We’re really pleased with how it’s turned out, but like all the best websites, that’s not to say it’s finished, of course.

If you browse it at the moment (and please do check the site out), you’ll see that the breadth of information is huge, but the depth is, well, still to come in some areas.

We’re working hard to put that right – and if you know a bit about IT, you might be able to help us and the small businesses that use the site. So get in touch and I’ll explain more.

There truly are some shockers out there. And that’s probably why the good ones stick in your head.

I stumbled upon one just the other day. The sign up form for WordPress.com really is a thing of beauty. It’s clear, straightforward, and only asks you to type in four bits of information.

What’s more, it includes this delightfully playful text that sums up just what we all really think about agreeing to terms and conditions:

“Legal flotsam: I have read and agree to the fascinating terms of service”

I wonder how they got that one past the legal team. Nice work, WordPress.

These sites have drastically cut the cost of getting hold of images without worrying about copyright issues. I use them, so I should know. But there’s one big problem: when you pay so little, you don’t get any control over who else uses the photos.

Those images are sold again and again and again. Some of them are exceptionally popular – and that can spell embarrassment for your website.

I’ve trawled iStockPhoto – one of the biggest stock imagery sites – to bring you these five examples of stock photography that’s been rather, well, overexposed. If you’re looking for images to illustrate your website, steer well clear of these.

From web hosting to chief marketing officer

Plenty of websites seem to like the look of this lady. When she’s not urging you to “get more now” over at Midphase Hosting, she’s also putting in an appearance at Data102, a Colorado Springs hosting centre.

Then there’s marketing. She’s been standing in as a chief marketing officer for Brand Week – and been involved in this article about self branding. Busy lady.

A tired metaphor for growth

If you’re growing a business, here’s one visual metaphor you might want to steer clear of. It’s a very well-trodden path, you see. It might have been Clydesdale Ventures that first used this image. Or maybe it was Ian Brodie. Or Accelerate Media.

In hard copy, the books Recession Thriving and Trading Pain for Peace both have strikingly similar covers. Those green shoots of recovery are certainly spreading.

From pornography to the pharmacy

It’s amazing how many uses a single picture of a generic, photogenic family can be put to. Protecting families from pornography? Check. Life insurance? Check. Carpet cleaning in Naperville? Check.

Oh, and don’t forget to register for your free pharmacy card, will you? As for what this poster is advertising, I have absolutely no idea. It does use a tasteful monochrome version though.

Our call centre staff are all very attractive

Need to illustrate your company’s contact details? Look no further – this multi-skilled lady should be all you need.

She knows all about spectacles (top left corner of the page), going on a cruise, sorting out your computer’s performance, running an online backup service and, er, making a bit of cash as a phone sex operator (don’t worry, that last link isn’t dodgy). I’m no expert, but I’d have thought one of those occupations would be much more lucrative than the others.

Are you saving enough?

A piggy bank. What better way to illustrate a story about the credit crunch / recession / money / banking / savings (delete as appropriate)? If you use this particular image, you’re certainly in good company.

Once you’ve read Virgin Media’s guide to being frugal you can head on over and get a bargain weekend break. Back from your hols? Then you’ll be ready to start saving for the next one. Given the number of times it’s been used, the photographer behind this image probably isn’t short of a few quid.

Avoid the trap

Ok, so you’re using stock photography for one good reason: it’s cheap and it does the job. (That’s two reasons? Never mind.) There are three main ways to steer clear of overused images:

• Check the download stats. Most stock photography sites give you some idea of how many times each image has been downloaded. If an image has thousands of downloads, there’s a fair chance it’s been used thousands of times too.
• Do a quick search. There’s a totally amazing reverse image search tool called TinEye which helped me with this blog post. Give it an image and it’ll show you other websites using it. If there are lots of results, you might want to choose another picture.
• Stop being clichéd. The piggy bank. The lady wearing the headset. The growing plant. Images like these have been used to illustrate the same subjects many times before. So get creative and think up some less predictable ideas.

Finally, I’d always advocate that it’s worth spending money to get really top-notch text for your website. If so, you might want to look into paying a bit more for some unique, quality photographs too.

What do you think about cheap stock photography? Ever had any embarrassing moments using it? Leave a comment and let me know.

