Giraffe Forum

Advertising agencies don’t get the Web because the web is the place people go to do things.
In 2004, I wrote an article advising companies to never, ever let an advertising agency near their website. Back then, ad agency websites were a total joke. If you wanted to find out the very worst way to design […]

Customers crave speed on the Web, and they reward organizations that make things fast and simple.
Why is Google successful? Because it delivers better and faster results than its competitors. Google truly understands the customer’s need for speed. “At Google, we’ve gathered hard data to reinforce our intuition that “speed matters” on the Internet,” Jake Brutlag […]

On the Web the best way to think of your customers is as intelligent strangers whose most precious resource is their time.
In Ireland, the Catholic Church is facing a crisis of trust and confidence. For much too long Irish people have placed a blind faith in the Church, as they have placed a blind faith […]

The most important thing a webpage can do is be crystal clear about exactly what you can do on that webpage.
The best word to describe people when they are on the Web is “impatient.” They are particularly impatient when they arrive at your website for the first time. They are asking themselves the essential […]

It is time for marketers and communicators to stop treating customers like little children and start treating them like intelligent adults.
“In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology,” the good Google person told me. “This includes […]

A great many people have a poor view of what happened during the 2000s, with the exception of the growth of the Web.
According to a survey published in December 2009, Americans have a pretty dismal view of the 2000s. It has been voted the worst decade in living memory. “By roughly two-to-one, more say they […]

If your customers fall in the forest of your website and you don’t hear them scream, did they really make a sound?
Yes they did. It was the sound of them clicking on the Back (I’m outta here and I won’t be back) button. I’ve been doing this web thing since 1994 and I still make […]

Manage your customers’ time
The Web is not free. It charges customers their time. Successful websites deliver the most value for the least time.
Google is the benchmark for success on the Web. Google is obsessed with time. Your time. Google is all about helping you find stuff quickly. Practically everything Google does has speed as a […]

The exact words you choose on the Web can have a huge impact on behaviour. Finding the right combination of words takes testing and a focus on the action.
Dustin Curtis creates user interfaces. He’s a creative type. I knew that as soon as I visited his website because he uses a black background. That’s very […]

To make menus and links simpler you have to think like a customer. You also have to reduce the number of links and focus on the task at hand.
If you visit the BBC homepage and choose “Sport” you are brought to a page about sport. Just sport. The critical first screen is all about sport. […]