I was skeptical then and I’m skeptical now as the same media, Digitoday, publishes almost the same piece of news. Except that the company who did the research is different.
(Article from other source in English)

At march it was Webmark who did the research, now it’s Blue White Partners.

Anyhoo.

Article (in Finnish) claims that “Blue White Partners went through over thousand Finnish corporate web sites evaluating their marketing efficiency“. Jolly good.

Marketing efficiency?
Over thousand corporate web sites?

Hmm.

Well, as I last time learned, our journalists can be quite busy sometimes. So off to BW Partners we go to find the press release!
And yes, there it is ( press release as .pdf)

Whee, this is nice.
According to press release,  methodology of the said research is based on “an average efficiency to attract visitors and turn them into customers, based on hundreds of thousands web sites evaluated“.

Errm, what?

And how the hell does one measure that?
And hundreds of thousands web sites evaluated?

Hmm.

Hey, there’s even more!
Again the Press Release states that “the average Blue White Score for Finnish Companies” (sic!) ” is  42, still below the international average of 50″. Now, Nokia, the front-seat student of all Finnish web sites, scores 99,8 and release states “which means that only 0,2 % of companies worldwide have as good or better web site as Nokia“.

Phee.

It seems that the rating goes from 0 to 100, 0 being the lowest score and 100 the highest. 100 obviously means “The Best”, there is no better and 0 that there is no worse site. (Please do correct me about the rating  if I’m wrong)

The top-100 list for Finnish companies can be viewed at BW Partners Web site. All sites, listed in order of ranking, followed by score and change since the last evaluation.
(Small side note: depending on source about 8 % of (Finnish) men are red-green colour blind. If someone wants to indicate something, let’s take change, with colours, do use some other colours than red and green. Or better, don’t use colours alone, use something else. Like a minus-sign in front of negative changes?)

Anyhow, forward.

What’s nice is that I can purchase the evaluation report for only 295 eur!

Pretty cheap, isn’t it?

Conclusion and remarks

As such the evaluation portrayed here is worthless (at least to me). I don’t know the methodology,  I don’t know the sample and so on.

Perhaps they’ll tell in the 295eur-report the following facts left missing in the press release and articles:

1. Exact size of the sample (“over thousand” is not that exact, you know. 1001 is over thousand, isn’t it?)
2. Methods of evaluation (“average efficiency to attract visitors ” and so forth is not that convincing)
3. Sites Sampled (“over thousand Finnish corporate web sites” doesn’t tell that much.)
4. Pages Sampled from every site or the algorithm for selecting the sample (did they evaluate only the front page or what? Did they start from the root and continue to leafs?)

Most likely the evaluation will be covered heavily by Finnish media, which is somehow sad.

Still waiting for the first proper “Best Web Site in Finland” evaluation.
I’m not holding my breath, though.

(Usual disclaimers apply; I do realize that evaluation methodology can be a trade secret, as well as other data. I also realize that business is business and everyone must make a living. )

[Edit 15.45, Arctic Startup has written about the first evaluation done by BW Partners. According to linked article the evaluation score is "is made by investigating content semantics, language, search engine rank and index, and presence in social media."]

Related posts:

1. Nokia’s Site Chosen as “Best In Finland”
2. Helsinki, UN and Certain Surveys.
3. links for 2009-05-04

Why?

I got a message from an old buddy of mine who hasn’t done any activity at Facebook for the last 4 months or so (that’s what kids do, mind you).
It naturally raised my suspicions and yes, it’s a phishing site designed to look like Facebook’s login page.

Don’t go there.

Anyway, being a little snot for statistics I went through my user stats today and found out that most people during last days came here looking for above mentioned scam.  Nice SEO, not nice for Facebook users to always try these things.

(My original Google result was this blog.)

Related posts:

1. links for 2009-05-25
2. On Google AdSense Ads on GMail
3. On Posting Photos

I don’t know if the quizzes in Finnish are more annoying than the ones in English, still annoying.

And know what?

I take those quizzes. I don’t know why. I hate them.

The Finnish ones are full of spelling mistakes (yhdys sana for example).
Results all either fucked up or just plain stupid.

And know what?

I still take them.

Because it’s so thrilling to see if I’m “a True Finn” or wheter my co-worker does the same things I do this summer. Or is my political view what I believe it to be?

