returns "no items found matching this criteria", Christine, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, North America "Needing to call for pricing." -Paula, Department Head, North America "Precise information, prizes, application." -Milan, Professor/Teacher, Europe "What I find most annoying is that once I have become very familiar with a website, and am comfortable using it"That they go and change it. I find this happens fairly frequently with scientific suppliers, maybe they are trying to show that they improve (change) their website like they improve their products. I don't mind the changes in the product, but I hate it when I can't easily find something on line." -Jane, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Australasia/Pacific Fermentas: "I really do not like when the information I am looking for is not clearly given at once." -Jacqueline, Professor/Teacher, Central/South America "There is only a very "rude" form for ordering products. I would prefer when I fill out my customer number that this must be enough information. I always have to type my whole address again, this is very boring." -Gertraud, Laboratory Technician, Europe "Variety of products not big, therefore for another kind of products I should search in other sites." -Julius, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Europe GE Healthcare: "Actually this is a well-designed website and one that loads quickly. if I can say two negative things about finding products. The first is having thumbnails that are not hotlinked to the product category"You must press the text and the second is the constant sending to "which country page" before getting to product info, especially when the very first page of the site has a check box to make the chosen country the default page." -John, Department Head, North America "GE Healthcare's site is sometimes difficult to navigate, and if you don't have a clear idea of exactly what you are looking for"It can be impossible to find. If you were to just search on column media, for example"You would get so many potential hits it would be difficult to wade through them all." -Jackie, Laboratory Technician, North America "I am looking for workshops"They are not updated nobody knows anything they send you from one person to the other. Hard to navigate dull design." -Lorelei, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "I find the general layout confusing somehow - I do not have any idea how to do it better, but I tend to feel lost when looking for specific information. And the search engine gives too many hits..." -Dirk, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "I like the site, products are separated by solutions, clinical specialty and category, however in the Protein purification and production area I think there's not enough information"I would expect more from a giant like GE." -Daniel, Principal Investigator, Europe "Impossible to find specific staff contacts." -Peter, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, North America "Lack of accessibility from Safari on Mac OS X on some pages." -Gabriel, Principal Investigator, Europe "Not having a specific webpage for Portugal. The main areas of products and technologies should be divided." -Ricardo, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Europe "Promotions on discontinued products or non compatible technological "updates" to keep a product working." -Octavio, Professor/Teacher, Central/South America "Some of the product information file are not available in all languages!! so we some times have to make do with information from a similar product. If you a going to post data for customer use make sure its as complete as possible." -Paul, Principal Investigator, Europe "Sometimes difficult to find technical literature about specific product." -Norbert, Principal Investigator, North America "Sometimes you can't get the price of a specific product." -Jose, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "The "country select" request. Every time I go to the site"It asks the same thing. Is it possible that the web-site can figure out what my country is based on data from my computer?, Juan, Principal Investigator, Central/South America "The lack of price information that is usually found in printed catalogs." -James, Principal Investigator, North America "The most annoying feature of GE Healthcare's web site is that the search engine doesn't provide you always with the most relevant information. I suppose this is for marketing reasons since companies want to show you all their products and "hopefully" purchase all their products while you are looking for something else. Also, an improvement of the structure of their site will be an add on since it's core remains the same from the times of Amersham." -Dimitris, Staff Scientist, Europe "The website is crowded with a huge amount of options about different areas. Finding information about proteomics (my main area) is quite hard. Besides that"It has an annoying country detection system that gives me the site in Portuguese. OK, I'm from Brazil, but the PT-BR version of the site is quite poor and mixed with English. A plain English version would be better. Another problem: no prices for products in Brazil." -Wagner, Professor/Teacher, Central/South America "When a search results in no hits in spite of the fact that I know the product is somewhere on their website." -Judit, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Europe "When looking for characteristics or procedures of the products there being several products with the same name (sometimes different presentations of the same product)that makes me loose a lot of time trying to realize if that really is what I am looking for." -Ana, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "When there is no price provided and one has to request it specifically. It applies to rather expensive products but I still would like to have an idea of order of magnitude. also"It gives impression that price depends on who is asking and makes me feel I am not getting the right price." -Anna, Principal Investigator, Europe Invitrogen: "Actually the site gives me most of the time what I want. But what is the most annoying is their frequent shut down or unavailability for extended periods of time (especially when I need piece of info now). So more stable site, please. JK." -Jan, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, North America "As a whole I find Invitrogen okay for searching information. Invitrogen's website for molecular reagents are more annoying because the search site usually gives you a lot of choices, and rarely are they the ones I am specifically looking for." -Ami, Laboratory Technician, North America "Being automatically "locked" in a specific country's web page." -Renate, Principal Investigator, Europe "Clicking on a data sheet about a specific product to find specific details to find that only generic details about several related products (including the specific product) are available which are not specifically helpful." -Janet, Principal Investigator, North America "Comparison of prices for related products or different sample sizes is cumbersome." -Frank, Principal Investigator, Europe "Easy comparison between different products available for same application." -John, Professor/Teacher, Europe "Filling up forms, before you can start searching for product information.." -Vikas, Staff Scientist, North America "Getting appropriate pricing information for my governmental research organization is difficult because of our own organizational structure. I always have to call and find out the additional shipping costs and/or if my representative has negotiated a special price for our lab or our institution or our part of the country. It would be better if the rep could disseminate to the end users"The researchers, and not to our administrators"The necessary ID/PW to get INSERM-specific pricing online." -Heather, Principal Investigator, Europe "Having to then contact the local representative to order products instead of being able to do this online directly." -Horst, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Asia "I cannot find many "similar" products for my use so I can decide which one I prefer but instead I get only one selected product that has been selected by the PROGRAM according to my selections on the website. Example: when I want to use Dynabeads for particular use at the end of my search I have only one type of beads and no information about other beads available! It was much better when Dynal was providing this information on his webpage...." -Dorota, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "I find that it is difficult to find information on a specific item. For example"If you look up "Alexa-488 Phalloidin" you would expect to only get 1-3 items (perhaps for the 3 different sizes they offer). Instead"You get every single item in the Invitrogen database that has the words "Alexa", "488", or "Phalloidin". The item that you want is on the 4th or 5th page of your search results. The Invitrogen website would be vastly improved if they allowed qualifiers such as AND or allowed quotes to be used, or even if they weighted the search matches to that the things that had all 3 words were listed first." -Caroline, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "I find that the Invitrogen web site, compared to other web sites, is very easy to navigate and understand. To me, this is the MOST important point for a web site"No matter how good the products. As a negative example"I could point out the PROMEGA web site, which is a catastrophe in terms of ease of use. The web site is annoying, and therefore I avoid using it. Even though I know that PROMEGA products are good, and I even use them in the lab. But their web site: no thank you. It may even prevent me to buy at Promega. As