Thoughts on Digital Life

Recently I have written about content for various clients and I thought it would be nice to share what I've been writing. Although I've tried to keep it short - this blog will take some time to read. But I think it'll be worth it. Your audience You'll need to know who your talking to. Its quite different if you're talking to decision makers or a visitor who just want to read about your product or service. You need to know who your audience is so you can decide on a tone-of-voice. Are you going to be open and friendly or maybe very strict and corporate? Content goals Write down your content goals, so you will develop your content with the right mindset or focus if you will. If your goal is to inspire - make sure your content inspires. Anything that takes you away from this goal will clutter the website. It also helps in making choices for your designers. If I need to inspire I will not choose a font such as Arial for instance. Responsibility It is importa...

Just as we are all getting ready for the most festive time of the year - I'd like to look back at 2015 and look forward to 2016. I've done so every year on Facebook. But as Facebook is getting less personal and stuffed with promotional adverts I decided to use my blog. Lets start with the three themes of 2015. 2015 1. Living Video 2015 for me was all about background videos. AirBnB started a trend by using a video in the background of its header. Over the past year it has been described as 'living video', 'experience video', 'backdrop video' and more. 90% of clients have asked for it last year. So for me, this was the trend of 2015. I really wish people would look beyond the "living video" in 2016. 2. Social presence Another thing of the past year was social media. Where companies needed to get a website over the past years - because "the Yellow Pages just don't work anymore - you have to be online!" - they now seem to...

First of all I'd like to apologize for the delay in posting. I've been pretty busy (freelance) and I was doubting this blog for a while. It played a part in me losing my job, so I was a bit reluctant to post again... So my apologies, excuse me and let's give it another go. TV shows for kids Something struck me over the past weeks, something I noticed in TV shows my kids were watching. When I grew up there was Teddy Ruxpin, Fraggle Rock, Gummi Bears, Mask, Dungeons & Dragons and He-Man. There were more, take a look at some of the intro's here . Quite nostalgic to me, pretty dated when my kids look at them. I've seen a lot of more recent shows together with my daughter and my son. They watch shows like Dora, Diego, Bubble Guppies, Blaze and the Monster Machines, Paw Patrol, Ni Hao Kai Lan. All of these more recent shows have something in common. Something the old shows I enjoyed didn't have. Character interaction Dora, Diego, Kai Lan and all...

This article is again about webshops. Webshops need conversion. Webshops need to sell products. I decided to take a look at my user journey when looking for a new laptop, Adobe software and some shoes. Here's how Zalando, Dell and Adobe made me feel and what they could improve. Zalando First of all Zalando isn't responsive. Your mobile experience is different from your desktop experience. The mobile experience is better, because the flow of information is positioned better. When you view a product on desktop format, the conditions of Zalando (about shipping and payment) seem to be the most important - as they are presented first. On the mobile version these are presented last. It gets better though! You can view a product at a larger format, ideal when looking for new shoes. You can see this in the image shown above. The bigger image is shown over the price and order button! Thats a conversion killer right there. The image below shows the same page if I don't roll over...

In this blog, the first in a long time - I apologize - three examples of User Frustration. Within a week I was dissappointed by 2 big (Dutch) webshops and by Google. Let's take a look at the cases. iPod Shuffle I was looking for an iPod Shuffle 4th Generation for my girlfriend. There's a reason I wanted the 4th Generation. Simply because it'll do and the 5th Generation is dubble the price for nothing extra. Just the number 5 makes it twice as expensive. I first take a look on Bol.com, because I have an account there and it'll be easy. As a user I want my search and buy to be easy. No way. Bol only sells the 5th Generation, so I keep getting pushed to buying the more expensive iPod Shuffle. Could be that they are out of the 4th Generation, but no alternatives are offered - I have to get the expensive 5th Generation. So I go to Google to search for the 4th Generation. Wehkamp I end up on the Wehkamp.nl website. Wehkamp still offers the 4th Generation at the decent p...