Or the quizz about my military rank? What’s with it? My rank is what my rank is – and I certainly know what it is.

Be Your Own Annoyance

And you know what? I won’t complain more, I’ll just do a quiz of my own.

It seems, according to small empirical test, that the hip app for quizz -making is “Make Your Own Quizz” (link leads to Inside Facebook’s app-page). According to app itself:

“Making a Quiz has never been easier! Making a Facebook app has never been so fast! Make your own quizzes and turn them into your own real Facebook applications!”

Jolly good.

Ok, Iäll just go to app  at FB and make a quiz.

Above is a screenshot about the first page, fugly highlights by me. First highlight is the language – I want my quizz to be in Finnish. Second one is picture, it actually says “This is very important! It will make your quiz more popular!“.

So, I have to have a picture.

I chose one about stairs at Pispala and named my quiz to “Kuinka korkealle pääset Pispalan portaissa” (how high can you reach?).

Next page was about the results, screen grab below:

Make A Quiz on Facebook, results page.

Typed some results, put on some images.

My images, however, were too big. The “useful” error message stated “2MThe uploaded file exceeds the maximum file size of %1 bytes.“. Perhaps someone should’ve told about the file size limit earlier?

Anyhoo, downsized the pics manually, tried to upload them.

Kaboom!

Everything gone.

Oh well, another try, luckily not from scratch.

Then the actual questions!

I just basically make something up as everyone does.

Make A Quiz On Facebook - questions page

After setting up the questions, a new app for the quiz:

Setting up the application for my Quiz

And voila, there it is (after just one step – I won’t paste that here).

My own little quiz, whee. (Find it out for yourselves if you fancy).

Conclusions and pondering

• Making ones own quiz isn’t that hard. That’s certainly the reason for all the annoying quizzes!
• Result (of the quiz) can be something totally different than the maker intended as the answers and outcomes are connected in my opinion in somehow awkward way.
• Quizzes can be used to influence people and their opinions
• Quizzes can be used as part of marketing

All in all, quizzes are here to stay (although really, really annoying), so why not use them?

Related posts:

1. My Comparative Study about Facebook Ads (weeklies, part 2)
2. Facebook ads, part n.
3. What Happens When You Win at Elections

What has happened since?

I wrote a short e-mail to Valio Consumer Services about the Gefilus and SEO, linking to these pages. Short and polite reply came pretty quickly, stating that they will deliver the feedback to developers of the site.

And now?

What was earlier like this:

Sivusto vaatii toimiakseen selaimen joka tukee freimejä. Ole hyvä ja päivitä selaimesi.

Looks now like this:

Gefilus – Vahvistaa vastustuskykyä. Sopii kaiken ikäisille

What can I say?

Now the <noframes> -element even has a nice little link to some other site (which sadly is the same Flash-based site as Gefilus.fi).

Power of feedback is remarkable, I’d say.

And why did I do this, someone asks?
No-one paid me any money. Pro bono. Free. Kansalaistoimintaa.

I might have just as well done nothing. Or just laughed my tiny ass off.

I didn’t. Now the problem is somehow fixed.

What else?

At the original posting I wondered who on earth makes only Flash-based sites with no proper content for search engines.

Well, who makes them?

The link at <noframes>-element leads to Vapaatila.net, or actually SEK&Grey, Finland’s biggest ad agency.

Sic.

You might as well draw your own conclusions about SEK&Grey’s own website (Flash, Whoo-hoo!), source code below:

<noscript>
<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0" name="sek" width="100%" height="100%" align="middle" id="sek">
  <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" />
  <param name="allowFullScreen" value="false" />
  <param name="movie" value="sek.swf" />

  <param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" />
  <embed src="sek.swf" scale="exactfit" bgcolor="#ffffff" width="100%" height="100%" name="sek" align="middle" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" allowfullscreen="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" />
</object>
</noscript>

I rest my case.

Anyhoo, I’m glad that Gefilus is somehow better;)

Related posts:

1. Gefilus (Valio revisited)
2. Patton and Wonderful Guys
3. Old but Good (Here Comes Another Bubble)

When going through the results something caught my eye, Gefilus. Google result looks like this:

Valio

Sivusto vaatii toimiakseen selaimen joka tukee freimejä. Ole hyvä ja päivitä selaimesi.
www.gefilus.fi/ – 2k – Välimuistissa – Samankaltaisia sivuja

Yes, you say, and then what, you continue.