for Invitrogen"The web site is very big and extensive and there are many things to see. If I remember correctly"When you live in Spain you are guided directly to the Spanish INVITROGEN page, instead of the general one. This I find very annoying, because as a foreigner"I would like to have the choice to visit the English web site. Other than that"I do not find much fault in their web site, except that it mixes Invitrogen with molecular probes and all the other companies they have incorporated, so now it gets more and more complicated. Please. The easier to navigate"The better. I don't really care what brand a product is, as long as I find it under its name in the search engine!!! So don't confuse me with the brand name"I don't care!!!! Buy the way, Invitrogen's email system for technical support is excellent!!!" -Verena, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "I find the start page very annoying because it asks me to select the country and, of course"My country does not appear in the first list (should I say de A-list). It makes the web less world-wide and makes me wonder if I should apply for a passport or worse, a visa. Does it really matter where I work if I want to know about a product? I only login to buy stuff or ask for the price. The best part is that the rest of the site is in English (no matter what country I select) so it is not about the language. What is it about then?" -Ana, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Central/South America "I have a hard time finding the right place to order siRNAs. there are not really clear links to this information from the home page and it often takes multiple attempts to find just what I'm looking for." -Melissa, Laboratory Technician, North America "I have my software set up to block the popup banner ads. I HATE the banner ads and refuse to open them." -Brandon, Professor/Teacher, North America "I have repeatedly had a difficult time finding individual yeast clones. It is not apparent how to find individual clones. They certainly don't come up when one goes to "eukaryotic cells"." -Allan, Professor/Teacher, North America "I have seen them helping by sending the mails for my query within few hrs." -Vinod, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Asia "I like the options with product together with protocols where these products can be used." -Iryna, Principal Investigator, Europe "Inability to get a cost for the product. I end up having put information regarding the area in which I live and end up with the statement consult your local agents for price. I think I am going to get a price but only waste my time trying." -William, Staff Scientist, Australasia/Pacific "Inability to get pricing information." -Brian, Principal Investigator, North America "Invitrogen's website if very difficult to move around in to get specific information about products." -Edward, Principal Investigator, North America "Invitrogen's website is not intuitive. It often takes several attempts to find the correct product information. The process should be streamlined." -Leslie, Laboratory Technician, North America "It is often more efficient to use targeted key words search with site specific queries such as "something I want" site:www.invitrogen.com using google instead of own suppliers search engine with less advance technologies and dumber algorithms. It keeps clients and potential buyers out of the site itself and decrease the probability of being expose to a new product announcement or a one time offer etc. Companies should realize the importance of search ability and efficiencies and should opt for a third party engine (google offers this service - BTW, I'm not affiliated with them) system integrated to their site with smart design." -Kristophe, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, North America "It is often slow. This may sound like a simple answer, but it is very painful to have to wait for pages to load and searches to be performed." -Andy, Staff Scientist, North America "It is sometimes difficult to find the required information, as products are grouped in categories that seem to be made up by marketing guys but not scientists - well-sounding category names appear to be preferred over meaningful ones, or products are found in categories few scientists would look at first." -Frank, Principal Investigator, Europe "It is too overloaded. Hard to find what I want"To many companies fused in one... Hate ads." -Konstantin, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Europe "It is very difficult to navigate the web site using the search engine. You receive too many hits and the information is not well prioritized--i.e. prioritized by the amount of prior hits a page has received. Too much information with too little organization leaves an inexperienced user spending too much time digging through pages he or she isn't interested in rather than getting work accomplished--using the manufacturer's products! It's also a way Invitrogen could lose sales when online shoppers get frustrated and seek information and products elsewhere." -Millie, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, North America "It's a rather specific thing, namely regarding products from Molecular Probes. I think it might be a heritage from before the fusion, because the original Probes homepage product search was also difficult. Just recently I was looking for some specific Alexa Fluor antibodies, and some of them took a while to find..." -Rene, Staff Scientist, Europe "Keyword searches rarely return the desired hits. Instead I often find myself rummaging through available hyperlinks until I find the category containing the sought information... This process is often frustrating when you know the information is there and a search cannot find it." -Jon, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "Lack of address bar that would allow going higher in the hierarchy of the website with one click." -Jean-Francois, Principal Investigator, Europe "Large volume of responses to query." -Eleni, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "Man...you click on a link from a search and you're taken to that specific page, but you can't navigate around it! Want a different size? Want a similar product? Go back and start from scratch! Arh!" - Alan, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, North America "Many times when using the 'search' option to look up information"You get a summary of hits of every webpage of the supplier which contains the word(s) you search with. This way the results get diluted with all kinds of hits which you would get to anyway when you would start at a 'top' page. So search engines should only give the starting out pages concerning your search and leave out all hits that you could get to by follow-up-links from the starting page. This would make searching with less specific terms without drowning in numerous hits." -Alan, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Europe "My main interest is in fluorescence related products so I was a fan of Molecular Probes web site. But when Invitrogen bought MP the information that was so easy to obtain, became loose in the middle of the forest." -Alberto, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Europe "Not enough literature citations. Accurate, detailed product descriptions can be like mining for gold in a farm field." -Beverly, Principal Investigator, North America "Not finding my product whenever I search for a specific product." -Bernardo, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, North America "Search engine results presenting the same product multiple times." -Glenn, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "Search function is terrible." -Joseph, Professor/Teacher, North America "Searching for a product manual on this site can be an arduous and lengthy operation. Sometimes you are taken from page to page until you finally find the small 'PDF' link somewhere in some page down the line. The search engine from the site is of limited use in this regard, often pointing to indirect links"In some occasions 2 to 3 clicks away from the desired page." -Luciana, Principal Investigator, North America "Searching on Invitrogen's website can be very aggravating. Generally when I search I'm looking for product manuals or specifications which are rarely the first 'hits' in their search results." -Stephen, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, North America "Sifting through reams of non-related information." -Sean, Staff Scientist, Australasia/Pacific "Since I actually like the site I would not say that this is annoying, but it would be great if I could set personal preferences for their search engine, with the ability to override on a case-by-case basis. They have so much information that you are generally forced to select (one or multiple radio buttons)which sources to search within." -Bob, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, North America "Slow response." -Kazuhito, Post Doctoral Fellow, Asia "Small text, large figures without content." -Gilbert, Principal Investigator, Europe "So far"I had no problems to use Invitrogen's Web site to look for an information." -Claudia, Staff Scientist, Central/South America "So many PDF's which can be useful but take up a lot of time to download. Sometimes if the information is supplied as just plain text"It's easier to look at that. Especially on older computers." -Jason, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Europe "Sometimes it just won't show a product price and then Invitrogen can be slow to respond." -Paul, Principal Investigator, Europe "Sometimes it seems that suppliers are more interested in giving information about related products rather than the one you searched for i.e. making the side sale. Everyone's time is limited and a supplier may not realize