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Last night, I took some guests to try out a casual restaurant in a nearby town. It had a happening patio and seemed quite popular with the locals, so why not give it a try?
I know restaurants often welcome free placemats with local advertising to cut costs, but honestly, what is going through your head when you put out placemats that advertise a SEPTIC SYSTEM?
The first thing I saw as I sat down to eat were the words “septic”, “solids”, “bacteria”. Bon appétit, folks!
For the love of Pete, people! I don’t care if they were free. It’s not worth it.
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Humour in copywriting can be tricky. Finding that “universal LOL” is extremely difficult. When it works, it’s brilliant. When it falls flat, it sits there in a mirthless mess for all to see.
Last weekend, this flyer arrived in my local newspaper. I don’t know if the "modelquin" idea seemed like a whole whack of good silly fun at the concept stage, but these ads for Old Navy are more creepy than hilarious to me. I looked into it a little more, and apparently I’ve been living under a rock. The Crispin Porter + Bogusky ad campaign started two months ago. (BTW, CP+B are the folks behind that other creepy plastic mascot – Burger King’s King.)
Alex Bogusky is quoted as saying, "We're taking a poke at fashion. We're doing it in an entertaining way with some characters that are having fun and feeling good."
Oh.
Well, I’m sure my feelings are apparent, but what about you? Does it work for you?
Last week, when I compared visiting a site to having a meal at your favourite restaurant, the irony that most restaurant websites aren’t very good did not elude me.
I’m not quite sure why. Maybe as an industry they aren’t very online savvy and use the same sort of “glossy brochure” offline design thinking? If you’ve got any insights, please share them. (You can also reach me at Twitter.)
There is just missed opportunity after missed opportunity to have a great website. Here’s an example…
Café Santropol is a Montreal sandwich restaurant that is awesome. The food is outstanding, the service is friendly, the shabby chic interior design is quirky and welcoming, and they've been roasting their own fair-trade coffee long before it was ever fashionable to do so. They also donate a percentage of profits to charity and are actively involved in the community. Whatever the polar opposite of “bland coffee & sandwich restaurant" might be, this would be it. And don’t get me started on the cute secret garden - I could wax poetic for days! In short, I’m a huge fan. I’ve taken friends and family alike and everyone falls under its magical spell.
But the website makes me weep.
It is so dreadful, in fact, that it’s practically a tutorial on what not to do. It exemplifies how a poorly conceived and designed website can almost destroy the real-world wonderfulness that is Cafe Santropol. And, they aren’t alone. As I started looking around, it became apparent that criticizing restaurant websites would be like shooting fish in a barrel. It’s far, far too easy.
In the case of my beloved Cafe Santropol, there are a few issues that are not just particular to their site but to many other restaurant sites as well.
Unnecessary Clicks & Choices
When you arrive at the homepage, you are forced to make a choice – do you want to learn more about their coffee, or more about the restaurant? Site visitors shouldn’t have to choose. It would be just as easy to have a coffee section on the Santropol website, so users don’t have to toggle between the two. And, once you do make your choice, you are faced with an empty language selection page; yet another barrier to the stuff you really want to know about – the food, the prices, how to get in touch, etc. (Go ahead, guess how you find the language of your choice! I dare you. Yes, by clicking on the faces peeking out from the curtains! Which segues to…)
Mystery Meat Navigation
When someone had to type “Pull on the ropes” to indicate how you are supposed to navigate around the site, didn’t something click? Didn’t someone think, “Gee, it’s supposed to be apparent how to navigate through a site.”? Why all the theatrical metaphors? I don’t know either.
Help Me Find You
The contact information -physical address only- is below the fold on “splash page #3” While the operating hours and address are appreciated, it is entirely too easy to miss. And there is no separate Contact page. What if I had a question? There isn’t a telephone number or email address that I can readily find. I eventually did find it, but by accident.
Don’t Change the Rules
So, I’ve discovered that I need to pull some ropes to navigate the site. I click on Links to find out more, and –presto-chango– my rope-pulling nav has disappeared. Gone. Poof. Dear freaky ropes, why have you forsaken me?? Instead, I need to use my back button. Or, if I was extremely attentive, I might scroll down and down until I saw a smallish icon of a house. The same thing happens on the About page, but without my newfound friend, the home icon. To boot, it also opens up in a new window.
No New Windows
Many of the top-level navigation items open in new windows. I don’t want a bunch of new tabs opening up as I navigate a single site. All internal links should open in the same window. End of story.
There are also untitled pages, one section suddenly and inexplicably designed in a completely different way that uses frames and on and on and on. It breaks my heart. Why? Because I know what a great place this is.
I know the care and love they put into their food and restaurant. And I’d love to see that translated into the website, with photos of their amazing sandwiches and the cute outdoor terrace. This dark, theatrical website has absolutely no connection to the funky restaurant that Montrealers rave about. In real life, the experience is friendly and cohesive, but online it is a bizarre collection of web pages that don't have a consistent look, feel or navigation. And, unfortunately, the user experience is mind-bogglingly bad.