Well yes. Gefilus is a Valio product line in which all dairy products include Lactobacillus GG Bacteria and should be healhty for each and every one of us.

Now, that’s not the point.
The point is the Google result for Gefilus which looks exactly like above. (They even have bought a Google Sponsored link to tell what the hell this is all about!)

Why all this?

Finnish text at Google result says (in english):
“This site requires a browser that supports frames to work. Please upgrade your browser.”

My browser? Oh yes, newest Firefox.

Google’s browser? Why that’s a whole different matter – and believe me or not, it’s not Chrome.

Google has no eyes or ears. It doesn’t support Flash or frames properly (and it’s not even supposed to, IMHO). (See Wikipedia on Web Crawlers for more information.)

And as Googlebot, Google’s search robot (or web crawler), doesn’t support frames, the only content Gefilus.fi shows to Bot is the (in principle properly used, mind you) <noframes> -element and it’s content.

Thus the awkward Google result.

Conclusions

• If you still use frames at 2009, do use the <noframes> -element.
• … and if you use the noframes-element, put some meaningful content in it, because that may be everything the allmighty Google sees.
• … and if it’s not in Google, it doesn’t exist, does it?
• …which leads me to wonder what the hell  the ad agency behind Gefilus.fi thought when doing all this? (Flash, frames, page titles (whole Gefilus.fi is named “Valio” according to HTML)).
  Looks pretty, yeah, contents are fine but what about the technical side?

Related posts:

1. The Power of Feedback (Gefilus, once again)
2. Valio.fi – anna elämän maistua.
3. Opera Mini 4.1 (or my mobile browsing, revisited)

Home - Valio.fi's front page

Above is a screenshot of Valio.fi, front page (in english).

The english version of finnish site is somehow empty, so I’ll use the finnish side instead (sorry!).

I’ll review the site shortly on three two aspects (as I’m lazy, this is my blog and the third category, usability, got me bored):

1. Design and looks
2. Technical side
3. Ad Hoc usability and Information Architecture

Design and looks

In my opinion the new design looks good and fresh – as it should when advertising dairy produts;)  Compared to old design the contrast is great, or what would you say? (Screen grab using Archive.org below)

Especially the orange compared to new blueish theme is somehow annoying in the old version,

Flowerish logo theme is repeated at page background and images, nice!

Technical side

Platform

On technical side the site uses Oracle Portal as platform (as did the old one, too). Oracle’s platform is sturdy enterprise level publishing platform which suits high traffic sites like Valio (although according to TNS Metrix it isn’t one of the 250 Top Finnish sites).

HTML Validation

• returns HTTP 406 when trying to validate with W3C Validator.
• using Firefox HTML Validator returns over 100 errors, starting with no Doctype declaration.
• Result: terrible, doesn’t validate as anything.

Opera Mini Simulator Test (mobile use)

• works pretty well

Styles

• What site at 2009 uses document specific styles (with <style> -element)? Ah, I remembered, Valio.fi.

Random

• Page naming is awful (simple SEO, Search Engine Optimization,  anyone?)
  • example 1, front page is titled “Etusivu” (front page)
  • example 2, Tilauspiste page is simply titled “Tilauspiste”
  • would it be better if it read Valio somewhere?
    for example:
    Etusivu – Valio.fi
• URL‘s are quite pretty, no page ID’s used, nice.
  But:
  • technical platform is visible in every URL:
    http://www.valio.fi/portal/page/portal/Valio
  • so, get rid of the /portal/page/portal/ -part and yes, better!
    

Conclunsions

• Redesign looks good and sports some nifty new contents.
• Quite good a redesign on top.
• Technical side of the site is sturdy and working, but doesn’t validate.
• It’s generally good idea to select a CMS (Content Managemment System) to suit one’s needs. Perhaps Oracle Portal is the best solution here.
• URL’s are are important, too. They get printed on magazines, on milk cartons (sic!) and sides of cars.
  Try printing:
  • www.valio.fi/keittokirja in stead of
  • http://www.valio.fi/portal/page/portal/Valio/Keittokirja
  • See any difference?
    