they are one of many that are competing for a limited amount of time. Sometimes I just want the information so I can accomplish my goal which is lab work not searching for new products etc." -Sam, Staff Scientist, North America "Sometimes the website is very slow"Not a function of my computer." -Bonny, Principal Investigator, North America "Sometimes there are problems (mixed images) with the on screen listings of products (e.g. for stocks of the supply center). This has happened on different computers. As one wants to be quick"You have to do the whole process of ordering again." -Bart, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Europe "Sometimes you have to know the product number to get technical information/user manuals for a specific product. Using just the name of the product often doesn't get you to this information." -David, Professor/Teacher, North America "Sometimes I experienced that searching engine in the Invitrogen website is heavy and it takes half a minute to see the results and the results include many unnecessary items. That is very inconvenient and annoying. Sigma-Aldrich website is very user-friendly. Sometimes"I also experienced that when I inquire about the products"I could never get any responses." -Hiro, Staff Scientist, Asia "That it is not always compatible with the internet browser that I use (Safari, Mac platform)." -Kitty, Staff Scientist, North America "That registration is mandatory and for prices I have to contact the local representative." -Effie, Principal Investigator, Europe "The absence of information concerning the use of a particular product from Invitrogen with other non-Invitrogen products." -Jacques, Principal Investigator, North America "The differences that exist to work in Argentina: is necessary to cross the site to be able to find the information that is valid in our country, like the final prices, or the arrival of the product. I think that the greater problem is than the site is not designed for a fast use for consumers of Argentina." -Maria, Staff Scientist, Central/South America "The Invitrogen website is very thorough and fairly easy to navigate. However"When searching for products via category it is annoying to have to go through several pages to get to the particular product I am searching for. I think what would benefit the site most is having a pop-up menu (similar to windows start menu) for each of the tabs at the top of the page. This would allow the user to hover the mouse over the particular category and load only the page necessary to get to the site of interest (e.g. Products --> Antibodies --> Primary Antibodies --> Apoptosis). With one click the user would load a page listing all the products within the specific category that he/she is searching for. Overall I think the site is great, but think this would be a nice addition." -Mark, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "The literature references are not always related to the specific product I am searching." -Maria-Elisa, Professor/Teacher, Europe "The most annoying quality of the Invitrogen web site occurs with info on some products. They have a lot of products, so sometime the search engines will not get as specific as you would like it when trying to find a rare product." -Afshin, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "The need of the hour is the use of webinars for all products. I feel it would be nice if all suppliers stick to webinars. , Prashanth, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Europe "The search does not seem to work as well as one would expect - I often find myself wading through irrelevant links, even when I have combined several search terms in a way that ought to be relevant. My biggest problem with Invitrogen is that all of their newsletters get rendered by my email reader with about a 0.5 inch window with a scrollbar. Makes it very difficult to read, and it is a credit to their products that I make the effort." -Amy, Professor/Teacher, North America "The search engine on Invitrogen's website needs to be improved. The listing for protocols and price (when not ordering) are sometimes hard to determine." -Edward, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "The search function is not very good. Searching with a product name does not always find the product. The easiest way to find a particular product is to use the catalogue number. This is ok if you know the number if not sometime you need to spend a lot of time searching around." -Glenn, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "The search products came back with zero result." -Lingyi, Staff Scientist, North America "The site is well done. However I would like to be able to see what our institutional pricing is for Invitrogen's products, rather than the "catalog" price. Our institution receives substantial discounts, and for budget-tracking purposes, we would like to actually see what the cost is for the products we're ordering rather than guess what our order total is going to be. We place our orders through our purchasing department--and they are not always aware of discounts/special pricing." -Geoffrey, Staff Scientist, North America "The time to open a complete page. Some times is quite slow." -Andres, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, North America "The way that their special offers animation isn't configured for certain web browsers." -Leila, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "The web site is convoluted. Some times I do not who I get to some places. The new tools in the web site help, but it takes them a long time to get the tools to work as they should. I m still having problem to access the tool"That are"If not the only way to get the information on the products that fit my specific, for sure the easier way to do it. The web site assumes that you have access to the tools"If you do not, then you are for the long ride or calling the representative." -Alvaro, Principal Investigator, North America "Their Spectra viewer for fluorochromes is only for those fluorochromes they sell and not for other available colors." -Randy, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, North America "There a problems doing searches on their website: 1) If the product number isn't used in the correct (website) format"You won't find the product even if the product number is directly off the product. I don't know why their website and products display the numbers differently. 2) The BLAST search function on the CloneRanger portion of the website is frequently malfunctioning causing one to wait a day before being able to use again. 3) The search outputs are often presented in a less than usable format. They should use something more like Google or Yahoo. 4) One may have to search specific sub-pages of their website to find what one wants. A search from the main page often yields zero results, but searches of other Invitrogen websites buried within will yield the desired results." -Nicholas, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, North America "There is so much information at their home pages that it can be difficult to navigate. Visually The text is small and hard initially to focus on your area of need." -Donna, Professor/Teacher, North America "There is so much information on the screen it is almost too much, and the moving banners can sometimes be distracting." -Kathy, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Australasia/Pacific "They can't leave well enough alone. Every time I visit their website"The links move around on their main page so I need to hunt for them every single time I visit. They should leave the links alone and just change the graphics or the main picture or whatever they wanted to change and leave the navigation links alone. It is very annoying to constantly have to re-read their main web page to find the link to the tool/service I need." -Beverly, Staff Scientist, North America "They frequently change the look of the homepage. It is annoying to have to search around for the routine things you usually do, i.e. order custom primers." -Katherine, Laboratory Technician, North America "They have a lot of information and many and many pages of technical data sheets, etc. However"Sometimes too much information can be too overwhelming. It is like a double edged sword. You want a lot of info at your fingertips and you don't want too much to make you avoid using it." -Charles, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Asia "Too complicated." -M." Staff Scientist, Asia "When a search is carried out for a specific product the results come up in a box with symbols to represent technical information or product data etc and the number of hits for each group. It is all a bit small and difficult to get to grips with. This page could do with being a bit more user friendly." -Amanda, Principal Investigator, Europe "When I have a product that I liked but haven't used in a while and they have discontinued it or re-named it and I can't find any mention of that fact. I might be interested in the replacement if I could easily find out what was the same and different about the two products so I could decide if it would work for me. I'm also interested in why they changed or discontinued a product - am I the only one that used it? Did they incorporate customer suggestions into a new product and what are they?, Deborah, Laboratory Technician, North America "When it crashes in the middle of something." -Isabel, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "When querying a product number"The screen often comes up with out a match. At times it will require the hyphenated extension and at other times it will not except the extension. For example, 14190-144. This can be very frustrating." -Kelly, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, North America "When searching for a specific product, a