seeing and sniffing on the go
Sometime I try to visit my website, with the eyes of a stranger, trying to take a step aside and look at it like someone who has never seen it before. A difficult taks because you tend to become blind in the sense that you know exactly what is where and do not realize anymore that things are hard to find or information is missing.
I did this yesterday and realized one thing: I do not have any pictures of my samples there. Which is a pitty because I put quite some effort into them and with the new flyer design I feel I should a least show what a client gets.
Thus….this will change in the coming days. If I find time,I will also try some javascripting that I found lately, allowing links that bring little windows up with other links, which might be a cool tool to guide clients through the information space… to be tested.
For all those happy folks living near by…. there’s a L’air du désert marocain on the go for you…. Pascal and me had the idea of placing a bottle outside the shop, allowing people to pass by and spray. We just considered it a test. It is quite amazing how many clients use this bottle just on the go…., and enter the shop soon after. It is kind of an immediate client interaction, seamless, without having a sales person involved…In an abstract way, this is the way to go on the web, too. Allowing a client to discover things, seamless, using tools like Ajax applications or alike, with an on-the-go feeling. The key is: Interaction (without having to wait for the server loading things). Ajax sounds like a little bit too heavy for me, though…but still: There might be small things to improve…
Another nice thing about the internet: Having a website is like building an endless puzzle: It is never finished but hopefully looks better with every piece you put in there.
August 18th, 2006 at 9:24 am
Ajax is neat, I really think so. It’s not a standard or must have yet, but I truly believe it will prove to be in the near future. But, yeah… heavy. There are some really neat effects possible, however, and it does improve navigation options and functionality in certain ways. It’s definitely not as easy to configure as simple CSS and html (and php, but I find that one tricky, too.) Still, it’s awfully fun to look at what others have done with it, no? I love seeing some of the cool menu toggling on some sites, where it’s very intuitive to navigate around but not so obvious as to distract from the theme/look. Thanks for the link - the article had a nice point at the end about being careful. It’s really tempting to play too hard with the new toys and forget to keep things cleaned up overall. REALLY tempting. Heh.
August 19th, 2006 at 7:54 am
Yes, indeed tempting, REALLY tempting, and I love what Google does with it. Now, I do not really have Google’s resources yet, thus… AJAX is probably still a little bit too much for me.
But a little bit of this and that might not harm….
August 21st, 2006 at 3:00 am
Love your new sample cards, a very nice touch!