Website Reviews 28 Feb

Twitter
www.twitter.com

Thanks for checking out this issue of Digital Strategy Website Reviews. Only one site today - Twitter and not really a site review, more a few thoughts on some rather strange reports about Twitter that have recently appeared in the press.

The press seems to have suddenly gone all atwitter. Have you noticed the coverage recently? Twitter seems to have landed in the UK and the members of the press are paying attention. Boosted by the UK Twitter champion, Stephen Fry and his excellent tweets, the service has sky-rocketed recently. It’s a classic environment for network effects to drive adoption once critical mass has been attained and with annualised growth running at about 1000%, it’s safe to say critical mass has been reached.

Surprisingly, a lot of recent commentary has been negative, ranging from “I don’t get it” to “A waste of time” and even to “There’s something wrong with you if you follow people on Twitter”. We even have the rather odd situation of digital industry stalwart, New Media Age finding itself in Daily Mail territory reporting that Twitter is a “child safety and privacy disaster waiting to happen”. Really? Have the writers spent any time on t’interweb recently? Twitter is not opening up some new gateway to hell, a one-way ticket to a land of endless escort services, drug abuser, racists and pornographers. I am told that these people flourished perfectly well before Twitter came along.

For those that don’t get it, that’s OK, go somewhere else. For those that think it a waste of time, well apologies for distracting you from your contribution to more uplifting and worthy societal developments. For those that think we’re in some way damaged for “following” people online, I have a secret to share with you: It’s fun. We who tweet are not pestering or stalking, we’re sharing. Whilst you’re busy wringing your hands at the latest sign of the decline of standards, we Tweeters are in another place having fun. Is it OK if the open-minded among us indulge in some community chat that we enjoy? As Tom Petty sort of said, “You can’t hear us, but we’re laughing all the time”.

A good retort to those who want to rise up and save us from ourselves can be found on the Made By Many blog which recently addressed this very issue. As a side point, the Made by Many blog happens to be a tip top example of agency blogging – they pick topics, any topic that they find interesting really and write about it. Always well written and with many members of the team contributing, it’s produced to a high standard.

Anyway, back to Twittergate, I really can’t understand the fuss. It would, of course, be terrible if anyone came to serious harm as a result of a tweet, but how is sharing on Twitter that different to the internet in general, and the wider offline world we live in? Twitter did not invent the insult. Censorship is rarely merited and talk of such in reference to Twitter is ridiculous.

Update 2nd March: Doing a quick scan of Brand Republic shows a near daily update on Twitter articles. One caught my eye today - reference to an article from PR Week covering some research on the most prolific tweeting flacks. One was recorded as having tweeted 3,410 times in just 372 days. That does seem a lot and is perhaps newsworthy, but this is not a competition. Volume does not make value but it does seem to play to the point I'm making above - the media just discovering Twitter.

Update 4th March: Further evidence of the growing importance of Twitter - you know you've arrived when you're declaimed by Google, as reported in The Times. Pity the Google CEO got the number of characters in a tweet wrong! Again in today's Times a report on a failed attempt to rescue a lost skier using Twitter to spread the net.

Update 17th March: Read in NMA today that Debenhams had had their id squatted on Twitter: Brand identities at risk as fakers take their place on Twitter (can't deep link as you need a userid to read the full article on the site). Fortunately no-one seems to be publishing under the original Debenhams name, unlike South West Trains, where an unhappy SWT customer is recounting (poor) personal travel experiences on Twitter under the name of SWT. What action can a brand take? Not much it seems. Debenhams officially tweets under DebenhamsRetail. The brand protection part of a digital strategy just got harder - not just grabbing domain names in lots of markets but taking brand names out of circulation in all social media environments, across all markets - near impossible.

Website Reviews 02 Feb

Thanks for checking out another Digital Strategy Website Reviews. Today it's a real mix of sites - from a micro music publisher to a Prime Minister. A couple of holiday companies make up the set. All are interesting but have starkly different digital strategies - one is aimed at sellling on the site, one at communication of a political message, one at providing leads for a travel providers and one of the travel providers, trying to convert leads (browsing visitors) into holiday buyers.

Funky Frog Music
www.funkyfrogmusic.com

Funky Frog Music is the publisher behind Zootopia - a CD of songs for children. This is a great little site that has a simple objective – to let visitors sample the songs and direct them to the shop to purchase. The songs are delightful and each one can be sampled on the site. The samples instantly play – from Midnight Mouse Dancing to The Chickens' Farmyard Hoedown. Each song is themed to a different animal and there are lots of illustrations, all of which are fantastic. As the proud father of young daughters, I can confirm how popular the songs become – firm family favorites. The shop works perfectly and delivery is very quick.

