it's funny 'cos it's true

 

that's a good idea, I think i'll order one ...

 

what's the point if ...

... 'Grok can make mistakes', [you should] 'verify its outputs'.

In case you're not a follower of football: it was 2-0 at half time [surely every report on this match anywhere on the web would have reported this correctly], particularly as the third goal [on the hour mark] came in the second half. If an LLM can get something as simple and obvious as this wrong, why would to trust it for anything important?

one thing you don't change is your team [3]

 And these are local rivals to my team ... 

one thing you don't change is your team [2]

 

one thing you don't change is your team

 ... and Liverpool ain't my team.

none of these are 'my city' [and most of them aren't even cities]

 

A follow up to the last post ...

 ... which featured a promotion for 'Lessons from the Web Performance Summit 2026' which featured 'More than 100 corporate digital communications professionals from many of Europe’s biggest companies'. 

Well, I'm sure those folk know there own organizations, but how much can they offer marketers that run digital communications for organization's that are smaller than Europe’s biggest companies?

No tracking = not much room to read

Previously I've commended Bowen Craggs on the way their website handles cookies - but it seems the space for users to read the content with the cookie message in place has shrunk a bit [the box I've highlighted in yellow]. 

But things get even worse on a phone's screen - it's the bit at the bottom [again, in yellow. 

open ... or closed for business?

This morning I was going to visit an antiques/collectibles shop about an hour away from my home. Because most antiques stores do not keep 9-5, 7 days a week opening hours, before setting off I thought I would check on their website if it was open today. There was no website, only social media pages - none of which included the basic details of the business [just a lot of nice pictures]. I eventually found a phone number and gave it a ring. Landline number, no answer. Is it closed today? Will it be open later? Are they on holiday this week? One thing is certain: they won't be taking any money off me today. Or perhaps ever.

Moral? Well, it could be; read my book - but I'll go with: have a basic web page with 'about', 'address', 'contact details' and 'opening hours' [you can get these for next-to-nothing when you buy a domain name], or have these details on the home/pinned page of any social media presence. Or go old school and have an answerphone message saying 'sorry, we're closed at the moment, our opening hours are ...'. 

Customers can be hard to find, don't make it hard for them to find you.

Update: several hours after originally publishing this post - and because I wanted to follow up this post, not because I was desperate to visit them - I had another go at finding some opening hours ... and after a bit of digging, found them. Ho hum. 

a snapshot in time?

After attending a Premier League football match, I was invited to complete a questionnaire about my match-day experience. All fairly standard stuff, but there was one key question missing: what time I arrived at the stadium. I got there an hour before kick off - effectively, one of the first to experience the various elements of the event so, no queues. I'm pretty sure folks arriving after me would have had a very different experience.  

another 'war and peace' review

This notice popped up at the end of a purchase. Sound idea, provides a bit of marketing data [not sure how much], but I was logged-on to the site - so technology should have been designed to recognise this. To be fair, when I clicked on 'other', one of the options was 'shopped here before', but that should have been in the original list. As with most [all?] of these feedback forms, I was willing to offer a couple of quick clicks ... but I gave up after four clicks and was then asked to write something🤷. I left the site at that point.  Surely the site's data collection is set up to show how many folk start, but don't finish, the feedback.

unnecessary clicks

One of my website design bug-bears is the use of hamburger menus [three lines] which you have to click on to open the menu. These started use on apps and websites on smaller screens, where they do serve a purpose. But on a website like this one? No. In usability terms it's an unnecessary click for the visitor - more so if you have to return to the home page - where the opened menu will have closed. In this case, why not just put the menu/links across the top of the page? my opinion of why designers use the hamburger? It makes the top of the page look 'cleaner'. A case of style over substance.

So what is this ad for?

Short? What's a short?  I checked the website of the organization in the ad - and I couldn't find where it is based. Maybe it doesn't actually exist ... and a short is from the imagination of of artificial intelligence.

Close ...

 ... but no cigar - I'm an adidas man.