Archive September 2009
Smashing magazine’s 10 useful usability findings
I’d not normally link straight out to another blog post, but this one warranted it: Smashing Magazine’s “10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines”
Great article. Read it. 
A review of Admiral.com
What else do I do with my lunchtimes other than look at websites to criticise? Not a lot, it seems. The victim subject today is Admiral.com, one of the UK’s leading insurers, responsible for brands such as Diamond, Elephant and of course Admiral themselves.
Being in such an Admirable (haha!) position, you’d have hoped their site might reflect their customer ‘promise’ of “providing low cost car insurance for younger drivers, people living in cities and those driving performance cars.” Does it cut the mustard? What other condiments could it successfully incise? Read on!
0Top 5 stupid web design mistakes
Having reviewed a fair few sites over the last year or so, I’ve compiled a quick list of top 5 web design mistakes. It’s by no means exhaustive, but covers the basics. Read on!
0GoCompare and Gio Compario
If you’ve been fortunate enough to have not seen the GoCompare ads featuring Gio Compario, I envy you. Click here to see the ad, or here for the official website. I warn you, once you’ve watched these, you can’t un-watch them.
For those of us unfortunate enough to have been exposed to this complete bollocks, I have just one question for Go Compare:
WHY?
What does this have to do with anything at all? It doesn’t relate in any way to finding the best deal on insurance/loans/credit cards/anything. How do your customers relate to this creative?
On that note, did your ad agency do ANY research at all as to what could work? Or did they simply watch Compare The Meerkat ads all night whilst high on caffeine and chocolate-coated raisins and then spout this idea, wild-eyed and dribbling into their underwear, the next morning to your marketing team? Was it signed off by the same person who agreed to pay bloggers for links last year?
I reckon so.
Anyone else have any comments?
1Image(factory) isn’t everything
In order to prove that I’m not obsessed with online shoe e-tailers, I’ve been on the lookout for other sites that are really crying out for a review…and I’ve been pointed toward Image Factory‘s site, a UK-based printing company owned by US print giant Quarto. So what follows, predictably, is…
A critique of www.imagefactoryuk.com
Perhaps naively, I thought a printworks would be chock-full of creative people who’d not let their company website look like the pavement outside an all-night takeaway. Was I right? Was I wrong? Read on and find out. I know you just can’t wait…
0Schuhstore: design & navigation redux
So you may remember (actually you won’t remember because you’ve probably never read this blog) that about a year ago I reviewed the design and layout of the Schuh website. Well, they’ve relaunched it. In fact, they relaunched it a while ago, but I’ve only just got round to looking at it. So anyway, predictably, here follows …
A(nother) critique of www.schuhstore.co.uk
When I looked at this site before, there were serious hierarchy issues, navigational weirdness, coding oddities and some frankly bizarre graphics. Have things changed for the better? Is there a clearer idea of where to go? Read on and find out!
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