Tag Archive - internet

Sneaky Unsubscribe Page

December 10, 2009 in Business, Marketing, The Internet with 2 Comments

Somehow, somewhere, I got on the email list for US News and World Report. When I finally unsubscribed today, I thought their opt-out page was pretty sneaky.

US News and World Report Unsubscribe

I have always hated the “opt-out confirm” step, and think that unsubscribe links in emails should be a single click unsub. This one though used some subtle placement and language tricks that I’d expect to see more from shady grey-hat email marketers, than big old-media magazines.

As most users probably do, I read the page left to right, skip over or skim most of the text, and my first instinct is to click on the button marked “continue”. Since I just clicked “unsubscribe” on the previous page, my mind is expecting at first glance, that “continue” will continue the unsubscribe process I have already started. It actually keeps you ON the list if you hit that button.

Annoying.

Markus Frind Quote

February 23, 2009 in Business, The Internet with 0 Comments

As someone that is involved in building community based sites, a quote from Markus Frind (Plenty of Fish) in a recent INC Magazine article really resonated with me.

Frind has resisted adding other commonly requested features, such as chatrooms and video profiles, on the same grounds. “I don’t listen to the users,” he says. “The people who suggest things are the vocal minority who have stupid ideas that only apply to their little niches.”

Though what Markus says isn’t totally true all of the time, it is mostly true most of the time. Noah’s post on Twitter about Tropicana’s un-redesign made me think of this.

Good Internetting Amtrak!

October 8, 2008 in Business, The Internet with 0 Comments

By now you probably have at least seen this, which is awesome. But here is a bit more awesome Amtrak internetting!

I was looking at trains from Boston to NYC, and on the dates I was looking, there is some 10 options to NYC and some 3 options back…lots of combinations. I tried one and got this message:

Problem with Space Availability: Sorry, one or more segments of your itinerary may have sold out. Please select an alternate date or time, or call 1-800-USA-RAIL (1-800-872-7245) for assistance.

Fail!

But it doesn’t tell you which route is sold out at which time, just a generic sold out error message. So I tried a few more combos and got the same result. Starting over and searching again for the same stuff, gave the same result.

Is having a detailed error message indicating which route is sold out too much to ask? Or how about just not showing the routes on the selection screen that are sold out?

YearbookYourself.com

September 8, 2008 in Marketing, The Internet with 0 Comments

I’ve been seeing these fake yearbook photos bouncing around the web for the past couple of weeks, and thought they were funny. I didn’t even realize until just now when I visited the site, that they were part of a marketing campaign from Colle+McVoy for Taubman managed malls.

YearbookYourself.com

Very well done little campaign. And lots of fun.

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