lot of other non-specified hits are given." -Mauritz, Post Doctoral Fellow, Africa "When using a search button, finding out the first hit is not relevant with my search." -Pinar, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "When you cannot find the product info because of changes in product numbers based on packaging change. Should keep a list of synonyms to avoid the hassle." -Jean-Claude, Staff Scientist, North America "When you try to find more detailed information about a product and the links keep taking you back to the same site with general information!" - Tanya, Post Doctoral Fellow, Australasia/Pacific "While Invitrogen is a valuable supplier of many of the kits, plasmids, and other reagents our lab uses"It is always very difficult to identify useful information (e.g. pricing, technical documents, product information) for many of their products. In time I have become better at finding what I am looking for, although several of my colleagues still express extreme dissatisfaction. One exception to this involves plasmid information. Once a plasmid of interest is found (e.g. pcDNA3.1 or one of the Gateway plasmids, etc...) it is relatively easy to find quality technical information (maps, restriction digest information, etc...) that are even downloadable. However"Sometimes when one searches for a plasmid of interest the results only list the kits in which that plasmid is used and it takes a great deal of effort to get to that plasmids information page. Thus"I would greatly benefit from a more direct and clear way of searching for Invitrogen products (without using the catalog number). One suggestion would be to try to simplify the website if possible. I understand that Invitrogen supplies a large variety of products, yet it is not necessary to list every feature on the main page." -Brian, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "You almost always already have to know the product you want and it's item# ---at least for the PCR and RNA products I have searched for recently." -Cindy, Professor/Teacher, North America "You have to drill down further than I would like to get the relevant information that I want." -Bob, Staff Scientist, North America "You must get into the data sheets to find out whether their conjugate is soluble and has been used in any relevant studies. That information is buried from view when you just search for the product, and should be easier to access." -Elizabeth, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "You must match the product name exactly for the search to bring it up." -Richard, Principal Investigator, North America Millipore: "Limited info. I would rather read about a product than to have to contact a sales rep." -Johan, Laboratory Technician, Europe "The results of Keyword searches would be enhanced by having a brief description of content rather than just non sensical extracts of text with the key word highlighted. This would encourage me to use on commercial websites more often, because it would be an more efficient way of getting the information I am looking for." -Claire, Staff Scientist, North America New England Biolabs: "Actually, for NEB in particular"I think they have a pretty good thing going for what my needs are. I do wish that I could navigate the online info they have on restriction enzymes as easily and intuitively as I can their poster that I have hanging up in my lab. Don't get me wrong"The tools they have are great and I may just not be using them right, but it's not as easy (yet?) for *me* to get what I want online as on the poster...that's my acid test. In general"You may note from my answers that I quit clicking on vendor links a LONG time ago. I've been on the web since before it was really the 'net, so I'm a bit jaded...and I have to have a pretty damn good reason to visit a vendor site and I just don't have time to register. If I can't find what I need without registering on a vendor site"I find a new vendor! I *do* like this venue and participate as time permits. I do *not* click random links or take part in many online 'webinars'. I'm glad that the system seems to have let me leave blank lines that didn't apply to me, but IMHO, I'd have liked an N/A choice...." -Ivo, Staff Scientist, North America "Although I'm very positive about the www.neb.com website"If I had to select one thing to improve"It would be to use a larger default font size to improve readability, and use a darker blue in place of the light blue print for greater contrast." -Karen, Principal Investigator, North America "I can not find any annoying step when using NEB web site. In fact I enjoy using it." -Luciana, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "I can't think of anything that I have found annoying when using their website. I find it well organized and the information useful and pertinent,, Brant, Staff Scientist, North America "I did not find annoying stuff on the NEB website." -Amicosante, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Europe "I do not find anything "annoying" about NEB site. For the purpose I use it I find it satisfactory. Same applies to other vendors' sites that I typically use when I need specific product information. Some sites are particularly useful for protocols and specifications"I would like to mention just a few here: Promega, Pierce, GE healthcare (Amersham-Pharmacia), Sigma-Aldrich,- the ones that I have used just this week (i.e. yesterday and today). Overall most companies run good websites"The more established company, typically the more developed and more useful is its website." -Alexander, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "I don't find much about New England Biolab's site annoying." -Jeremy, Professor/Teacher, North America "In the results list obtained after doing a search"The hits are listed in milky blue smallish type on a white background. This makes all the hits blend into each other and into the background. Better would be the title for each hit in somewhat larger type and the listing with a bit more visual contrast i.e. to help more quickly pick out the desired hit." -Brian, Principal Investigator, North America "Maybe it's not a big deal. But I would like to see more info under the "Products" menu on the home page, instead of having to clicking all the way to a product I'm interested in." -Fan, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "New England Biolabs has a very unexciting Home Page considering the superb products that it supplies. The page that you get to when you choose "Products" (http://www.neb.com/nebecomm/products/categories.asp) would even make a better page as it immediately has most of the items that customers require. I don't know how many people stumble across NEB.com but scientists are usually well aware of its existence and really just want to get quickly to their product!, Alan, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "No idea, so far this is to me the most ideal website." -David, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "No product photographs." -Herve, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "Something annoying? Hmm. How about the fact that I had to go to NEB's web site to find something annoying? Hard to do, because I have been quite satisfied with their web site. But most annoying would be the lack of prominent quick links to other sources, e.g." genomic data bases...and of course NEB's sister companies, e.g." Cell Signaling. Tiny, light-grey letters at the bottom of the home-page! C'mon now! And reciprocal prominent links would be beneficial for NEB as well." -Anthony, Staff Scientist, North America "Sometimes pages don't load or links are very slow." -Tami, Laboratory Technician, North America "Sometimes product information are not updated to very recent results." -Michael, Principal Investigator, Europe "The NEB font sizes are too small as is the page width. Use dynamic HTML to span the available window and save users time from finding their glasses!, Jim, Principal Investigator, North America "The program does not pick up typos and so no return to searches are provided, unlike google etc that ask : did you mean ...?, Eva, Staff Scientist, North America "There is nothing I find annoying. Usually I am able to quickly find what I am looking for." -Wolfgang, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Europe "This is nothing annoying about the New England Biolabs website"It is useful and informative." -Philip, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "This isn't an information gripe - they do really well with information. It's an ordering gripe - they don't hold onto my credit card information, so I have to re-enter it with every order. A secondary gripe is that they don't take American Express, which is my grant-connected card. So I have to purchase items with my personal card & then go through the hassle of reimbursement." -Margaret, Principal Investigator, North America "Using the search option on the top of the web page to find a product of interest usually does not yield results even though the product is there, and the whole website has to be searched for the item." -Elaine, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Europe PerrkinElmer: "Search results are often redundant: i.e. 20 results that are only slight variations of the other -- usually resulting from different package sizes, etc." -Nathan, Staff Scientist, North America Pierce: "All of their technical documents are in PDF format, and sometimes their website is overbooked and it takes FOREVER for the PDF to download (if it ever does). Maybe they should look at a different mode of displaying their technical documents?" - Heather, Staff Scientist, North America "I don't find anything annoying about a product in Pierce's web page." -Ganesh, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "I have not come across