Why luxury brands need to focus on user experience and SEO

This is an excellent article in Econsultancy about the mistakes made by luxury brands in the way they use the web. What is so depressing is that they have been making the same mistakes for years and years and years. These are such fundamental mistakes you cannot believe they are still occurring  but they are: 

• Using terminology that only the brand initiated understand
• Displaying text as images (can you believe it)
• Dreadfully long page load times
• Using Splash screens (I know  - it is idiotic)
• Using bucket loads of Flash

And so the list of mistakes goes on. These types of mistakes are bad for all ages of site visitors but really bad for the older user.

When will these guys (and girls) learn? Dick Stroud