Archive September 2010
Business cards at moo.com
I recently had the pleasure of doing business with Moo.com – a rather awesome outfit that allow you to create & order your cards online.
Whilst this in itself is lovely (and they ARE lovely business cards), it’s made even lovelier by the fact that Moo.com‘s customer service was outstanding.
When I received the cards, I noticed that the main logo on the front was off by a 1-2mm: this doesn’t sound a lot, but it’s the first thing that everyone noticed. A quick email to their customer service team and they got back to me the same day – and offered to reprint the cards free-of-charge, and I didn’t need to send back the off-centre ones.
Thanks Moo.com: good work. 
P.S: It’s definitely worth taking a look at their website too – it’s pretty much a poem of web usability and design. Given this is my passion, I think I’m officially in love with Moo. Damn you. I’m supposed to be getting married, and I’m love with a website!
0Conversion rate explained
I love this awesome diagram of what conversion rate is:
I will be using this in meetings soon. Thanks, www.conversion-rate-experts.com 
Google Instant: yet another blogger’s opinion
Google Instant! How exciting. The results that change…as you type! Jesus. What will they think of next? Seeing as every other bugger is weighing in with their thoughts, I thought I would as well.
The blogosphere (I hate that word) is alight with speculation about how Google Instant will affect various aspects of the web, namely SEO and PPC.
Given my general dislike of PPC (for lining the Google wallet whilst being made out to be of benefit to us, the user), I’m going to put a somewhat controversial theory out there:
Who cares?
(this is just a theory)
So Google Instant changes the results as someone types. So what? They’re going to keep typing until they’ve finished their search query. No-one goes onto Google thinking “I’m going to look for something – but I’ve no idea what, so I’ll just let my fingers sort of run around the keyboard like a hyperactive child until Google suggests something I think I want”.
(In the name of science I did let my fingers run around for a bit and Google suggested I wanted Jafra JF9 Black Distinguished Man Offer – $44.00. Thanks Google!).
But the point is that, once again, this effort is really only benefiting Google. It increases PPC ad impressions, and basically means advertisers need to buy more keywords if they want to appear more often. Making out that it benefits us is, in my opinion, wrong. And naive on our part to believe it.
So it saves us as a population 11 hours a second in searching, does it? So what? Google proudly point out that it could save us individually 2-5 seconds of searching…so what? I quite enjoy skimming through the results. SOMETIMES…I like to get distracted and will click on a result that perhaps isn’t what I was looking for – but looks interesting anyway. Sometimes, I like to make my own mind up.
This all sounds very anti-Google. I’m not. I believe their natural search engine to be very good. But making out that this (essentially) Ajax-powered search suggestion thing is something new that benefits us is … well, wrong.
3Awesome browser-based sketchpad
Just a quick one: check out http://mrdoob.com/projects/harmony/ – an awesome, full-screen, sketchy pad thing that can elicit some completely bonkers creations. I’m no artist – so check out my effort and laugh a bit.
Homemade steampunk walkthrough: Fangoria 2010
Absolutely incredible. “A first person walk through of ‘Machine’, a steam punk horror show we built and performed in our garage.”
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