any pages on Pierce's web site that is annoying." -Thomas, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, North America "It is difficult to get a price that includes university discounts and shipping costs. They prefer to send you to your company representative or distributor company." -Judith, Professor/Teacher, North America "Some of the letters are too small"Too much information given sometimes." -Manfred, Staff Scientist, Europe "The things I want to do when perusing a website such as Pierce's is to get the minimal information necessary to make a decision about the product of interest, and then get the contact information off to our purchasers with minimal fuss. An emailable shopping cart that has the items that I wanted"My name attached to it, and all of the necessary information that my purchasers would need to make the purchase would be perfect. Anything that gets in the way of that goal is just annoying." -David, Principal Investigator, North America Promega: "A little too much text when searching or navigating further into the site more text is appropriate, but the number of links on the first page and amount of text on the next tier of pages can be off putting." -Andrew, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "Having to select the country of origin every time I visit the site." -John, Professor/Teacher, North America "I am not satisfied with technical support services. I do expect the answer to my queries with in one day of question but sometime I don't get any reply from technical support services." -Amit, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, North America "I don't have problems with their website. But Bio-Rad or some others you need log on, the log on precedure is really annoying." -Ying, Staff Scientist, North America "I was recently looking for information on a Renilla luciferase reporter and it took me several attempts first to find the one I wanted, which is what I put into the search field, and then I had to go more generic to get a list of all luciferase vectors and then scroll around to get to what I wanted to see which was the price and antibiotic resistance gene. I have had this issue with other searches at Promega's website as well in the pass." -Jason, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, North America "Sometimes it is difficult to find exactly what I'm looking for using the search engine. This can be frustrating at times, although I'm always quite happy when I do find it!" - Dubear, Professor/Teacher, North America "Sometimes there is a vicious-circle and it is impossible to obtain the final response to a given question. Perhaps a certain ergonomy in the retrieval system will be valuable." -Lisardo, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Europe "Sometimes too much information might be overwhelming and the golden rule: LESS IS MORE applies." -Elena, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "Supplier's contact information and link to their Web site." -Cernescu, Professor/Teacher, Europe "The search engine is not very good and sometimes you invert to much time in looking for something." -Manel, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Europe "The small blue letters that are not always easy to read fast when using a laptop." -Antoine, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Europe "When searching for products, Promega lists product systems under the products tab. You must then reselect product listing from an additional side tab to see a list of their products. Not the best organization for my use." -Laura, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, North America Qiagen: "Difficulty in browsing Qiagen's website after newsletter tabs has been accessed. If I click a tab from a newsletter but want more information than the articles provide, this type of browsing is difficult." -Nicola, Post Doctoral Fellow, Africa "I find it annoying that the tools (i.e. gene globe, etc.) are not clearly evident on the home page." -Lisa, Staff Scientist, North America "It is not easy to get help about DNA oligo from Qiagen's web sit where you are transferred to Operon which has no agent in NZ." -Jun, Staff Scientist, Australasia/Pacific "It's the inability to find all the information in one page. After reading all you realize that some more relevant information is available elsewhere." -Mohammad, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "Most annoying: the result of my search is often not within the first five hits. Why: Because that consumes more time to scan through the other hits. And if the sight cannot provide me an answer for my search"I am flooded with a lot of useless hits - would be good (if the search engine cannot answer my request) the Qiagen engine would automatically offer the link of my request to a different search engine (Google or what ever)." -Barbara, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Europe "On web search engine their website gives many unrelated web links according to keyword. So become difficult to filter them." -Gaurav, Staff Scientist, Asia "So far nothing of this company is annoying . They have representative in my country (Portugal)visiting my department and giving products to test. They are working quite well." -Claudina, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Europe "I'm frustrated by the layout of the site and in particular the colours...it's annoying when you try to print out the information, because details are not always readable." -Giotis, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Europe "Website adequately designed, but pretty dull-lacks color catching schemes." -Takis, Staff Scientist, Europe "When I find a product I'm interested in buying I can't see my university specific pricing until I log in, but by logging in I have to navigate away from the products I'm looking at so I than have to repeat my search. At least this is better than Invitrogen's website, where you don't see your custom pricing until you've added the products to your shopping cart, which means you have to add one of every variation of a product to your cart to find out which one the special pricing applies to." -Maxine, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "When you can not find a protocol after 10 min of frenetic search and you are sure that they have. Web site structure is not yet optimized." -Tetsuro, Principal Investigator, Europe R&D Systems: "Advertisements." -Chad, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, North America "Although we are more and more going to a website based environment for retrieving information on products and instruments"I still belief (and I'm at the beginning of my career) that the best way to be briefly informed on new products/instruments is a short meeting with a responsible from a company. To often valuable info is not considered due to e-mail overload. A short example on this, we were considering to buy a certain apparatus for 90000 euro. On a fair in Paris, we found a supplier we didn't know in advance and who sold an instrument for half of the price. The apparatus was not advertised on the fair itself but since I was discussing with a sales person"The topic came up from itself..." -Peter, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "Cost." -Garimella, Professor/Teacher, Asia "I generally search for the information I require." -Dinesh, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Asia "I have never been annoyed the web site of R&D is one of the best I visit and I get my info immediately." -Zoya, Principal Investigator, North America "I think their website is actually pretty good, and I have not had too much trouble accessing the information I need. It's one of the least "annoying" vendor websites out there." -Marie, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, North America "No integrated information for products"No hyperlinks to protocols using these products. It would also be helpful to score the usefulness of antibodies for different applications similar like impact points in the ISI. Antibodies or kits with many references in the literature would have more impact points giving researchers more confidence to use exactly this product from that supplier." -Christoph, Principal Investigator, Europe "Prices can be listed as please enquire and that is irritating, but on the whole I wish all web pages were as well thought out as this one." -Catherine, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "The most annoying thing about R & D systems is that " the research topics are very rarely up to dated" and not covers all fields of biology. The Customer service is always upsetting and never answer to the point. Websites needs to up to date very regular." -Gulrej, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Asia Roche Applied Science: "At Your Service facility"In the web page of Roche-Applied-Science.com! Since having lots of interesting information on the web site while try to open this facility (in order to have some ideas/details about the field relevant allied products) the link won't open immediately and it's asking me to do the save option! But this problem was not on the main web site of Roche .com." -Rajesh, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Europe "Complex navigation to the pages I am interested in." -Raimo, Principal Investigator, Europe "I must be prejudice because when you click on a website and the first thing you have to do is find your country"It is annoying. I realize the United States is not the only country that use Roche's services but it's like one of those little quirks when you call someone on the phone and the first thing you are asked is "If you speak English press #1". I guess people always expect the United States to have one of their own"No matter what it is." -Stephanie, Pharmacist, North America "Navigating