The BBC unveils its EU cookie law solution
The ICO's one year amnesty on enforcement of the EU e-Privacy Directive ends tomorrow, and a few more sites have been rolling out their compliance solutions.
BBC.co.uk launched its cookie info banner yesterday, while Channel 4, The Guardian and the Telegraph have today.
The four approaches are all very different...
Facebook launches homegrown mobile photo app
What's cooler than spending $1bn on a mobile photo sharing app?
The answer: spending $1bn on a mobile photo service and then launching your own mobile photo sharing app service weeks later.
Start Me Up! A profile of Achoo
Achoo is a social network which allows its users to brag about their achievements and build up a profile which will help attract future employers.
The site was launched by Andrus Purde, and I've been asking him about Achoo, its business model, the challenges of launching, and his future plans.
Mobile site review: Majestic Wine
Majestic Wine has launched a new mobile site to allow its customers to browse and buy wines on the go.
It has been developed by Usablenet, which also designed mobile sites for House of Fraser, Tesco and M&S.
A wine merchant isn’t necessarily the type of business you would expect to have a mobile site, and it doesn’t seem to be a common feature among its competitors.
So how does it measure up in terms of usability?
This week's top six infographics
Once again, here's a round up of some of the best infographics we've seen this week.
Topics include how social logins and sharing affect e-commerce, screen resolution trends, mobile payments and page speed.
If your eyes are straining to see the detail, click on the images for larger versions...
Slow-loading websites cost retailers £1.73bn in lost sales each year
Online retailers lose an estimated £1.73bn in global sales each year due to slow loading speeds, according to new research from online customer data platform QuBit.
Slow loading times are incredibly frustrating for shoppers, yet the Retail Focus white paper suggests e-commerce sites do not see site speed as a top priority.
The report also highlights the fact that consumers are becoming more impatient.
10 hidden Easter eggs found on websites
Recently I listed a bunch of creative 404 pages, which a) made for light reading, b) show that it is possible to deal with problems in an engaging way, and c) goes some way to prove that an interesting 404 page is an easy way of generating some extra link juice.
Since it’s Friday here’s another slice of fun.
Finding Easter eggs used to be a case of running around the garden once a year. Then came along computer games, which included ‘Easter eggs’ in the form of hidden treasure. Some websites have Easter eggs too, and I thought I’d point you at a few of them.
A note: this post shamelessly references this thread on Reddit, which contains a number of other examples.
Enjoy!
User tests: How well does Thomas Cook work on iPad?
Tablets are a big deal for online retailers, with stats showing high AOVs and conversion rates, so it makes sense for websites to provide an excellent experience for users of these devices.
Thanks to some user testing videos from whatusersdo.com, I've been looking into the user experience offered by Thomas Cook for tablet users.
The user tests uncovered some serious problems with Thomas Cook on tablets, issues likely to cause customers to abandon the site.
Here's a summary of the issues...
Is your mobile app better than your website?
The apps versus mobile websites debate isn't going away any time soon.
It's not an either-or proposition, and companies that get too focused on picking a winner may lose sight of more interesting and important subjects that apps and the mobile web have created.
Firefox follows Chrome, plans to remove favicon from address bar
It's certainly hard to label it an 'important' part of a website, and in many cases, it's not even noticed, but for some, there's a special place in the heart for the favicon.
Proving this point, there is no shortage of websites that offer up favicons for download, or which allow users to turn their own graphics into favicons. And if you're a web designer, chances are a client has asked you to create one from scratch.