(All images bought from iStockPhoto. Naturally.)

It seems not everyone agrees with me. Rather like Marmite or Manchester United, Twitter’s one of those things people love or hate. They get it or they don’t.

Well, in an effort to introduce you to the world of Twitter (and convert any sceptics out there), here are six reasons I think it’s great. It’s not just people saying what they had for lunch, you know.

• It’s a great source of information. People on Twitter are a friendly bunch all-round really. There’s always someone who’ll answer your questions, whether you want help buying a laptop, or advice on the best place to go for lunch.
• There’s interesting stuff to read. Where I used to turn first to Google Reader for my fix of interesting articles, I can now be pretty sure of finding handpicked gems in the stream of tweets from people I follow.
• It gives me an outlet when I’m working by myself. Working from home gets a bit lonely sometimes, but at least I can partake in some online banter with fellow tweeters if things get too boring. Think of it as an online watercooler.
• It’s good for networking. For me, LinkedIn seems too formal and Facebook is too much about people I already know. But with Twitter it’s easy to find people working in my profession, so I can share ideas, offer (and receive) advice – and maybe even pick up the odd client.
• You hear about news first on Twitter. All the major news outlets use Twitter now (here’s The Guardian and BBC News), but you’re more likely to pick up on breaking news as it spreads like wildfire through the system. The Hudson River plane crash is a great example.
• Occasionally you get free stuff. If it’s material gains you want, plenty of companies run promotions and giveaways on Twitter. I’ve blagged a free case of beer and a CD so far. It’s not quite the conveyor belt from The Generation Game, but there are opportunities out there.

I could go on, but if you’ve not been convinced by those points, there’s no hope for you anyway. Don’t use Twitter? Go on, sign up and give it a go. You can follow me for a start.

Still, at least when it fell over, it didn’t display a dull generic error message:

Check it out! It’s a picture of a knackered bus – the type you might get in some the far-flung parts of the world that Lonely Planet can help you visit. (Full size here.)

Ok, never mind that in reality you’re probably just looking for a cheap week in Benidorm. This error page is a great example of how a bit of quirkiness can turn a negative (my hotel search not working) into a bit of a positive (making me chuckle).

It certainly put a bit of a smile on my face, and I’m more likely to give the site another chance as a result.

What could your site do differently to surprise its users?

Bizarrely enough though, the car’s indicators got me thinking about how important it can be to conform to people’s expectations.

Conventions abound in virtually every product we use. They make things easy-to-operate and easy-to-understand.

Imagine if every kettle worked in a different way, or if some door handles were postioned on the ‘wrong’ side of the door. Making a coffee would be a nightmare. And each time you opened a door would be a gamble; it might hardly move, or it might fly open and send you crashing through it.

As any web designer worth their salt will tell you, conventions work online too. Following them is a good way to make your website easier to use. Just ask Jakob Nielsen.

Put menus where people expect to find them, make the normal things happen when people click links and using your site will be a less-frustrating, altogether more pleasant experience.

Challenging conventions

Every now and then, a company tries to challenge a tried-and-trusted convention. Just occasionally, they’ll do so successfully; think of the iPod’s click wheel. Why use ‘up’ and ‘down’ buttons to navigate through lists when you can do the same thing faster (and more accurately) with a touch sensitive wheel?

But most of the time, these convention challenges fall flat. The Vectra’s indicators are a fine example – because they work in a different way to virtually every car I’ve ever driven. To turn them on, you push the indicator stalk one way. To turn the indicators off, you push the stalk the same way again.

It’s true that, like most other cars, you can also stop the turn signal by pushing the stalk the other way. But often it doesn’t work well; you simply end up signalling to turn the other way, and then get all confused.

Honestly, I’ve never driven another car like it, and I do apologise to anyone who had to share the Hanger Lane gyratory with me yesterday afternoon. I was trying to go right. Not right-left-right as you might’ve been led to believe.

I’m sure that, given time, you get used to this new way of doing things. But why bother when the old way works just as well?

Because this was a hire car, I was stuck with it for the weekend. However, if it had been a website with a dodgy navigation, I’d have been right out of there.

Clear benefits

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think challenging convention is always a bad thing. If nobody ever did it, all our vacuum cleaners would still have bags and the world wide web probably wouldn’t even exist.

