The 2 Israeli internet realities

Israel is a country of paradoxes. You can find here one thing and its extreme opposite. Internet is not exception. I mentioned it in the past but i am still amazed (nearly shocked) by the outstanding gap you can find between local israeli internet websites and the services created by entrepreneurs that are addressing the global market.

I can't really read hebrew but israeli sites are poorly designed, user experience is prehistorical, advertising is disturbing the navigation, there is no optimization for Firefox which has close to 20% penetration rate, loading is slow, pictures are in low resolution, news sites are very rarely having RSS feeds and when they do they do not promote them correctly (read Orli's post on it)...The experience is frustrating specially because users are now used to surf everywhere.

On the other side, web startups try to build cutting edge sites with new design, experiences and competing with the best international standards. Check out Gizmoz, 5min, Gigya, Vestopia, StyleShake (disclosure: my fund is investor), MetaCafe, SeekingAlpha, Sportingo....and just compare with any average israeli site and pay attention to the quality of the execution

What is the explanation of that? I am not sure. Maybe the fact that our internet infrastructure is totally prehistorical (although penetration of free wifi is pretty amazing).

But this is far from being the main reason: i think we lack of true wed design talents in Israel. There are some, but they are rare and usually go to startups because the upside is better. We lack of training infrastructure. We need more talents to feed marketing departments, web design agencies,..

The other reason could be linked to budget: since israel is a small country you cannot allocate too much money for creating a great site. I think this is half true. you can do a great website with a very little budget. And even when you have money the result is not always there (check out CellCom website for example which is far from perfect or wose 013/Barak my ISP or even DiscountBank my future ex bank)

The problem is not necessarily budget, but talent.

Comments

[Roi]

And imagination...

[Jeff]

This has continually amazed me as well. What really amazes me is the English-language Israeli sites who obviously have a global audience. - they are horrible as well.

Just look at the Jerusalem Post. It looks a university intern slapped that site together with no thought process in usability.

[Fara]

It's about customer service & understanding your customer - let's face it: Israelis are notoriously bad at this. How many times have you tried to call customer service here only to find that "you're the problem"!?! The cellcom & bank discount sites just reflect that they have put little effort into understanding and helping their customers. The other companies you mentioned, looking outside of Israel for their customers, realize that the Israeli standard is not going to cut it on a global site.