Flowers are a very popular gift at Christmas, and are an almost perfect internet purchase. But with flowers the delivery date needs to be right. (more…)
December 21, 2005
The Ghost of Christmas Delivery
December 19, 2005
The Ghost of Christmas Empty Shelves
A key factor in being able to buy something is being able to find it. When people seek things out on the web, they typically will know the details of what they want, and have been intimately involved in deciding to buy it. But at Christmas many potential childrens gift buyers like uncles, aunties, cousins are often looking for things they don’t know about, haven’t decided on buying themselves, and might only have been told about on the phone. (more…)
December 16, 2005
The Ghost of Christmas Availability
The Christmas season is special. People buy differently and for different reasons than in other months.One very important difference is availability. Everybody wants the same things, and they want them at the same time!
This Christmas, Nintendogs are very popular, and mostly sold out. Finding one in stock is hard. Parents are desperate. (more…)
December 13, 2005
The Ghosts of Christmas Customer Experience
I was asked to appear on BBC Business Breakfast recently to talk about how Christmas E-Commerce differed from Rest of the Year E-Commerce. This was a great opportunity to consider what was different about Christmas, and how this might affect the customer experience. So I went and found examples from three major retailers. But I only managed to tell one story, which I thought was a shame. (more…)
December 7, 2005
Independent Suduko Design Misses The Point
Suduko has become pretty popular, and I have to admit I have indulged … It is kind of fascinating, like a crossword by logic rather than by lexicon.
The way I’ve learned to do it is you write little letters in the squares that represent the numbers that might be there. In that way by a process of elimination, you get to uncover what must be there. This solutions methodology (and I’m not alone in this according to Suduko for Dummies) demands that the design of the grid is of a size that allows you to write, say, maximum five numbers, then one big number over the top.
Problem for The Independent readers is that although they get three Sudukos a day, the grid is just too damn small to get the little numbers in. The Independant have designed for quantity, but in doing so have created an unusable print interaction design. Although the Manchester Guardian only has one Suduko a day, it is of a size where I can fit the numbers in. So I think I’ll stick with that, and leave the Independent readers to squint and scribble in their rag.
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