Rent a Center is unquestionably the 400 pound gorilla of the RTO industry, unfortunately that leadership does not extend to the web.

While more 'consumer centric' than previous versions, the new www.rentacenter.com is, for lack of a better term, stark. The site is 'cold' in comparison to other RTO sites such as Rent One, Easyhome, and Rentway. Rent a Center's homepage does not exude friendliness or warmth. The only human being seen on the site is 'Bob'. Bob, intended to represent the typical rent to own customer, replaced John Madden as the company spokesperson earlier this year.

On a 56K dialup connection (presumably what most consumers will use) Rent a Center's homepage took over 1 minute to load. The overly large Flash file used to scroll brand-names is jumpy, causing uneven scrolling throughout the site. The only way to improve the scrolling issue was to adjust the Flash 'Quality' setting in my browser to low. On a DSL line, the page loaded quickly, but scrolling did not improve.

The site apparently does not utilize browser detection. Browser detection allows a website to be optimized for the viewer regardless of the browser being used. For example, if a surfer visits rentacenter.com with a non-flash browser, they are greeted by annoying pop up windows announcing "flash is required to view this page", rather than simply being redirected to a non-flash version.

Frames are used in the product section. The purpose of frames is to allow a visitor to scroll within a browser window. They only work well if the entire page fits in the browser window. Unfortunately, even on a 20" monitor, the frame containing Rent a Center products extends below the window, requiring the visitor to scroll both the frame and browser to view all products.

Bottom line...a definite "do-over".