Mr Happys online journal

OK I know my title implies all web designers, developers, marketers and owners are guys but you can change girlfriend to boyfriend if you feel you need to regenderfy. Basically I have a gripe (its unusual I know). But can someone please tell me why so many websites seem unloved. The websites I own, market, design or help with are like lovers.

Design for the website as if it were a lover

Designing a website is like a gift to the content. The design should be in place to allow the content, the voice, the attitude of the website to shine. It is not there to provide a barrier to communication. If you lavished the love, attention and all the other things you know you could do how much better would your design be. You can tell websites which are simply churned out as pieces of work – websites treated like a one night stand. Take wordpress themes for example. Many wordpress themes are little more than one night stands. Designed to be almost a commodity. Some are almost drowned in love and a desire to make the site all it can be. Some are simply a way for someone to exploit others it’s simply a way of hacking together as many links as possible.

Almost to their entire detriment all simply downloadable wordpress themes are of the ‘one night stand’ variety. If you look at

Market your website as if your introducing her to your friends for the 1st time

It’s difficult isn’t it. Introducing a new girlfriend to your friends. No doubt down the pub or over a meal with your friends partner(s) in tow. It’s make or break. you’ve probably either said so little that no one believes they actually exist or been so rapt in ardor that you’ve been told to shut up more than three times in the last week. Either way you want things to go well. Marketing a new website is like this for me. You need to have everything ready before the meet (website launch). imagine if you turned up without your partner and they never showed – that’s what your 404 page is like. you need to make sure that your friends can get to the site in the first place before the whole thing clicks and you have a great time together. Your customers are your friends. Make sure that what they’re promised in your email campaigns, natural search results, PPC ads or media campaigns turns up.

Listening is more important than talking

Its the start of any relationship – you try not to say too much and probably say too much. You should be listening. And listening is something that should never stop. You should always be listening to the messages that your site is giving you (and not only what is being said but also what isn’t). Have you ever looked at your analytics to find that you’re not converting traffic into sales. Listen to what your site is telling you through your analytics and find out why. Half your traffic bounces on PPC to your homepage – why is that? You’ve got all the signals – you just need to listen and turn these into a definable set of actions.

Right I’m away to get my wedding planned – hope this ramble made sense. We’ll call this post a concept piece….

It seems like so long ago I got to post as Mr Happy but I’ve managed it – at last.

I thought I’d break my self in nice and easy with a quick link rolling post – where I’ll bung up some links to some cool/not so cool/funny/ interesting things I’ve seen on the old interweb in the last couple of weeks.

1. Terminator Salvation Film Review – one of the most scathing reviews of the new terminator film – ternimator salvation – that I’ve read so far. From what I gather it’s pants and no one should waste their time or effort on going to see it. But hey I’m a sucker for crap movies so will probably go and see it. On a similar note Transformers 2 is a it naff – Megan Fox aside.
2. No Follow Post by Matt Cutts – not as cute as Megan Fox but equally interesting post by Google Guy about WTF Google actually see nofollow as being and WTF they do with links that are nofollowed.
3. Falkirk take on Vaduz of Lichtenstein in the Europa Cup – YAY. But I cant get to the away leg. Minor disaster. but getting to Europe is a great step forward for my – almost relegated – fitba team.
4. Susan Boyle Kicking Hollie Steele – nuff said. snick snick.
5. 
   Song of the week – Beaver Patrol by Pop Will Eat Itself (inspired by Nick)

Right promise to post something serious soon.

As a quick post I thought I’d talk about furry handcuffs. With Valentines day almost upon us I thought of what all the mad online folksies would be looking for and for some reason it came to me that they were probably looking for furry handcuffs: not exclusively pink fluffy handcuffs but certainly furry handcuffs.

This got me thinking what kind of handcuffs do people really look for in the search engines: those for pleasure and those for law enforcement purposes.