through the myriad of product protocols - you have to try and think like the website designer as to what the protocol might be listed under." -Sandra, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Australasia/Pacific "Not finding the one reference I expect, but instead a list of several analogous products. Time consuming..." -Annie, Staff Scientist, Europe "Pop ups." -Milan, Principal Investigator, Europe "Roche Applied Science has many guidebooks to refer various research fields. I hope guidebook list would be updated once in a while and we can see the last list of them." -Hisao, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Asia "The announcements. take a lot of useful page space." -Arseni, Staff Scientist, Europe "The organization of the website does not provide an easy method to locate the reagent/instrument catalogue and product information. I can only find it through search engines and usually have to repeat searches to find the product of interest, even if I have been to that page previously." -Scott, Staff Scientist, North America "Too conservative site.....put more animations." -Joao, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Europe Santa Cruz Biotechnology: "I do not like a long search. If I click on a Web site and perform a search"I prefer to find the information I am looking for, as soon as possible and do not want to go through annoying advertisements or so. I also do not like search engines which produce too many hits e.g. instead of information about a specific product just an irrelevant document with another link to what I am looking for." -Thorsten, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "In cell signaling there are multiple abbreviations for the same protein and therefore for ABI's to these proteins. Anti-MAPK 1 may not be listed as MAPK but rather ERK. Santa Cruz does not always have all the versions for particular proteins and ABI's." -Brian, Principal Investigator, North America "Sometimes it takes longer than desirable to get to the info needed especially for a new user." -Isaura, Principal Investigator, Europe "That the url name is www.scbt.com"Not www.santacruzbiotech.com." -Beverly, Professor/Teacher, North America "The photos they show are "beautified", Athanasia, Professor/Teacher, Europe "Their web site is very informative, however"When doing a search"Too many products pop up, many of them I can't figure out how they were connected to the key word that I put in." -Anne, Staff Scientist, North America "There should always be a picture accompanying an antibody." -Simone, Staff Scientist, North America "When the information is no different from, and gives no additional depth than that found in their print catalog." -William, Principal Investigator, Asia Sigma-Aldrich: "1. Not having a vertical window on the left-hand side and having to go back every time you want to change page. 2. The search requires registration and quick search is not possible although the hard copy catalogue is freely available so why not the soft-copy." -Ehab, Professor/Teacher, Africa "As for many other web sites: most annoying is sometimes the lack of information about possible limitations or other critical comments related to the product or service (I call it "warning info"), without which the "information" (that has to be full) becomes just an "ad"." -Alexander, Principal Investigator, Europe "Being given a contact number or email. As having originally used the web site I would not expect to have to use another method of finding the information I need." -Thelma, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Europe "Can't find solubility information. Can't find which version of a product is right for me. Site doesn't list synonyms for products. Lack of literature references which describes how a product is used and what it does (i.e. a histamine antagonist). Difficulty finding categories, i.e. list of receptor membrane preparations, or list of nicotinic receptor antagonists. Need access to families of products." -James, Staff Scientist, North America "Difficult to locate and search for a specific product information." -Ateequr, Professor/Teacher, North America "Display too many irrelevant products in the search results." -Chenya, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, North America "Even though the search engine is powerful when you know exactly the name or number"It can be erratic and hard to use when you don't know the full name of the product you are looking for." -Christophe, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "For a search of a given product name"I often get too many hits of the same product and finding the correct product takes time as the search results page gives too little information and I have to visit product pages separately for the items." -Toni, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Europe "For some products, PDF files of the data sheets for these products are not available. Then it is very difficult to look for small details, such as solubility, working dilutions etc. and save these details electronically for future reference." -Vladimir, Principal Investigator, Europe "Having to navigate through multiple pages to narrow down the product that I want." -Igor, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "Having to say country I'm in each time despite clicking on default option." -Hazel, Laboratory Technician, North America "Having to select my country on the first page EVERY TIME, even though there is a little check box to "remember" this information for future access." -John, Professor/Teacher, North America "I do not find anything currently annoying with Sigma-Aldrich's web site." -William, Principal Investigator, North America "I don't find anything annoying. It is annoying, however"When I receive 16,000 e-mails daily from suppliers; it verges on harassment and I get turned off." -Floyd, Professor/Teacher, North America "I don't like the selection of a country as an entry page and the subsequent permanent language selection based on cookies. I would much prefer that later at the first information page." -Guenter, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Europe "I find the font a little small, and light grey text on a white background is not ideal." -Chris, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Europe "I hate having to always log in to get a price for an item." -Melissa, Staff Scientist, North America "I have the impression that for some products you get the data sheet or MSDS sheet without log in and for some products you need to log in. This always annoys me when I try to look something up about a product I bought." -Daniel, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Europe "I have trouble with the search engine- sometimes I know the product name, and other times I know the product number. Sometimes one or the other doesn't work in the search engine." -Jennifer, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, North America "I only wished they provided product information about material they do not supply frequently, because company catalogs are the best places to find product information and sigma-Aldrich is one of the most informative sites!, R." Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "I wish to be in touch with Sigma to know some information about the products." -Idress, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Europe "I would prefer more technical details and specification about the products. More links to an application literature. Sometimes it is uneasy to identify the product for a given application among a bunch of others very similar products." -Marek, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "If you are not logged in you can not see the price of the products." -Enrique, Principal Investigator, Europe "It always take time to find out the item that meet my specific interest without doing multiple search and read information not of interest to my search. Search engines are not as specific, and have a tendency to direct search to other areas not related to search." -Philip, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, North America "It is annoying that the receiving of the necessary information is a time-consuming procedure. In particular"You need to denote the country (it should be defined automatically), and to carry out some other consecutive steps." -Liliya, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Europe "It is quite difficult to "navigate through" the website. In other words"The website is so complex that sometimes you have to wade through irrelevant information to get to what you want. They should have independent "discipline-focused" websites that we the end users can click-into." -Enal, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, North America "It's difficult to find MDSS sheets for products, and they are required for institutional protocol approvals. Direct links to MDSS information from product information web pages would be very helpful and save me a lot of time." -Allison, Staff Scientist, North America "Its layout and the time it takes to get pricing information." -Vangala, Laboratory Technician, Europe "It's quite difficult to find the protocol relating to the product you want. For example"I was looking for the Bradford protocol. On the reagent page there are numerous related references and bulletins which can be useful, but no apparent link to the protocol. I had to do a separate search for it and even then it came up quite a few hits down the page." -Susan, Laboratory Technician, Europe "I've got often problems to get information about solubility of substances and their storage conditions. If these circumstances are not displayed on the containers (e.g. bottles etc.) it might be very difficult to get the data by internet. Then I've to call the company by phone and even then there