Social Media Saves the Day for Boring Websites

So tonight I was doing a little bit of what I call “pre-shopping” shopping where I scope out what’s new at all of my favorite stores ONLINE the day before I go shopping so I already know what I’m interesting in seeing when i hit the stores the next day.  (Yeah, it’s a little shopping secret I picked up when time began to be a precious commodity.) And today’s pre-shopping led me to the Marshall’s website.

Now, for all of you shopaholics out there this won’t come as a surprise, but Marshall’s doesn’t actually post it’s clothing online because, like other overstock-type stores, inventory is dependent on boutique and department store mess-ups.  Knowing this ahead of time, I was visiting the site only to check store locations when the company’s new savvy online marketing campaign hit me square in the heart.

Instead of marketing products directly like most retailers, Marshall’s is now using their web site to market the Marshall’s shopping experience.  Clever, I thought, since their former website was nothing more than a  store directory.  So instead of staying on their website for 30 seconds to get the map for the D’Iberville store location, I actually poked around a bit longer, viewed a few “shopportunity” comments like “I just scored 1000 thread count sheets” and “Another Fabulous Michael Kors find” and thought about how social media has saved the day for a company that wouldn’t have otherwise had much of a web presence.

My favorite little tool is the twitter “tweet” box at the bottom on the right hand side of the screen.  Twitter boxes aren’t new (I’ve had one on my website for almost a year now), but the way the designer has it displayed permanently at the bottom no matter the size of the user’s monitor is what caught my eye.  It’s static-ness makes it almost impossible to miss and like your browser tool bar, it follows you no matter where you go on the web page and changes with each new tweet giving the user the unconscious feeling that they are part of some alive social network of equally excited shoppers!

Ok, so maybe that’s a little too much analyzing of a twitter tweet box, but I can’t help my utter fascination for new ways of displaying content online.  If you didn’t know this already, I love web design.  I’m passionate about layouts, placement, colors, lines, and font.  And through the inspiration of others….  Jaimee Designs continues to grow.

So stay tuned.  I just may turn my next brochure website with zero “stickiness” into a social media haven complete with it’s own stationary tweet box in the corner!

Am I inspiring you?  If you have a favorite website, tell me about it.  I love to get new ideas.

Get Your Walkin’ Shoes On

One of my favorite websites to visit is walkscore.com because I can type in any address I want and the website tells me all of the businesses, schools, restaurants, grocery stores, and coffee shops within a certain distance of that location.  It also gives me the distance to each establishment and the contact information.  On the iphone, I can even click to call.  It’s a very handy tool when you are traveling or looking into real estate.  People say location, location, location is the name of the game.  Then walkscore.com is a major online resource to help everyone determine how great a location really is.

Coupons oh my…

Like to save money, but not a big newspaper coupon clipper?  Try coupons online.  There are several fantastic coupon sites that enable you to scan dozens of coupons and print only what you are interested in.

The following are some great coupon sites:

• couponchief.com (Become a CouponChief Fan on FB)
• coupons.com
• retailmenot.com
• couponcabin.com
• fatwallet.com
• dealcatcher.com
• groupon.com

Check out the video of my mother (who is very new to computers) printing a few coupons for herself.

The Internet is the Ultimate Game Changer

So I jumped on facebook today, as I normally do first thing in the morning to check up on what all of my friends are doing and found what looked like a newspaper clipping of a dear friend of mine name Laufer Kaufer posted in my news feed.

The caption read:  “Laurel Kaufer, a single, working mother from Woodland Hills, told lawmakers she had received notice from Anthem Blue Cross that her health insurance premium could rise by as much as 34 percent, while testifying before the Assembly Health Committee at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif., Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2010. Executives of Anthem Blue Cross, California’s largest for-profit health insurer, appeared before the committee to explain an attempt to boost insurance premiums by up to 39 percent. ”

Look at that, Laurel made the national news.  You go girl, is all I thought at first and then it occurred to me that she’s doing it again.

“What?” you may ask.  Being bigger than herself.

This is the California woman I met 4 years ago when I had to interview her for the Sun Herald newspaper about the non-profit she started after Hurricane Katrina blew us away.  She saw the devastation on the TV and being a mediation attorney herself, she didn’t think there was much in the way of helping that she could do. But when she thought some more, she realized that when the rubber met the road on rebuilding the coast, there would be a lot of potential conflict. To help educate leaders on resolving issues, she created the Mississippi Mediation Project.

But that’s not all.  A few months back, when international leaders met in Copenhagen to discuss climate change, she was there too. Flew herself out and participated in the talks.

What’s so amazing about her is that she’s just one woman… one…. but she doesn’t let that dictate her influence in the world.

Maybe we all don’t have the skill, inclination or energy to get ourselves involved in everything we are passionate about, but the internet sure makes it easier for all of us to be more than just one voice.

Gone are the days when only celebrities or millionaires or corporations produce change.  In today’s world, anyone with a computer and video camera can voice their opinion in a video blog, post it you youtube and have 300,000 views within a few hours.  Today, anyone can create a page on facebook about whatever it is that is important to them and enthuse thousands of like-minded people. And today, anyone, even a little 7 year old can use a site like justgive.com to raise more than $200,000 for charity and make a real difference.

Today, we have the internet and it is the ultimate equalizer, the ultimate socialist, the ultimate game-changer.  Today there are no more excuses.

Travel the World without Leaving your Desk

If there’s one thing I love about the internet, it’s how fast information travels.  It’s how quickly you can discover new topics and dig deeper into old ones…. without leaving your seat.  It’s how intimate you can be without being intimate at all.  The internet is such a geek’s dream come true.

Just take today for example.  I just finished reading a CNN story about another Haitian survivor who was trapped under the rubble for more than four weeks after the earthquake.  An amazing story, miraculous story, a story that happened in another country and yet I could read about it, see pictures about it, even hear people talking about it right when it happened.

And before that I read a friend’s blog on getting his hair cut at a barber shop. It was a feel-good story about the barber shop difference that made me smile and at once I wanted to share that positive feeling with the writer.  So I went on Facebook and left him a message, “Loved the barber shop blog!”  He and I aren’t best friends, no, but we keep up and having him on my friend lists adds something to my life.

After I hit send, I glanced over the recent status updates and saw shots of the Saints quarterback Drew Brees in a parade at Disney World. Apparently one of my other facebook friends was there and got some pictures.  Wow, Drew Brees really does have a scar on the right side of his face, I thought.

Earlier today while I was working, I typed quick, snappy sentences into an instant messenger and was able to make instant demands to a programmer I hired more than 7000 miles away.  7000 miles away?!?!  (Well, that could be an exaggeration…. let me google how far away Moss Point, MS is from the Romania. Oh, just found out that google maps apparently doesn’t give international, transatlantic driving directions…. bummer. I’ll stick with my guesstimation!)  And not only was I able to express myself through words and icons via the internet, I could also watch him work on a project, right before my eyes. “Refresh your page and check it now,” he typed.

Ahh, the internet.  I can chat with someone in Europe, hear about a miracle in the Caribbean, think nostalgically about a hair cut I’ll never experience, and find out what Drew Brees was doing today without leaving my seat or picking up the phone.  I can even stumble upon the limitations of such technology… let’s face it, by now google should be able to give me directions to Romania if I ask it to, right?!!?  On second thought, maybe somethings are better left to discover for oneself!

From Mississippi to Romania