So a wee rummage in WordtTracker later and I found:

• handcuffs – 171 searches
• james parker hancuffs – 38 searches
• furry handcuffs – 35 searches

I have no idea about james parker handcuffs and neither does google – anyone know why people would be searching for this?

Anyway, cheers to fi for raising this idea in my head – she forwarded http://www.agentprovocateur.com/love-me-tender.html onto me earlier on – which kinda raised the idea of handcuffs initially.

More details on the female model in the ad can be found @ tokyito post about Rosie Huntington-Whiteley

Below are links to the bookmark pages within del.icio.us (I know its now delicious.com but I prefer the old skool version – kinda like Lynns note taking)

1. PalinAsPresident.com – Political Satire of what would happen in Sarah Palin was president of the United states. Is kinda funny.
2. John McCain is Your Jalopy – Nope I’ve no idea WTF this means but it did make me laugh
3. Big List of Obama Jokes – I thought I better provide some balance in a BBC stylee
4. Watchmen Stuff - God I love that comic book

Right thats enough delicious.com/del.icio.us stuff for today. Toodles

The world’s gone mad. To sell houses some folk in Glasgow are trying to sell flats (Studio flat starting at about £115K) with websites. OK this aint bad until till you see their flash movie -> http://www.gh2o.co.uk/love-story.

FFS I can tell you that if gh20 is populated with prostitute and frequented by sailors who booked through an escort agency they may not be able to maintain these prices. Even if they do the wonderful scam used by many house builders of offering to pay the deposit!

Sex sells – but sometimes as with all marketing sex just becomes absurd and funny. And to add insult to injury someone I know has been writing stuff to advertise it (they will be getting seriously reprimanded the next time I see them).

The view of sex from Heaven

• Bethany : Sex is a joke in Heaven?
• The Voice of God : The way I understand it, it’s mostly a joke down here, too.

Pinched from Dogma by Kevin Smith

Just heard from Blog Herald that Reddit is now available as open source software. This is cool, I use pligg for digg style websites when I need to develop them but will be giving the reddit platform a wee go now that I have choice.
The best thing about the redit platform is the cool little logo they’ve made:

hahaha – good going guys.

If you head over to http://www.berocca.co.uk/bloggerrelief/ you can apply for your free blog relief kit from berocca! Nice reward for all you stressed out bloggers who are hacking away day in day out to keep freedom a reality across the world. Else even if you’re just posting pictures of your cat, talking about guys/girls, musing on the lastest episode of Dr Who or complaining that your My Bloody Valentine tickets havent arrived yet.
Whatever it is I’m sure that the kind folk at Berocca will be delighted to hear from you.

As ever with the British summer due to start soon one of the high points of TV is about to start – Lauren Laverne. In the coming months this little pop pixie is likely to be inescapable on British TV. From the culture show, the weekly standard dose of Miss. Laverne ably assisted by Mr Kermode, to the soon to start festival season she shall be inescapable across all our TV screens. Thank God – Lauren Laverne season is looked forward to by myself far more than the Summer Blockbuster movies or the Christmas TV schedule. So get ready to turn on, tune in and thank all that is good in the world that there is still room for someone this cute in the world.

Over the last couples of days I’ve had the pleasure of encountering too much 1337. It seems to be re-surfacing at a rate of knots I’ve not seen since Google search was available in 1337.

For some reason 1337, or leet, whatever you call it has resurfaced into the office lexicon. I implore the world to react against this deviance and speak plain English and not send messages in 1337.

On the theme of 2008 being the ‘year of the geek’ I thought it was about time to update some websites I know for girls that’ve gone geek.

Here are two for your deliectation:

• SEO Chicks – Yep Girls can game search engines too. And they can be hot too. They even abuse UK SEO companies for their sexist attitudes. Grrrrrll Power
• Girls Gone Geek – Girls who love geeky stuff – they have a cool post on Japanese Air purifiers for babies!

I was going to post some more but I need to go and do some stuff.

L8r