George Rosier's portfolio & blog site

Recent conversations on the web have indicated that trustmarks don’t work (see eConsultancy reports on the subject here).

LV seem to have taken this one step further, though: in their Life Insurance quote journey, the (usually clickable) image to verify the presence of a Verisign seal has simply been embedded using normal HTML. If you click it, nothing happens…

Click to enlarge

See for yourself here: link

Shocking!

Bit of a rant coming up – but one with a point that, I hope, will stimulate some debate.

I recently received a stack of internal comms emails. Since Monday, I’ve received 6 messages on various topics that are completely irrelevant to me and only serve to clutter my already-over-its-size-limit inbox (as the mailbox administrator continually takes pleasure in telling me).

One could argue that, in the grand scheme of things, 6 emails is nothing to worry about – and indeed that’s true: the Delete button is a wonderful tool. But I feel there’s possibly a more important point to make here:

Should there be an unsubscribe button on internal communications emails?

UK email communications are subject to a 2002 EU directive on privacy and electronic communications:

• The directive was brought into force in the UK by the Privacy and Electronic Communications ( EC Directive) Regulations 2003
• The regulations apply to all organisations that send out marketing by telephone, fax, automated calling system, email, SMS , MMS or using any other form of electronic communication
• The regs make distinctions between personal (joebloggs@hotmail.com) and corporate/company (joebloggs@company-email.com) subscribers
• The regs state that an organisation can’t send unsolicited marketing communications by email to individual subscribers unless the recipient has given their prior consent

There’s a bit of a grey area here as to whether my email address is considered a company or individual one, but my question is: where did I ever give consent to be spammed by corporate comms?

Clearly the definition of spam is a vacuous one, but the principle remains that I haven’t opted-in (or indeed been given the option to opt-out) for any kind of messaging from a self-absorbed internal comms team.

I personally can safely say that each and every email I’ve ever received from a comms team has been deleted. At BEST they’re of zero interest. At WORST (which is 99% of the time) they just get in the way and are a distraction.

Have you ever received a really good internal comms message that’s inspired and motivated you? Does that message from the CEO really touch your emotional core and tug on your heartstrings? Or have all yours also been total balls?

All comments & opinions appreciated.

(thanks to Out-Law for the various email marketing law info!)

This is a personal bugbear of mine: badly-designed payment screens. The payment stage is absolutely critical: if a site screws up here, a customer will quite often leave the journey if they:

• Get confused by what’s being asked of them
• The content of the site isn’t accurate/correct
• If the site doesn’t inspire confidence in the purchase process

With that in mind, DomainMonster should revise their card payment section:

It all starts off well: select the card type, and fill in the details…only it gets confusing because I’ve selected Visa Debit, yet each of the questions still have a * next to them, indicating they’re mandatory…except the ones with (Maestro only) are purporting to only need completing if the user has a Maestro card.

So which is it? Do I fill them in anyway? What if my card doens’t have those details on it? What if it does, but I’m being told I don’t need to complete the fields? What’ll happen if I don’t fill them in?

The problem is that these are such trivial issues, but often they’re enough to make users bail out of a journey.

The solution? Dynamically alter the question set depending on the type of card they choose from the drop-down. It’s not hard to do, and could drastically improve the usability of this section.

I’ve used iPods in various incarnations since 2005 when I was bought one as a gift. I still have it – a 4th gen white ipod – in a box at home. It’s a bit battered and scratched, but fully-functional. I feel this is pretty good for hardware that’s usually  expected to stop working after a couple of years.

On the other hand, I’ve got through about 8 pairs of the standard Apple headphones through the years: they just don’t last! And they’re not covered under warranty unless you buy the £25 Apple Care service when you buy a new iPod.

This is shit.

Rant over.

p.s: My ear-holes are a funny shape – therefore any comments along the lines of “Oh get some Sennheiser headphones, they’re amazing” will be rudely ignored.

I was lying in bed recently, and caught the new VISA ‘Life Flows Better’ ad. It’s here for your viewing pleasure (YouTube embedded):

This is all well and good…but being a massive geek, I noticed something. Play the video above again, and listen to the noise the camel makes at 0:20. Hear that noise? That’s not a camel noise: oh no.

It’s a sound from a zombieman out of the DOOM video game.

Evidence? Why certainly:

• Download the sound clip (12.7kb WAV)
• Embedded sound clip (needs Quicktime): http://wadview.bigredtower.com/cwWADView.dll/Sounds/DSPODTH1?View&WAD=DOOM&Loop=false
• Doom Wiki with sound references: http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Zombieman

Does anyone know who made the VISA ad?  (EDIT: Apparently Saatchi & Saatchi made it). I’d be interested to know whether the sound was officially licensed from (presumably) id software who own the Doom franchises. Or perhaps it’s so old that it’s now available in the public domain? Anyone know?

And yes, I fully accept I’m a massive geek for recognising a half-second sound clip from a game that was released 17 years ago.

p.s: Big thanks to http://doom.wikia.com: loadsa Doom knowledge!