November 2009 Archives

Squeeeeek! *insert funny monkey sounds here*

Have you tried MailChimp? It's a cool service to send gazillions of emails to your clients. A pretty boring task normally, but what makes MailChimp interesting is their branding.

On the startpage of MailChimp.com they have a big monkey. And when I'm signed in, Freddie (Yes, he's got a name!) talks to me and gives me fun links to YouTube, telling me that he likes my new shirt, and stuff like that. Pretty fun, and an unusual touch.

In October we had the luxury of being in Las Vegas and attending the Usability Week by Nielsen/Norman Group. There were several seminars to choose from and what caught our attention was Write Your Way to Cost-Effective Online Customer Care by Catherine Toole from Sticky Content.

She gave us many hints on how to communicate with our customers both in e-mail and on our website. Since it was a small group, Catherine dedicated around 30 minutes to discuss our website and helped us see what could be improved.

Sometimes I get the question on how a small business can protect themselves from their competitors prying eyes. I usually think it's totally unnecessary.

This fear is based on the the same logic when some businesses don't list prices of their stock products and services online. Because if their competitors see their prices,
they will... do what? You should care about what your customers think. And no, they won't call you. They go straight to the next website.