Trunk Media

I demand you stop being so demanding!

31 May 2007

Yesterday, people were demanding for me to give them my life history after I told them that there was a problem with their site. Today, and I hope I’m just having a bad week, I had Paypal demanding that I log in to their service when trying to complete a payment for a website that has already demanded that I sign up for it. This is just all too much for me this week.

I wanted to buy a book from an independant publisher in NZ. Cleverly, they have a nice website which allows me to purchase these books online. Not so cleverly they wanted a username and password. I don’t know why but people seem to think if you have a website, then everyone that uses it, must have a username and password. This is a great fallacy on the web. If the purchases that people make on your site are likely to be a one-off (like this one was) don’t make them create a username and password when they know they’re not likely to use it again.

I went through a great site the other day where I could choose to create an account or use the express checkout where they just took my details once, no usernames no passwords. I think they even politely offered to save them after the sale was complete but either way, I left that site knowing I didn’t have any more usernames or arbitrary passwords to remember. As a user I was empowered. Great!!
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How not to take user feedback

30 May 2007

If you run a website you will get feedback from your users. It can be positive, negative and constructive. I had a negative experience on the Companies website the other day and decided to give a bug report. I would term this feedback constructive.

I’ve used the site many times before to edit company details and it really was great to use. In fact I’ve heard but can’t confirm that it is pretty unique (or was) and innovative globally in making New Zealand one of the easiest places to set up a company. For $50 and in 5 minutes you can go online and set up a company.

However a little over a year ago, the site was revamped. Perhaps I should be clearer, it was reskinned, made to look prettier. You know the one, javascript dropdowns, some Web 2.0 gradients and some rounded corners; all the hallmarks of a great revamp that every website needs… The problem is with all of this javascript whiz bangery, they’ve managed to screw up the one piece of their website that made it great, the java applet that did all of the work. So my feedback went something like this:
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About-turn

22 May 2007

Being the avid sneaker fan I am, in order to keep my shoe game tight (slang for keep up with the play), I frequently visit many of the sites dedicated to the sneaker culture, whether it is to see what’s hot, what’s getting released this year etc….

Recently I was watching a video on the Kix and the City website which talked about the new Nike Air Force 1 website built to commemorate the 25th Anniversary of the Air Force 1. I had a few minutes so I thought I would check it out.

I was having a browse through the site and went to watch one of the videos, when I saw a sight that is becoming more and more familiar in the ever-changing web world which made me smile.

Before I could even press the play button on the player, my attention was drawn to something else that hovered below the movie screen. What I saw was a little input box populated with the object tags, so any user can copy the tags and embed the movie in their own site. I had to laugh, a few years ago, if Nike found you using their content on your site you would have been sat in front of a judge so fast you wouldn’t have had time to blink, and now, they are the ones wanting you to use their content.

Finally corporations realise that this form of free marketing is beneficial to them and their brand. YouTube and the like are the ones to thank for this about-turn; it’s funny how things change…

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Your website might be like this sandwich

17 May 2007

This is, according to how it was sold to me, a photo of a Cajun chicken bap. I call it a rip-off. You have to understand that when I bought it it was wrapped in glad wrap and what was exposed to me between the cut in the bread was a sandwich overflowing with chicken. The chicken was covered in spices, freshly cut and wrapped with grated carrot and fresh lettuce. It looked like good value. That was until I got it back to the office and had a chance to open it up. When I did I realised that all the chicken that I could see on the outside was all the chicken I would get and literally 60% of the volume of the sandwich was made up of a hunk of lettuce (a big slice, not leaves) and it was literally used as padding.

Now if you’ve paid for a website recently, you may have just bought the digital equivalent. It’s easy to make websites look nice and flash and pretty on the outside, it’s harder to make them rank in search engines, be usable, updateable and reliable as well as looking good. So a lot of developers just pad them with flashing graphics, Web 2.0 gradients and promises. I’m sure if some of them could, they’d pad them with lettuce too. The problem for websites owners is that you can’t just peel back the bread and see if your site is well built. It’s a problem and we’ve got a solution, so get in touch or just be more careful with who makes your sandwiches, I know I will.

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Wilfing – What Was I Looking For?

16 May 2007

A recent article in the NZ Herald reported a YouGov poll of over 2400 people. “Workers confronted with the almost unlimited pool of online information become distracted and begin wilfing.” The poll identified that two out of three British web users lose significant portions of their time to irrelevant web browsing. Research indicates that search* (a good proportion of which is probably wilfing) is catching up to email as the largest online activity. That is the internet though – it’s all about search and the accessibility of information.

But isn’t wilfing just a more engaging, physical form of 21st century daydreaming? I did try and find statistics on the percentage of time people spend daydreaming but got too sidetracked… It would be interesting to compare those statistics, particularly pre/post computers in the workplace and the advent of the internet. There are also other comparisons that could be made e.g. channel surfing and bookstore browsing.

Now a confession, I engaged in a fair amount of “wilfing” before writing this blogpost – i.e. spent a bit of time on Google searching for wilfing-related articles and finding statistics for web browsing. Isn’t that all part of research though? Broadening horizons? Becoming more informed? Ok perhaps finding out who’s been dropped from The Apprentice isn’t all that important but the internet is one big wikipedia – we can all benefit from a little unstructured learning.

*Statistics New Zealand report that for those people who have used the internet in the last 12 months 90.3% used the internet to send or receive emails while 84.4% used the internet for general web browsing.

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