clever ... and a bit spooky

You may well have see the 'generic' advert on TV, well BA have used some clever technology to include your street in the ad - try it on BA taxi. An excellent example of integrated marketing.

register? just to have a look?

I needed a part for my old car and read about this site in the Sunday Times' car section. But when I clicked on 'catalogue', this is what I got. Guess where I DIDN'T buy a cam belt for my 'classic' MR2?

specially regular pricing?

The folks at discountmobilitydirect.co.uk must have missed the lecture on pricing ...

see ... it's not just me

At the end of his review of the new BMW 328i in the 'ingear' supplement of the Sunday Times [April 15, 2012] Jeremy Clarkson commented:

"Then there's the problem with buying a 3-series. Go on, try it. Engage your internet, go to BMW's website and try to make sense of what's there. You can't. Not till you've found your reading glasses, and then go to Boots to buy a pair that is even more powerful. And even when you are able to read the microdot typeface, your computer won't have the plug-in necessary to enjoy an of the site's features. Not that you will understand what's on offer anyway, because it's either flowery rubbish or techno goobledygook. Soon you will give up with the complexity and buy something else. Well, I would, and that's a shame because whatever you buy will be worse."

I can add nothing.

Footnote: Today I had reason to look for something on the MINI website. Not only was the usability so poor that could I not find what I was looking for, but the pages took an age to download [on the university's T1 connection] - and eventually the site crashed my firefox connection. At least BMW are consistent in their website presentation.Footnote's footnote: I revisited the MINI webiste to copy the address for the link in footnote #1 - leaving the website open in another tab ... and after a couple of minutes I - and my colleagues in the office - were deafened by music from a video on the site. I have complained for years about un-invited music on sites, and this was an un-invited video.   

when is Sunday not Sunday?

... when it is Easter Sunday.

I needed to get some DVDs for my mum and the excellent [read: cheap] Thats Entertainment * has a branch at the Royal Quays outlet centre in North Shields. However, I hate shopping in crowds so I went online to check the opening times so that I could be there when the shops opened - and got this on the website:

So I was there this morning at 10.30 - but only a couple of shops were open, with signs in others saying they were open at 11. Worse still, around half weren't opening at all citing 'Sunday Trading Laws'. It is, of course, Easter Sunday, so I will assume that is the cause of the limited opening - but surely the law applies to all shops?

Anyhoo - open at 10.30 was Costa [so I had a cup of coffee] and Thats Entertainment did open at 11, so all ended well. But here's the reason for this entry:

As I have said plenty of other times on this blog; unlike printed material, website content is easily changed - so why was there no accurate details of opening times for Easter Sunday? I wonder how many people travelled to the centre for a 'day out' only to find half of it closed? Was it deliberate because advertising the real situation may have meant fewer visitors? I noted on my way home that many other retail parks were closed completely - so why not do the same for your centres? Because here's the thing managers at Royal Quays: the chances are that those people who wanted to go shopping would have gone on Bank Holiday Monday [the next day] if they knew the shops were closed on Easter Sunday. 

* though it does bug me that they miss out the apostrophe in that's.

right career for the web marketer ?

This is a long one ... so make yourself comfortable.

In chapter 10 of Internet Marketing when talking about Integrated Marketing I say that 'online' is often the poor relation of marketing and that it should be an integral part of any promotion - in this case the launch of the government's new National Careers Service.

Whilst having my breakfast this morning [banana, strawberry, kiwi fruit & yogurt smoothie :-) ] I saw part of the BBC's Breakfast News which included an interview with some from the Government Careers Service talking about the launch of a new service. So ... full marks to the PR dept for getting the story on national TV. However, if the interviewee mentioned a domain name or URL I missed it - so I fired up Google and search for "national careers service" - and got this:

Yep ... no listing for the new service, so [a] no pro-active SEO, and [b] no PPC ad.

So I searched on "national careers service relaunch" and got:

So I clicked on the top listing and was taken to www.ukonlinecentres.com/marketing/spring-online-with-us.html - and half way down that page was the message:

So I put "next step" into Google and got:

When I clicked on that link I was redirected to: [note the URL - the new services has a dedicated third level domain name and website - which should have appeared in my first Google search].

Note that near the bottom of the page was a promotion for something happening today - but only when I hovered my mouse over it did the message 'Launch of the National Careers Service' appear. Nothing else on the page told a visitor why they had arrived on the website of one organization [the National Careers Service] when they clicked on a link for a different organization [Next Step] - let alone tell them why/how the new service will be better than the old one - which is what the guy on the TV did to alert me of the story.

Integrated Marketing? I think not.

the bank that wants your number

I've trying to set up an online banking account with LloydsTSB and I'm having all kinds of problems, an example of which is this return I got when trying to fill in a form ...

