Jakob Nielsen is our favorite web design usability Guru and when Jakob says, we do implement his learnings in our latest products. Yes, we all love to Think Big and thanks to his study our designers will have a lot of fun making big and more enjoyable menus.
Based on the study, Mega drop-downs overcome regular drop-downs. What are their characteristics?
* Big, two-dimensional panels divided into groups of navigation options
* Navigation choices structured through layout, typography, and (sometimes) icons
* Everything visible at once — no scrolling
* Vertical or horizontal form factors when activated from top navigation bars; when activated from left-hand navigation, they might appear as mega fly-outs.
Internet became the favorite tool where people can share and speak freely. Popular social-media such as Facebook and Twitter are used to share about anything we have in our mind. It can be the funny anecdote that happened in the subway or a link to that cute video of a cat found on YouTube. But when it comes to release your frustration those are not the best forums… I came across this site Fmylife.com – a forum where people stream everyday anecdotes likely to happen to anyone. After all, my life is not that bad – think of this: “Today, my boyfriend gave me a card for my birthday and told me to open it 10 minutes after he leaves. I waited 5, in the card it said “it’s not working out, but here’s 20$”.“
This article addresses common mistakes among large organizations when it comes to run a corporate website. To read before you go to bed: from Smashing Magazine.
Fun from the negligee lingerie company: after getting canceled on V-Day, an insanely smokin’ model brings the fun at the office of her soon-to-dumped-bf. What follows is NSFW. Provocatively brought to you by Agent Provocateur.
This iPhone application has everything to get your party going! The drunk dial function seems quite fun. One more reason to get an iPhone.
The United States is in the middle of the most serious economic crisis since the 1930s. It’s been two years, the US has registered annual decline in median home prices. However, over the past 24 months, consumer prices have risen 7.8% according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. From coloring hair at home instead of at the salon to trying cheaper laundry detergents, new evidence indicates that Americans are modifying even minor household habits to save money. Americans are changing their everyday purchases and abandon brand loyalty.
On the marketing side, do you know that it costs 5 times as much to bring in a new customer, than to keep an existing one. Knowing that your marketing budget might be cut, perhaps it’s time to ensure loyalty with your customers by utilizing the “back to basics” of customer service. It’s usually hard for consumers to find another brand for the same product and that meet their needs. But why do they leave? They leave because of a lack of attention to plain-old customer service.
When customers buy a product or contact your company, your employees have the opportunity to improve or worsen the relationship with the customers. Hopefully you want to improve the customer relationship. So, it would make good sense to make these contacts as meaningful and helpful to the customers as possible. If you want your customers to be loyal, it is a good practice to have both you and your employees pay attention to your customer service practices and follow the basics.
And one of the basics is to show gratitude to your customers: always end each contact with a “Thank you” or a message of appreciation for their business.
So I wanted to share my experience with two nice cards that Bloomingdale’s and Gilt sent to me after my Christmas purchases.
If you are like me, you must be a crazy “bookmarker”. Everyday you come by an interesting article and you think you will read it later. But today your del.icio.us account is overflowing with useless information and your Google Reader is also full of RSS feeds that you don’t even read.
So as part of your 2009 resolutions, you wish to know “what are the most useful blogs I can read on a daily-basis” and find stimulating information while you take a break in front of your computer.
After lots of reading and investigations, here is a list of must-have. If you find something that is worth to be listed, feel free to comment.
Stop touching yourself! StickyScreen will save you from the perils of distraction at work. This service saves anything you type on a single sticky note. Save it as your homepage, and each time you open a window, StickyScreen will remind of what you should probably be doing.
Today is my recession deal, monitor your brand’s online reputation in ten minutes for FREE. In the daily activity of any agency or corporation it’s essential to follow what is said about your brand. With the rise of Internet, social-media and user-generated content all these conversations are right in front of us. It became technologically possible to be the observer and monitor the brand’s reputation. What is said can become either positive or negative, but you also have the possibility to react quickly and effectively. So here are my favorite tools to check in ten minutes and for free what is said about you:
With Google Alerts you receive email or RSS news based on the topic of your choice. The alerts can track blogs, news articles, videos, etc.
Twitter search can help you monitor the virality of your brand.
Social Mention is also a search engine that returns content from social media services.
Backtype allows you to monitor only blog comments. It’s a great tool if you need to follow or reply to a conversation.
If you too have would like to share your favorites tools, feel free to post them.
List edit:
Whostalkin.com is a tool that lets you quickly search through all that web chatter, it actually centralize your search among the most famous sources listed above for example. Thanks to Christophe Lauer [MS] for this gem.
Tony Hsieh is one of the genius of our Modern times, founder and CEO of Zappos.com, he revolutionizes how business is done today. 9 years after its creation, the startup is ready to be the new Amazon.com and Tony H. the new Richard Branson.
But what is his secret? How a simple online shoe seller became a near-future e-commerce empire?
Cheerful work environment: today I watched an ABC documentary about the firm and to be honest who would not want to work for this company after seeing happy and cool employees. Each employee was praising the quality of the work environment as the reason to the success of the company. Tony even offers $2,000 to anyone who leaves the company if he is not happy at work. Guess what? Nobody accepted the offer.
Okay. Actually Tony says it, he is not responsible of the ambiance at work. So what is his secret?
Customer service: Zappos.com is known to have the best customer satisfaction thanks to many factors. “Free shipping both ways”, they deliver for free and if you are not happy you have 365 days to return your order for free… Which other company does that?! And the call center is based at Las Vegas and not in India… thanks God! If your employees are happy at work, they take care of your customers very well. Tony H. even revealed that if an agent does not find the right product for a customer, he can redirect the customer to a competitor. Well, the result is that Zappos.com keeps growing with new customers but also build ‘very’ loyal customers.
Every company should provide this level of customer service but this is not the reason of his success, he says.
The truth is here: Poker. On his latest blog post, Tony H. reveals he learnt everything from poker and he is about to start writing his next book about this topic. It’s definitely interesting to read the parallels between business and strategy based games like poker. Usually famous CEOs would have compared their business mindset with the book “The Art of War” but I was kind of surprises to see Poker as inspirational. I actually don’t play Poker and don’t know anything about it, but I highly recommend reading his article.
His blog is very inspirational for business people and we learn a lot about his insight. We also learn they are working on a new platform called Zeta, you can find it here- it’s quite amazing.
Here is a fun link. If you are tired of stupid people asking you the same old same old or stupid questions they could find themselves on the Internet here is LMGTFY.com: submit the question and it generates you a link to the Google page and an animation proving you it’s not so hard to use Google. Click this link yourself.
Target recently launched for the Holiday Season a nice application (iTunes Apps Store link) aimed for “utilitainment”. This iPhone application is said to be “useful” and also “fun”, and got a boost by being featured on the front page of the iPhone Application Store. Not only you can shake the snow globe to find your gift, but also you know its price and where you can find it near you.
The TrendWatch is the collective postings of some of the FullSIX Group’s designers, strategists, and consultants on new media and marketing trends. It is meant to be an impromptu think-tank, and is a way for us to share theories and beliefs about how we think communication and connectivity is evolving.
We work for The FullSIX Group; a leading full service marketing agency with digital DNA. From our 15 international offices with over 600 employees, we constantly embrace and encourage innovation to make integrated marketing and communication campaigns that are more accountable and efficient for our clients.
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