I think this is probably a spam email

I usually simply delete spam without reading it [hmmm, how do I know it is spam if I don't read it?], but this one came in on my university email's spam filter.
Email's promising tax refunds are fairly common - but not from a design company in Hong Kong. Come on spammers, you can do better than that!

offer - what offer?

It is a fundamental of marketing that to be successful, any promotion must be appealing to the potential customer. As I have said many times - online is no different. So when I got this email I asked myself; "who will be interested in this offer?" I would have to be travelling this week [I received the email on Saturday the 14th], but surely, if I have a trip planned, I'd already have booked my hotel? Plus, Thursday isn't included in the deal. And the deal isn't available on Thursday night. Oh, and the small print under this ad says; 'All rates are subject to availability at the time of booking and may not be available at every hotel every night'. Or what if I had already booked with Travelodge and had paid a higher price?

coming soon - for the time traveller

I recently came across the concept of tan-though T shirts and so went looking for them online. One site I came across was that of safer-suntan.co.uk. The product looked reasonable, but availability seemed to be a problem. The first colour was listed as being available in M, L and XL - unfortunately, the exact same sizes that were not available.
It was a similar situation with the camel shirts, it's a good job new stock is arriving two years ago.
As a footnote: This website uses a third party for its online sales facility. Nothing wrong with that, it is common and - particularly for small businesses - sensible. However, when the user clicks on the link on safer-suntan.co.uk to 'enter the e-store', the URL becomes:
https://sslrelay.com/s77608230.oneandoneshop.co.uk/ [and a whole lot more gobbledy gook].
Note there is no sign that the store has any connection to Safer Suntan UK. Indeed, two domain names are listed in that URL, but neither is safer-suntan.co.uk. It might make some think twice before handing over their credit card number and other personal information.

good job it's not a Christmas present

For reasons that I won't go into, I spent several hours today killing time in the lovely town of Harrogate - and I called in one shop called Orvis. They had a nice jacket - but not in my size. The staff told me about the website, so when I got home I took a look. Selecting my size I found there was a problem with availability ...

Yep, that's the end of December before it can be dispatched. That's five months away. Hmmm. Furthermore, in the shop it was on sale - 30% off, but no sign of such an offer on the website. Consistency of pricing on- and offline is an issue, with best practice normally being 'same price' for all channels. I know I would have been sick if I had bought online and then seen the jacket in the shop for 60-odd pounds less.

As a footnote: this is only my suspicion based on my retail experience - but I suspect that this particular jacket is being discontinued, to be replaced later in the year with a new style. This would explain the long lead time for online orders and the discount of what sizes remain in the shops. If I'm right, why not just say that? Indeed you could actually make it into 'good' news, and collect email addresses of folk who want to be informed when the new style is available.

As is the case in all my entries to this blog: if Orvis's reputation management team pick this up [which they should - if such a team exists] I would be happy to amend my assumption if I am wrong.

Footnote: as you can see, someone from Orvis did contact me and we exchanged emails with regard to the issues - he concluded by saying my comments would be passed on to the appropriate folk.

not exactly nectar to my lips

I was signing up for a Nectar card and as part of the procedure I was - naturally - asked if I wanted to get emails with details of promotions, offers and so on. I ticked the boxes for 'no' [in itself, a questionable practice - ticking for 'yes' is more ethical] but on the last one this pop-up appeared.
Now, if you read it slowly it is not misleading - but for most people [it's a usability thing] if you tick something and a pop-up appears with 'OK' or 'cancel' as the options, clicking on 'OK' confirms your action. In this case it does the reverse. A bit sneaky you Nectar people.

you're where?

It is the case that the search engines look for key words in the text on a website - and having those words at the beginning of the content is deemed to be best. But - and it is a big but - you should never [ever, ever, ever] sacrifice the user for SEO. The text should be written for humans, not search engines - in other words, the content should make sense to humans.

And here is an example. Whoever is responsible for this website's content obviously thinks that getting the keywords 'Moorside, Bingley and Bradford' is more important than making the owners look like blithering idiots.

Want to test my opinion here? Try reading that first paragraph as if you were answering the phone at that garage.

localized ads on the Internet

I was listening to Spotify whilst working in my office at home. As I'm a cheapskate I have the free version - which has verbal ads every few tracks. And then - between 'The Wind Cries Mary' and 'Voodoo Child' - on came an ad recruiting staff for a Barclays call centre 'here in Sunderland'. Nice. Pretty basic IP recognition ... but still good.

why online retail works

Here's something that is theoretically possible offline, but not really realistic - for both buyer and seller.

I couple of months ago I ordered a few books from Amazon. Most arrived within days, but one was not published until this week. And yesterday I got this email:
Now, here's the thing: yes I know there was this price guarantee - but effectively I had agreed to pay the [then] price of £5.99. Would I have ordered without the price guarantee? Yes, I would. I could have put the book in my 'basket' and bought it later [another excellent facility from Amazon] - hoping the price might drop. But hey, it's £2. My total order was for around £60. Would I have noticed or even checked up on the current price when the book is delivered? No. My time is more prescious.

And there's the rub. Convenience. I've been saying it since 1996. Sure some folk will use the web to seek out the cheapest price - but for a lot of people, buying a lot of products, ordering online and having goods delivered is convenient. It save time, if not money. But as any half-decent marketer will tell you price isn't everything. If it was no premier product or service would ever sell. Ask BMW.

yourmove - the rightmove?

For reasons I won't go into I was looking at property on the YOUR MOVE website [your-move.co.uk]. There is a search facility that allows you to target your search - and yet the spacing of the house prices seems a bit off.

I would assume professional house sellers know what they are doing [and remember, I am a trained salesperson and I've been in marketing for some time] but why the jump from £100,000 to £150,000? Can't be a space issue, because up to £60,000 the steps are in 10s - and who buys houses for less than £60,000? And yet - and I could be wrong - surely there are lots of houses for sale for between £100,000 to £150,000? I would have thought the better sales tactic would have been increments of 10 so that a buyer might be tempted into searching for [say] up to £110,000 - when they really have a limit of £100,000.

Competitors Rightmove seem to agree with me, not only going from £100,000 to £150,000 in 10,000 increments, but even including £125,000 in the middle.

sweet FA on this splash page

I went to the Football Association [FA] website to checkup on my Saturday morning footie team's fixtures - but I was not on my computer and couldn't use my bookmark, so I went to the home page and clicked on the link for 'Durham'. This opened a new window and this page came up.
Now ... as you would expect I'm quite experienced as a web surfier, but I couldn't see a link to get me off this page [the content of which was of no interest to me]. Notice how this advert fills the screen - and I was using a reasonable sized screen, not a laptop or mobile device. As I do know something about website development, I looked at the location bar, and saw this:
Let's not go down the road of questioning this poor se of file names [the search engines would ignore this one, for example], buts as I know what a 'splash' page is I knew there must be a way off of it - and when I looked down in the right hand corner [see red arrow in ithe first image above], sure enough there was a tiny bit of page that had not appeared 'above the fold' and when I scrolled down, got this:
I wonder how many folk made the same mistake as me? I wonder if everyone found their way past this page? Think I was stupid not seeing it? maybe, but web developers MUST design for stupid people - for they are customers too.