However, if you do decide to do things differently on your website, remember that you’re asking a lot from your visitors. You’re asking them to learn a whole new behaviour, just for you. Essentially, you’re forcing them to do something different to what comes naturally.

For it to work, there has to be a definite benefit for them. It has to be easier, or faster, or better for some other reason. If it isn’t, don’t do it.

So be careful when you go against convention – or even when you bend it a little. Your great new idea might end up driving visitors away. If you’re running an online business, that could be costly.

Image © GM Corp

A couple of weeks ago I noticed a trend: articles from the Daily Mail seem to make it to the front page quite often. At first glance, the decidedly right-wing tabloid isn’t a natural fit with the social news site, where there aren’t any editors and the combined votes of users determines which stories get most prominence.

But in defiance of that assumption, here are some of the Daily Mail stories that have appeared on the Digg homepage over the past couple of weeks:

• Air stewardess goes topless for captain
• Goth who walks girlfriend on lead is told no dogs allowed
• Man becomes first to clone himself
• Why do ugly boys get gorgeous girls?
• Why men find a leggy lady sexier
• Scientists develop computer that can translate dog’s bark
• Pupils discover their teacher in porn video on YouTube

There are more – you can search the site to see them.

A skim through the titles does reveal some common elements. The popular stories are frequently about sex, psuedo-science or some sort of miracle cure.

What does this tell us about the Daily Mail? To be honest, not much. I think there’s some truth in the idea that barely a week goes by without the Mail reporting on some miracle cure or hidden danger in something we eat, drink or do. It’s a similar story with sex; the paper’s love of family values and its focus on moral standards ensure that one of its staples is stories involving a person of responsibility being discovered in some sort of compromising or scandalous position. The articles about the teacher and stewardess above are good examples of these.

But has the Mail discovered a new audience in an unexpected place? I think maybe it has. I don’t know whether there’s been any attempt to ‘game’ Digg (rather like last week’s shenanigans involving stories from Times Online), but I doubt it. I reckon it’s just more likely that the type of story which is the Mail’s bread and butter is also the sort that appeals to people on Digg.

The lesson for the rest of us? Well, let’s be honest: it’s hardly rocket science. If you want your story to go hot on Digg, try and write about sex, sciency-sounding stuff and easy cures for common problems or diseases. Quick fixes are good – how to get better at something without having to make too much of an effort. And it won’t hurt if you can find a technology angle and drop in a photo of a young lady in skimpy clothing too.

Accordingly, the next post on this blog will be titled ‘How having sex with computer programmers protects against cancer and makes you a better person’. That should press most of the Digg crowd’s buttons.

“Australians are the biggest polluters in the world”

The story itself doesn’t seem to completely agree with that fact, saying only that Australia “is one of the worst polluters in the world, on a per capita basis”.

I can’t find anything online to suggest that the USA isn’t the biggest polluter (in terms of carbon emissions), both in absolute terms and on a per capita basis. Here’s one example. So I reckon the caption on the picture is just plain wrong.

It’s hardly the end of the world, but a little misleading all the same. I’ve emailed to let them know. Be interesting to see whether they change it.

Anyway, I’ll get to the point. I just stumbled upon a new way of booking train tickets in the UK, and if you ask me it’s the best out there. By a mile.

Admittedly, that’s not saying an awful lot. The current train ticketing websites are pretty much universally awful. For the full story, check out my previous post on the subject.

Virgin’s site was the best of a bad bunch, but now GNER’s new ‘mixing desk’ actually delivers a reasonably pleasant experience. It looks to be in some sort of testing phase, but you can use it to book tickets – I just picked up a return to Edinburgh as part of their handy five quid promotion.

Ok, I’d be lying if I said I’d given the site a thorough test, and they still have some design issues to sort out (it doesn’t render properly in Firefox, though my non-standard font size may have something to do with that). But give it a go – it makes it finding the cheapest fares much easier.

A definite step forward, and one that might force the other vendors to up their efforts in a similar fashion. From what I’ve seen so far: good work.

That means you’ll just have to make do with a screenshot of the advert that prompted the rant. I think it speaks for itself. It could’ve come straight from a piece of junk email. Honestly – don’t they have an advertising policy?