Glimpses of genius beauty and novelty – designgeist
20/20 on design
Things overheard in client conversations recently…
- Let’s not be overly preventative… If you need to solve that problem, you’ll be making enough money you won’t mind investing in extra infrastructure.
- Let’s try this out. We can let a couple people on your sales staff see if it works, and if it does, -we can do it on a larger scale…
- It’s amazing how some logos will jump out at you right away. -Sometimes they’re not your favorite a couple days later…
- I think we should spend some time talking about where we would head if money weren’t an object. That way, we can plan for success, rather than failure. We don’t want to create a situation where you’re penalized for succeeding…
Sincerity VS. Professionalism
We recently received an email from a hosting provider of ours. Not long ago they had about a half day of outage due to an unavoidable circumstance caused by outside world infrasructure. Due to the advanced notice, and the frequent updates on status, we were sympathetic. After all, they scheduled the outage early morning on a Sunday…
The problem came a week or two after the down-time, when their email newsletter came out. It contained snarky little comments like:
“Hopefully, since you don’t run a web hosting company, it’s not so big a deal for you. Yeah, you can’t check your email from midnight-5am Pacific time one Sunday…”
and
“On top of the awesome benefits mentioned here-before in section 2, we also have a couple new completely stupid benefits which I am obligated…”
and titling the website page
“super-lame-apology/”
Needless to say, as a progressive company we value the ability to cut through the normal bullet-point rhetoric, and talk using real world language. We enjoy people that can intertwine humor, and a good time into their work life. We DON’T enjoy being made to feel foolish for being a customer. We DON’t enjoy being talked down to, or not taken seriously…
It’s strange that when what all of us are really looking for is a bit of sincerity, a company would choose to return the favor with sarcasm. We were lured in by your offbeat attitude, but we don’t feel that sincerity and professionalism are antonyms…
So thank you Dreamhost for teaching us a lesson about how NOT to treat customers. You just lost our business. We’ll take bullet point rhetoric over an anti-client attitude any day.
Maybe we’re just not in on the joke? see what you think:
ANZ Tours
The ANZ Tours website is a nice tight website we’re really proud of. Like most of our new sites, it’s XHTML, and CSS, which permits a lot of flexibility in construction, and future updates.
The site is driven by Coldfusion and Mysql. Between dynamic trip itineraries, and FAQ’s, the site is built to be self maintainable by our client for the foreseeable future.
We had an embarrassment of riches in photography for this website. The mouthwatering images of Australia, and New Zealand told the better part of the story for us. We just had to be smart enough to augment the message, and get out of the way… It’s a great problem to have.
We also did the identity
The new store, – same as the old store
Recently we had an opportunity to do a bit of consulting on an ecommerce site. It’s not uncommon for us, we work on a lot of sites that require commerce. No matter how many times we do it, we’re always surprised at people’s perception of selling online.
It seems that people have a perception of ecommerce as something different than normal retail. The same person who is a savvy owner running a successful brick-and-mortar store can be a failure at selling online. Why? Because they permit themselves to assume that the online world is different than the real world.
Although the interface is different, the online world is absolutely no different from the real world. Customers are looking for the same types of things. They’re susceptible to moods, atmosphere, purchase pressure, and all other forms of retail process. If you can think of a technique that fails, or works in a physical store, -there is an online equivalent.
Our advice is to approach online sales the same as in real world sales. If you’re willing to spend thousands of dollars for signage above your real world store to make sure traffic notices you, then why would you be less willing to spend an equivalent amount for your online store? If you analyze the way your lobby, or show-room floor might impact your customers buying habits, – then why not your home page? If you are picky about the attitude and tone of your sales staff, – then why not the way your checkout system works?