As a user, it is hard to resist calling the company when you have a specific question. Why bother reading the whole FAQ looking for the answer, when it is so easy to call someone and directly ask for it? For the companies, answering quickly to any request is a must for the conversion, but this can be compromised by the number of requests. So the question is: how to make sure the phone contacts are really not answered by the FAQ, and try to reduce the number of personalized information requests? ING Direct is a very successful online bank, and has managed to find a good balance, in my point of view.
Spams can be a hassle, and I agree sometimes you have to find a way to get rid of them. With current email systems and a few unsubscriptions, it’s become quite easy though, and I, for example, almost never see a spam: they go directly in my junk box. But according to how you use your email address, it can be more difficult. Last week, I tried to contact a company, and was surprised never to get an answer. Today, I finally realized it had been sent. Not only was the answer in my junk box, but it was an automatic reply. And this was not coming from the company itself, but from a website providing anti spam solutions. Basically, I had to click on a link, and then enter a captcha, before my first email was actually sent to the company. I was not a spammer, and could have become a client. Why make it so difficult to contact you? Except if you are overbooked for a few years, I wouldn’t advice going to so restrictive solutions. Let users contact you: this kind of process can definitely make a company loose customers and is of course quite bad for conversion.
Le Devoir website homepage has been granted a great place on Apple Canada website: it is featured as a page seen through an IPad (it is not a mobile version, but actually the website homepage). A good sign (and the feeling of a victory) for this not-easy to wireframe and 4-columns homepage.
Marketing is everywhere in real life, and especially where you don’t expect to find it. For this article, I’d like to transport my readers in the cosy and design atmosphere of a fashion hairdresser. Have you ever felt more beautiful than in a hair design salon? Everybody takes good care of you, making you feel unique, and look brilliant. Why is that? Here are a few thoughts on marketing at the hairdresser’s and best practices we can keep in mind for websites.
Surveys are the perfect tools to measure consumers’ satisfaction. That’s why you merely can’t miss them in shops, in your mailbox, and particularly in hotels. As I have been travelling a lot lately, I have found on my pillow a lot of those. But I have just received my first, and only, one by email. Here are three main reasons why an email survey is more efficient than a printed one.
Fleur de Lys Dupuis is a Canadian travel agency based in Montreal, Quebec. Started in 1974 by its current owner, the agency has absorbed other companies, to offer today a complete travel catalog, from coach tours to unique genuine luxury tourism, luxury cruises around paradise islands or bicycling holidays in France. With a single page for 2 of its activities, the company needed a more seductive and efficient presence on Internet. It’s the occasion to talk (a little) about how new technologies changed tourism, through some key-points of the new website.
Coup de Coeur Francophone is a music festival which takes place everywhere in Canada. As you could guess, all the concerts are French-speaking, and the festival is impulsed by local French-speaking communities all around the country. Coup de Coeur was created in 1987, and it has expanded its influence ever since, featuring and discovering unique talents. Its current website, coupdecoeur.qc.ca, has been created in 2008, for the event’s 22nd issue. The design was created by orangetango, a very creative communication agency in Montreal, who had also designed the festival’s ad campaigns for a few years. After one whole year of operation, It thought it could be interesting to browse the website for optimization recommendations. I suggest we do this with a SWOT (Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats), and see what happens (it’s the first workshop I do on boulli, and it may not be the last…)
My boyfriend has just forwarded me a link to this beautiful picture keyboard, designed by Christopher Monro Delorenzo. The concept is simple: replace each letter by a picture related to it. So, basically, the pirate character stands for P, etc. The design is really cute, and I found the idea interesting, speaking about usability: who could use it? And speaking about a keyboard, what about the muscle memory?
I have been asked a question about accessibility recently, and I realized it has been a long time since I’ve last heard about it. A way too long time. Accessibility means building something -a cinema, a concert hall, a shopping mall, a website, etc.- usable by persons with disabilities. Usability is the beginning of an accessible process: isn’t our job to make sure everyone can use our applications? Though it is just one step further. Isn’t it just normal? Why couldn’t a person with disabilities read a website, when she can enter a cinema, because nobody thought of making it readable for her? In this article, I decided to make accessibility a little more concrete. How? Well, I spent 1 hour browsing the Web with a text-only browser, Lynx. The conclusion of this article introduces to accessibility basic best practices by WAI.
A colleague at Adviso has shared this cool video with us last week. It briefly goes through the history of communication, from the invention of alphabet to advertising online, and it explains How the Internet changed advertising. What I particularly likes about this video is that it shows new media (Internet) = new ways of advertising. And I especially like them saying it has to be contextual (this is a strong belief of mine): to visitors needs, interests and interactions. The 2 rules to keep in mind from this video: 1. Trust the power of contextual, 2. To be granted with attention, offer interesting contents.
