Cheers,

Paul

(Meanwhile, Your comment was caught by my spam blocker)

Thanks for the link to your blog – you have some great insight and perspective on the Microsoft homepage. I’ve forwarded your feedback internally so they can get your perspective as well. I’ve included my experience/perspective on the MS homepage based on your points below:

1. The MS homepage is big
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I haven’t measured the size of the page itself, so I’ll make an assumption that you’re right and that the page is 500K. If that’s the case, I’ll admit it sounds a little heavy.

2. The MS homepage takes up too many CPU cycles
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I can’t say I’ve had the same experience of the IE7 freezing up on the MS homepage, however. It’s possible there’s a lot of computation going on in the background but I haven’t experienced that spike.

3. Spamming / Too Many Ads
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I don’t actually share your opinion on this one. I honestly don’t think the page is covered in ads. Yes, we show ads on our page, but as you mentioned, we are a product company and as such this is the main portal our customers see with respect to our products, so I don’t see this as a bad thing. If you have a better solution to showcasing our products on the site, I would be very happy to pass that feedback along! In fact, from your 4th point about Apple being less ad-concentrated, I’d argue that Microsoft’s page less cluttered.

4. Bad UI Design
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Again, I’m going to disagree with you here. I actually think the MS homepage design is quite clean. The resource link you provide to support your case states that a good design first and foremost provides you with an intuitive UI. I don’t quite see why the MS homepage isn’t intuitive; the menu options are plain to see and easily accessible.

And while the UI experience changes depending on the sub-site you pick (which could be changed, I’ll agree), each sub-site provides menu and navigation options that are contextually specific to the topic you are looking at. Even if you look at Apple’s site, they navigation is different across the different options they provide at the top. I don’t see that as bad; in fact, I see it using the same thought process we have in that it provides contextual navigation based on the site being viewed.

Paul

(P.S.: I certainly don’t see your views as anti-Microsoft – I appreciate your willingness to share your opinions on our site and certainly will share it internally. And of course we care about the traffic to our site! It’s the first thing people see when they visit our internet property. )