What’s particularly impressive about this site is how a micro-retailer can provide a high specification site with product samples and full ecommerce service. The tools now available for everyone to use means there is little or no barrier to entry in opening an online shop – most of the difficult stuff can be outsourced – the limiting factor is good content. Fortunately, this site works technically and works commercially. Try the songs, buy the CD, feel good about yourself.

Asda Travel
www.asda-travel.co.uk

The travel sector is full of surprising intermediaries, for example, Aldi recently started to offer travel services in UK stores, following the practice in Germany, Aldi’s launch was so successful, they jumped straight into the top 10 travel websites as tracked by Hitwise. Because of their distribution, supermarkets have enormous opportunity to capture non-traditional traffic. Asda has been covering holidays for longer than Aldi and travel site is just a click away from the main site but set on its own domain.

The site focuses on mainstream holiday options and offers comprehensive navigation. The design is a little corporate but there is an attractive headline font used to soften the layout somewhat. As common with most travel sites, their content can be consumed through third parties and I found the site after clicking through on an offer on a Cheap Flights weekly email. This dynamic republishing of content is common in the travel industry with many brands overlapping and the same offers appearing in many locations.

The Asda Travel site, thankfully, has more measured use of descriptions in their copy compared to some other operators. The tone is informative and interesting without slipping too often into the hackneyed, adjective laden copy, more typical of holiday content – must-see attractions, dizzying choices and mouth watering food being some of the tired phrases that make me reach for the Back button, if not the sick bag.

Thomson Holidays
www.thomson.co.uk

And talking about hackneyed, adjective laden copy, let’s look at the exotic and unsurpassed experience that is the fantastic Thomson Holidays web site. See what I did there? Yes this is the home of dead-weight, unimaginative copy. Let me provide an example:

When it comes to mealtimes at BeachClub, the choice is dizzying. From laid-back snack bars by the pool and exciting theme nights to world cuisine and a la carte restaurants, you'll find plenty of enticing eateries to tempt your taste buds. There's something for everyone - even those fussy little eaters! Drinks are on tap from dawn to dusk, too - whether it's a cold beer, colourful cocktails or a frothy coffee... More.

I particularly like the exclamation point after ‘fussy little eaters’. More? Er, no I don’t think so.

Still, the site has good tools for navigation and a wide range of holiday options. The images are pretty good and the site does build excitement towards holidays. The home page is gorgeous and I love the wraparound picture enclosing the content. The first impression is very positive – slick look and feel.

The destinations tab takes you first to a rotating globe which you can pause at areas of interest and click through to find more content. It looks very nice but I wonder how necessary it actually is? I’ll trust that Thomson Holidays have done their homework and this navigation embellishment actually helps their customers. I’d have been happy with a flat map or even a panel per continent. In any event, selecting a continent offers the countries that you can select. These are accompanied by video highlights but the display size is too small to be able to make a sensible selection. Of course there’s always the copy to fall back on. Here’s what they have to say about Italy:

‘Soul-stirring cities, world famous art, waist-expanding food and drink – holidays to Italy will captivate you from the word go.’

I really think they could do better than this. And that’s really how I feel about the site – nice to look at but could do better.

Number 10
www.number10.gov.uk

Connect with Gordon and stay up to date with the message from 10 Downing Street. That seems to be the essence of the Number 10 digital strategy. Perhaps I’m deceiving myself but this site reads much more honestly than I expected. The message appears to be informational rather than distorted and biased. There is lots of content, frequently updated, covering events at Number 10 each day. Policy announcements and details of engagements make up the majority of the content but there does appear to be a real attempt to be open.

This is a nice site aimed at keeping the UK population up to date with the events at 10 Downing Street. You could easily go to one of the excellent news sites such as Times Online or Guardian but there are some interesting things that you only get here. Firstly you get the government view, which might be good or it might be bad, but it is a view. Second you can get a link to Twitter to follow the PM’s movements and announcements. Thirdly and most importantly, you can find out which petitions are currently circulating and digitally sign-up for them. So if you believe in a topic, add your name to the petition and see if people power can move the topic up the political agenda.

This is an interesting experiment in communication, bringing politics to the people in a tangible way, unsullied by party political attack politics and shouting matches during Prime Minister’s Questions. It is easy to register and confirm your interest in a petition and you get immediate confirmation. Nice.

The design is a big upgrade on some of the other government online properties (I’m looking directly at you, HM Revenue & Customs) and is maintained regularly. The language is accessible (pay attention HMRC) and the tone is informative. The Twitter feed sends occasional announcements which act as a good driver to return to the site. Some Twitter feeds, e.g. ESPN are so voluminous that if you don’t visit Twitter for a day, you have a page full of ESPN updates and little from your friends. Not that Gordon is my friend, though it would be nice to have a one-to-one, wouldn’t it? – ask all those questions in private that wouldn’t get answered in public, get a sense of the person behind the position.