 

Yes, you techie folk as LloydsTSB - I think you will find that J O A & N are actually characters and not numbers.

rubbish at up-dating a website

Because the rubbish collectors keep failing to empty my mum's bin [another story], earlier in the week I was looking online for the opening times of the public rubbish tip in Rochdale. And this was the relevant page from their website:

Now ... I was actually looking at this page on the 29th of March - and it wasn't a Sunday. A check revealed the last time the 29th of March was a Sunday was in 2009 - so that message was three years old. And yet the page had been updated after the 21st of September 2011 because it tell us a different recycling centre closed [ie past tense] then.

As I have said before - would this happen in any other medium of communication? And is any other medium of communication easier to amend?

Ho Hum.

this list is all rather academic

I have complained before that when I register for a 'free' download with many sites the relevant organization does not appreciate that academics might want the report/paper to help with research or to keep themselves up-to-date with the subject. So I was really pleased when FT.com actually listed 'Business School Academic' in its list of jobs. 

But sadly it all went pear-shaped because in the 'job responsibility' section there was no entry for lecturer/teacher. Ho hum, close ... but no cigar.

no way out

I have already posted two entries in this blog about bad practice on the Blackpool Football Club's website [see Register - just to check availability?  and just the ticket. not ] - and here's another which follows on from those. This morning, I got the following email:

As it is of no interest to me I decided to 'unsubscribe' and so clicked on that link, which took me here:

... where I entered my email address and password. But it was rejected ...

... so I clicked on the 'get new password' and got this email:

So I put that password into the form and got:

If anyone at Blackpool FC [for it is in their name] or Ticketmaster [who seem to run the system for Blackpool FC would like to tell me how to unsubscribe from something I never wanted in the first place please let me know. Oh ... and by the way, if anyone from either organization is reading this: you are now [probably] breaking the law in this issue.

email: instant communication?

I have already posted an entry on this subject [email - [still] the poor relation of customer service?] - and that was back in 2008 when I asked the question. Well, it's now 2012 and 02 [they are a teleCOMMUNICATIONS company] still want me to wait up to two days to respond to an email.

Why? Phone calls can be answered immediately, why not emails?

It gets worse for 02 in this entry however. I needed to conatct them because I had exactly the same problem I posted about in oh oh oh oh O2. Oh dear.

no charge?

I wanted a mains charger for my sat nave system - and so put the relevant term into Google. Top of the ads was one from chargers4u.co.uk -  which means they had bid most to be there. So I clicked on that link and was taken to the site - see below ...

£2.99 seemed to a fair price, so I thought I would order one. However, when I had added the order to my basket I clicked on the 'delivery and account information', but guess what? They wanted my delivery and account information - there was nothing about how much the delivery was going to cost me. And to get that information I would have to complete the form shown below.

So I went to ebay where I bought the same product for £2.49 including delivery.

I would file this example under 'there is still work for me'. Good e-commerce sites gave up on this prcatice years ago - if, indeed, they ever started to doing it. I was telling organizations about telling customers the full cost of products in 1997. And yet companies still do it. Ho hum ...

login or signup to download your identity

I was looking to access a report and was presented with this option. Now, I have read how this facility has increased access to password-protected sites because folk don't have to register on the site but 'sign in' using their Facebook membership. But take a look at what I would have to give up for that convenience:

1 Access my basic information. Well, no biggy you might say, this is all available on a personal Facebook page - errr, yes but mainly only to 'friends'.

2 Access to my profile information. Yep, all the stuff  folk can make private from 'non-friends'. 

3 Post to Facebook as me. I'll say that again: Post to Facebook as me. Yes, these folk can go to any Facebook page they like and say things and they will be attributed to me. 

Needless to say; I didn't 'login with Facebook'.

no news is bad news

Here's another entry where I am criticising an organization that does some good work - but lets itself down on its website. This is their 'media center' page:

I tell my students [and I say so in my book] that you should not have any element of your website that depends on being frequently updating if you do not have either the news or the commitment / resources to keep it up-to-date [the same applies to any and all aspects of social media]. 

What makes this worse is that it is the media page of a media company.

bad language?

In my book I advise against using flags to denote languages - but this one is a doozy. This is on the website of a university in the UK - but the US flag is used for 'English'. If you are about to say it refers to 'American English' ... don't. My colour and behaviour both have Us in them. Similarly, French is spoken as a first language in many other places that don't fly the French Tricolour. And are these six the most-spoken languages in the world? I would have thought Spanish would be in there somewhere [it is close to be the most spoken language in the USA].

In addition - around this time of year I am always on the lookout for out-dated copyright notices - I was going to use Tesco as an example this year [their notice still says 2011] - but I'll use this one instead ... only five years out.