Years ago I started saving groovy corks, with thoughts of doing something interesting with them… maybe a chair or whenever I get around to ordering several tons of clear acrylic resin, perhaps a tabletop. But from the several hundred that I have stashed away, I have never seen a web address on a cork.
Isn’t this a clever-clever idea?
The cork of a wine bottle is quite literally a customer touchpoint, and what a better way to direct people to your website? The label for the rather charming Columbia Valley Semillon from L'Ecole No. 41 also featured the website and other contact details.
Lovely!
Writing is a journey. It goes beyond "content" and filling empty pages. It’s understanding the message and its relevance to the person reading the words on the page. Writing has the ability to transport us, take us away, change us. It connects us as people. It can make us laugh out loud. It can change our opinions. It can seduce and elicit an emotional response. Writing is powerful. Words matter. Use them wisely.
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Writing is a journey. It goes beyond "content" and filling empty pages. It’s understanding
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I was as pleased as Punch to find one of my Flickr photos – the one above – used on Spacing Montreal, an online magazine that explores neighbourhoods, architecture, urban planning, transit, cycling and just about anything that involves the public realm of the city.
Even cooler, I learned a new word: psychogeography.
According to Wikipedia, psychogeography is "a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities...just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape."
Sounds like a little dose of the unexpected in a walk-about format.
If you’ve ever let yourself be thoroughly, completely captivated by a foreign city or new area of town, drifting and wandering happily from street to street, drinking in the personality of the place – the architectural shapes, smells, feel and colour – and letting yourself be delighted by something new, then, you’ve done a bit of unbeknownst psychogeography.
The creative process is similar. A bit of happenstance. A serendipitous drift. Suddenly, two unconnected bits/thoughts come together and form that “Oh, now that’s interesting” moment.
It’s Saturday. Try something new. Maybe a psychogeographical mosey? Or rearrange your bookshelf by colour.
(Photo credit: Robbie Sproule)
Earlier today I was happily gathering suggestions for favourite and most-hated Twitter-related phrases or words, (I’ve got some good ones, and feel free to send yours along.) when I was reminded of the Yahoo layoffs as Jeremiah Owyang tweeted about a leaked Yahoo layoff script obtained by Valleyway.
Currently, Yahoo’s layoff story is slowly unfolding on Twitter. Real life excerpts of those that made it through and those that didn’t and many others just offering their thoughts and sympathies.
I took a peek at the PowerPoint slides and my own layoff experience came tumbling back to me. Close to five years ago, I had just returned from maternity leave to my job as an editor and community manager at LookSmart, and –wham-o- they announced that the Canadian office was closing. It was devastating. I remember someone saying that I shouldn’t take it personally. Why not? It sure felt personal.
Yet, the office marched through the procedures, filling out exit interviews and meeting with some sort of transition counselor who gave us all advice on creating a new resume.
So, when I saw the PowerPoint, all those carefully cloaked words leapt off the page. The words and phrases that “blandify” (yup, I made that up) the entire layoff process.
Take “I have some information regarding our organization” for example. If you guessed Christmas bonus or company picnic, you’d be wrong. “Some information” is quickly becoming code for “very bad news indeed… news you probably won’t like at all.”
So, why would Yahoo refer to layoffs as “getting fit” (which, incidentally, was voted to the Grand List of Asinine Corporate Layoff Euphemisms)?
Because words are powerful. They have the ability to hurt, anger, infuriate. How best to take a potentially powder keg message and defuse it? Make it bland.
Bob Sutton, author of The No Asshole Rule, has compiled a list of mealy-mouthed layoff euphemisms which include “adjusting to shifts in demand” and “cost improvement plans.” WordSpy also lists a few, including my personal favourite, “career change opportunity.” These all sound rather benign –potentially alluring even!– don’t they? At least they do until you’re standing on the street with your desk plant in one hand and a plastic bag of personal belongings in the other.
As a general rule of thumb: the more detached the message, the more unpleasant the news. I suppose it is to calm the nerves of the visibly quaking ones left behind under the management that got everyone into this mess. But, no matter what words you use to try to hide it, there is no getting around the brutal truth. Layoffs suck. They hurt.
For what it’s worth, my layoff was the catalyst to start this company. So, any ex-Yahoo readers, good things will come. I believe in that.
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The other day I read about Google’s “Mail Goggles” feature. In a nutshell, it’s a program that attempts to prevent Gmail users from sending messages when they’ve been drinking. How? By answered a few math problems in a short period of time.
Jon Perlow, a Gmail engineer, writes, “By default, Mail Goggles is only active late night on the weekend as that is the time you're most likely to need it. Once enabled, you can adjust when it's active in the General settings.”
I honestly thought it was a joke - that in a day or two, that card Perlow would write a new entry entitled “Gotcha!” and we’d all have a good laugh about how we were fooled into believing that Google Labs would put out such a ridiculous feature.
I mean, what’s next, cell phones with breathalyzers? Digital cameras that refuse to photograph kittens, animals in costumes and other twee images?
Pity the math-challenged people (that would be me) who just can’t solve math problems quickly.
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