Quote from A Small Orange (hosting company) CEO on good customer service as sound marketing investment.

When I do our books, I’m tempted to split up our support costs as half marketing and half operating expenses. When we provide great service (which we try to do as frequently as possible), our customers notice and appreciate that. A lot of times it results in them telling their friends and social networks about us, which leads to more sales and greater customer loyalty.

via 37signals

Another in the awesome shop signs series.

But that’s OK. Scott Burkun (ex Microsoft user interaction designer) makes us feel better about our design failures and helps us to learn from them.

The more I see this the more I like it. Listing sign up steps and then striking through the first to indicate that it’s not necessary adds surprise and delight on the very first screen. Email us and we’ll email you back with your new account. Thanks very much!

I am a big fan of Joshua Porter’s work, esp on social design. Found my way to another of his ventures – Performable. It starts off with the claim that

Every day, 98% of the people who visit your web site or landing page make a near-instantaneous decision NOT to do business with you. They end up leaving, never to return.

Oh yeah. And what do you have to back that up with. Oh that quote immediately to the right:

The Horrible Truth:

“2%…that’s the average conversion rate in the United States of America whether you’re selling elephants or iPods.

Avinash Kaushik
Analytics Evangelist, Google

In a workshop developing user journeys I was asked by a client what end goal we were designing for: the users’ or the organisation? It is of course both. While as an interface designer you can develop frameworks to encourage behaviour, you can’t force it – people will just leave your site. On the other hand you can’t just ‘fulfil user needs’ if your company hasn’t got what they want (however good your UI).

So to paraphrase Stephen King, it is a matter of linking what the customer wants with what the company is (uniquely) able to provide. This is the most important interface.

via Influx

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.