are sometimes problems and they've to call back." -Thomas, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Europe "Lack of complete technical information. Because every scientist has his/her own requirement for a specific technical information." -Dinesh, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "Layers of products with too many sizes I like to see them in the catalog in my hand." -Christine, Professor/Teacher, North America "Logging in is kind of tricky if you forget your password - their security question is what is your favorite sport or hobby. That is difficult to remember the answer to." -Barbara, Principal Investigator, North America "Many times the results of a search are not in an order that is based on the best fit to the search criteria. Sometimes there are many results and the ones that are most appropriate are buried within many less appropriate ones." -Philip, Staff Scientist, North America "Most annoying on using Sigma-Aldrich web page is the fact that it always asking me on region where I'm from. It's just reminding me fact that we are living in the world of different pricing policy for Europe and U.S.. I really hate the fact that most of the stuff is more expensive in Europe in compare to U.S. (of course it's not the case only for Sigma-Aldrich but Bio-Rad, BD, Invitrogen, etc. ...all is the same)." -Karel, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "Needing to register in order to use the website." -Patricia, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "No flexibility in search." -Rosalba, Principal Investigator, Europe "Occasionally it is difficult to print out requested information, such as a Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS)." -Anthony, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, North America "Pop-ups." -Chris, Staff Scientist, North America "Possibly the hierarchical search result window that means having to click on further links to find out the full name of the product." -Iain, Principal Investigator, Europe "Search engine is really unpredictable." -Eric, Professor/Teacher, North America "Search engine works only in English and sometimes if looking not for specific product and only for something like ... it is problematic to fit in the search, but this comes to me only occasionally." -Radovan, Professor/Teacher, Europe "Sigma has so many versions of the same type of chemical"It often takes more time to figure out exactly which one is best suited to my needs. Of course, this is also one of the best parts of sigma. They carry everything and usually give all the information necessary for the user to figure out what exactly they need." -Gina, Staff Scientist, North America "Sigma-Aldrich's Web site is a good web site but not very user-friendly." -PÈterszegi, Principal Investigator, Europe " Small characters." -Camillo, Principal Investigator, Europe "Some products have non-intuitive names or keywords, making them difficult to find." -David, Professor/Teacher, North America "Sometimes there are too many links with info that is not necessary to what I'm looking for. Also there appears to be some lag time with their web site"It can use to be faster." -Josef, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, North America "Structure search." -Carlos, Staff Scientist, Central/South America "Technical problems with loading the webpage, which occur quite often." -Diana, Staff Scientist, Europe "That I have to register to see the products and the prices - especially the prices!, Coleen, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "That to some products there are actually no technical information about the appropriate solvents the substance should be dissolved the useful concentrations and for how long the product will then be stable and good for use." -Elina, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "That you cant easily compare products and that it is difficult to find a product not using the search function." -Christina, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "The "tree" way that information is provided when you have a list of products. It makes navigation very slow." -Joao, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "The accuracy of the search results is not very high The folder system doesn't make it very much easier to find the product searched for either why not including a search refinement option that allows to in-/or exclude further search words." -Nikolaus, Principal Investigator, Europe "The big pictures with links as opposed to the smaller links. The balance is lost in this way and Sigma seems to push me into those links rather than the other links which may or may not be true." -Maarten, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Europe "The delaying in loading the information> However this is not directly link to the Web site but to the speed of my own provider and electronic system." -Nyasse, Professor/Teacher, Africa "The fact that the page is renewed each time I click on the plus sign in front of a product name to see all available product numbers." -Vassilis, Professor/Teacher, Europe "The huge number of products consumes a lot of time." -Mariela, Professor/Teacher, Europe "The layout of the site is quite complicated and one has to get used to the way it works before one can get to the information sought." -Nagavalli, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "The little boxes (+/-) for collapsing/expanding threads in search results." -Chris, Staff Scientist, North America "The most annoying about the Sigma-Aldrich's Web site is a general problem that occurs while downloading files from a website using the new IE7 standard security settings. You have to restart the download of a file (e.g. a PDF file) at least two times. The first time after hitting the link"You receive the message that download was blocked for security reasons. Using the link the second time"You can activate the download. However, time of retrieval of the file for download is too long." -Stefan, Principal Investigator, Europe "The most annoying for me is the fact"That you can see the price of the Sigma product but this price differs (and sometimes a lot) from the price that is given for us, for Czech Republic. Of course it is always higher price for us than is presented on the Sigma web page." -Pavel, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "The most annoying is the very first page that pears, asking for the country I am in. I don't see the point and could be asked at a later stage when questions become more precise about conditions of delivery etc." -Gael, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Europe "The need to register to get price information." -Thomas, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Europe "The need to register." -Petri, Principal Investigator, Europe "The repetition of information." -Carmen, Principal Investigator, Central/South America "The site seems to be slow to respond, although it may be due to my work network being slow at times." -Edmond, Professor/Teacher, North America "The use of colours can sometimes be off putting." -Tim, Department Head, Europe "The website first comes up with all sorts of information regarding to everything BUT the issue at hand. S-A is primarily a supplier of laboratory and production grade chemicals, secondarily maybe equipment, then maybe services. The site should be reorganized so that searchers, or listings of products are much easier to see, do, and to assess the results of the search. Kind of like when one flips open the catalogue. One can browse from one compound to another through a particular section, once you locate a compound or section to look through. A link to another section would be good, much like a keyword may initiate a person to look into another section of the paper catalogue. Links on keywords would be nice." -Berry, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, North America "Their local representatives are not able to understand English." -George, Staff Scientist, Central/South America "Their so-called "Buffer calculator" is almost useless." -Nony, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Europe "There are so many variants/grades of each product"That it is difficult to find the specific one you are looking for, unless you already have the exact item details with you." -Brad, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "There are too many links per page a mostly no description about what will contain the link." -Gonzalo, Professor/Teacher, Europe "There is nothing annoying about a web site"If the information provided is well organized and easy to navigate. User-friendliness and privacy (i.e." providing information such as pricing, etc. WITHOUT having to register) are, for me, of biggest importance. Given such a web site"I am likely to return. Any kind of unsolicited contact (i.e." spam), however, will only do harm to my trust in that company." -Christoph, Post Doctoral Fellow, Asia "They have the slowest web server in the world!" - Robert, Principal Investigator, Europe "To get the price quotation about a product"It is necessary to register. Without a username and password, one may not get access to the information." -Sharmila, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "To have to use too much hits." -Ennio, Staff Scientist, Europe "Too many clicks!, Antoine, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Europe "US pat number XXX." -Fann, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, North America "Web pages takes long time to download and open. Keyword searching wont suggest any alternate (It simply display recommend a new product)." -Ramamirthum, Principal Investigator, Asia "When doing a search for a particular chemical, one often gets a list of many hits that overlap." -Macdara, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, Europe "When we are in a third world country it is very hard to found all specific information about the prices with local currency, delivery time, payment..." -Mehdi, Staff Scientist, Africa "When you do a search for really basic chemicals (e.g. sodium chloride) the first hits are for more obscure chemicals rather than the plain old salt that you were looking for. This site seems to work extremely well with rarer more complex chemical searches but is not so good with your 'bog standard' lab chemicals." -Gillian, Post Doctoral Fellow, Europe "While most of the information I am looking for about any given product is there"It is often necessary to click on several links or try several different search phrases to find the relevant information." -Amy, Laboratory Technician, North America Stratagene: "Getting lots of hits for MSDS sheets for products is annoying to me. Usually I'm looking for a price, quantity, or information about usage, and the MSDS has none of that information. Scanning between the MSDS hits for relevant sites takes a few extra seconds." -Ernest, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "I found the length of some of their web-seminars too long (20 min and higher). When you are interested in learning about a technique and multiple web-seminars cover different topics related to this technique (e.g." Stratagene's QPCR fast track education series)"The time needed to view all of web-seminars begins to add and becomes too long quite quickly." -Katie, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, North America Takara: "Sometimes the information is incomplete - the particular question is not answered. Case in point - rTAQ info does not detail that an A is usually added by this enzyme a the end of the reaction, while this information is included in the description of ExTaq." -Chris, Principal Investigator, North America Thermo Fisher Scientific: "Find it really difficult to find a product. You need to do searches within searches otherwise you end up with 150 pages of hits with 20 items per page. Totally useless website." -Lesley, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, Europe "It can be difficult to browse the catalog for products when you don't know which catalog or category to look in. Also"The search function often brings up obscure products and intermingles them with more useful hits." -Jennifer, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, North America "Lack of descriptions or pictures of some items makes it very hard to compare." -Juanita, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, North America "Not all items have pictures associated with them. This makes it much more difficult to determine if the item in question is the one I want to order. Also"It is essentially impossible to do comparisons simultaneously. For example"I recently wanted to try nitrile gloves, which I had not ordered before. I did a search and got a page that listed about 70 products. From the descriptions I could rule out most, but I then had to check the other ones individually. It would have been nice if I could have compared perhaps three or four on one page (even seeing the prices would have been helpful) rather than having to click back and forth among them." -Daniel, Principal Investigator, North America "Occasionally the site is difficult to navigate for updates on software." -Leslie, Laboratory Technician, North America "Often times there are products in the catalog that have no description. It's pretty much useless to include items on the website if you can't get the information or description there as well." -David, Principal Investigator, North America "Search engine is very specific and split into 3 boxes. These should ideally be combined into 1 box that could recognize everything from keywords, CAS numbers and catalog numbers." -Richard, Staff Scientist, Europe "The inability to be specific enough and limit the number of hits. One should be able to search within a previous search." -Lou-Ann, Principal Investigator, North America "The most annoying thing is sporadic browser issues that erase search history and empty shopping carts. We use Firefox and have had these issues, despite Fisher's assurance that there are no compatibility problems." -Louis, Department Head, North America "There are rarely pictures, often not even complete descriptions. I am usually searching for a new product and need as much information as possible before deciding whether to purchase or not. I frequently resort to the paper catalogue to find more information, or to another supplier's web site, even if I eventually purchase from TFS." -Emma, Principal Investigator, North America "There are so many products that it can be very hard to find the one you want. You have to guess the specific description to pull up the product. A search powered by Google would bring up more relevant hits. Also, some items do not have enough pictures and descriptions to figure out what they are. However, some have plenty of info and are extremely useful. I like how you can enter any supplier number and it will come up even if you don't know the Fisher number." -Dave, Laboratory Technician, North America "What I find most annoying about Fisher's Web site is their presentation of hits when performing a keyword search. The hits are often "nested" according to a hierarchy of categories that must be navigated to find the product of interest. If the classification hierarchy is different from your own idea of how the product could be classified"It could take some time to find the product." -Todd, Staff Scientist, North America "Whenever the information is not adequate, i.e. when a product comes in packs or cases and you can't determine the size (grams,mls etc...) of the individual contents. Although it doesn't happen often but it does get in your way of making a decision. No easily spotted contact info or links! people are usually frustrated and impatient and don't feel like looking hard." -Goleeta, Graduate Student/Research Assistant, North America VWR International: "Difficult to maneuver between hits." -Teresa, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, North America "Hard to find new things. Many times it can be much easier to go to the print catalog if you are looking for something you've never ordered before." -Daniel, Laboratory Technician, North America "Hard to navigate." -Mats, Professor/Teacher, Europe "Incomplete product listings or descriptions." -Matthew, Staff Scientist, North America "It is not communicative as I would like it to be and it is not up do date." -Guy, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "Its very difficult to find a particular type of product if you don't know the supplier who specializes in the item. Its difficult to do a multi-keyword search and obtain useful results." -Christina, Staff Scientist, North America "It's very inconvenient that prices are only shown at the item level, and are not visible with the thumbnails that come up in the search list. (We LOVE the thumbnails"They were a great improvement when they were added.) But a major concern for a small lab is often price, and it would be helpful to be able to scan prices without going down to the item pages every time." -Jocelyn, Principal Investigator, North America "Just the speed of my Internet link at work!" - Joao, Production/Manufacturing, Europe "Many of their catalog items do not show a photo, and the description may be somewhat cryptic. I do not want to risk ordering what I think is probably the item I need, and receiving something different, so I avoid those products." -Heather, Staff Scientist, North America "Must checkout to get shipping charges." -G." Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, North America "The homepage is packed with information. Thus"It is sometimes quite hard to find the information you are searching for." -Stefan, Principal Investigator, Europe "The search engine is to sensitive"You need to type the exact name. Can not search more freely." -Carina, Laboratory Technician, Europe "The search engine sometimes retrieves too many irrelevant results. Therefore"It takes time to weed out the junk and find the product I'm looking for." -Andria, Staff Scientist, North America "Too much information, information needs to be better organized and focused according to subject/area of research." -Suchita, Post Doctoral Fellow, North America "VWR could make for an easier transition from one product or piece of an assay to another necessary component as other website have (example Affymetrix). When I order a product I like to see listed/linked to other similar products or co-products that work together. I feel like I'm required to add to the basket and restart a search unlike to linking to a product component." -Timothy, Laboratory Technician, North America "What I find most annoying is that they don't have pictures for all their products and well as a full list of information regarding the product. I find this annoying because I then have to call VWR directly and that can be time consuming." -Krista, Staff Scientist, North America "When searching for a product their site tends to bring up multiple links of the same product in the links list. There are no photos of the products being searched so I usually have to search through many links to find exactly what I am looking for. It would be beneficial if their site would include images of the search item." -Jason, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator, North America Waters: "That I am going to be contacted by a sales rep, whether I want to or not. Also that I will be put on their email list and get bombarded by info." -Carl, Professor/Teacher, North America "The information seems to have been written by advertising students and not by fellow scientists." -Michael, Principal Investigator, North America |
|