Related posts:

1. Gefilus (Valio revisited)
2. What’s Wrong With Finnish Theatre (Or My Short Trip to Tampereen teatterikesä)
3. Pretty URLs (or Aamulehti redesign)

Motivating people isn’t always that hard, is it?

No related posts.

One feature, however, is annoying, funny and useful at the same time. I mean the Google AdSense ads in e-mails.

This one chain of e-mails was about a meeting at Helsinki, between me and four other people (all part of a marketing group for a nonprofit). We discussed possible meeting times and places.
Which ads were relevant, according to Google?

Following text ads were presented (in finnish, english translations for titles follow):

Oletko raskaana?
Raskauskalenterimme ilmoittaa mitä tapahtuu sinulle raskauden aikana.
(Are you pregnant?)

Freelance graafikko
Ammattitaitoa kuin
pienessä kylässä.
(Freelance graphic designer.  Editor’s comment: Typo at finnish title)

Kaikki odotuksesta
Tietoa, vertaistukea ja arjen komiikkaa.
(Everything about expecting a baby)

Vihaatko tyrkyttämistä?
Lue B2B-markkinoijan pikaoppaasta mikä on markkinoinnin hunajapurkki.
(Do you hate pressing (your customer)). Editor’s comment:  hard to translate.)

********-äitiysvaatteita
Mallisto, jälleenmyyjät, verkkokauppa. Tervetuloa!
(****** -maternity clothing)

Ei krapulalle
Juhli ilman krapulaa
Kokeile hintaan 0,20 €
(No to hangover)

Vauvan nahkatossut
Käsinvalmistetut vauvan nahkatossut -Yli 40 hurmaavaa mallia!
(Leather slippers for babies)

Miltä vanhempien juominen
näyttää metrin korkeudelta? Muodosta mielipiteesi täällä!
(How does it look from height of 1 m when parents drink?)

Conclusions?

Yeah. Right.

I do have two children.
I drink occasionally and yes, who likes hangover anyway?
Yes, I’m interested in B2B marketing.

Was the marketing then targeted right?

Yes and no.

I still wonder if it should have been different. Topic of e-mails was something completely different, nothing about children, drinking or pregnancy. Marketing, yeah. Nothing else. The freelance designer was a good one.

All in all, not that good results.

Related posts:

1. Playing With Google Maps (part 1, sadly)
2. Whiteflash and Google keywords

The upgrade was as smooth as ever (okay, a few glitches but anyway).

First impressions?
Hmm, new admin interface (dashboard), lots of new stuff. Improved UI, I like it.

Pretty swell.

Will write more about this if I manage to find the time somewhere…

Related posts:

1. .htaccess and WordPress 2.5.
2. Doodlings and WordPress 2.5 Gallery Feature.
3. Dangerous, My Middle Name.

Personally I like photography, like taking pictures, love the feeling when some of my shots turns out to be exactly as I wanted it to be.

And yes, I’d also like someone else than yours truly to see my best photos.

And as I’m all for Web and digital solutions, I’d like to share my photos online.

Simple google search with “share photos online” returns over 31 million results. Obviously no good for me, eh? Just simple clicking on first 20 results would take days if I really wanted to get to know the services offered. Not my way.

Then there’s this blog. WordPress offers some decent tools for image uploading and galleries. Well, why not?

• First: they’d be at my own server taking up my space and my bandwidth.
• Second: as the space and bandwidth are not free, I’d be the guy doing the paying part
• Third: This blog is located at joint server at a finnish ISP. I strongly doubt if it’ll take any serious amounts of load (which I don’t think my “fancy photos” would create, but anyway).
• Fourth: Licenses. Should perhaps get a CC-license or something as some persons roaming the internet tend to think anything without a clear license is free to take and use (which is not the case). Well yes, I think I have to do this, sometime. Not now.

In stead of those first two alternatives I’ve tried Flickr, Picasa (Google Photos?) and lately Facebook for sharing my photos. My impressions?

Flickr (wikipedia article):

• owned by Yahoo, perhaps the biggest web2.0 photo sharing tool on web.
• free account with 100 MB monthly limit (which is really decent)
• up-to-date licensing systems (cc, mainly)
• Somehow this just isn’t my cup of tea, don’t know why.

Picasa (wikipedia article)

• owned by Google, perhaps more for private photo galleries than Flickr (imho).
• free account with 1024 MB limit
• TOS permits Google to “to use the uploaded photos to display on the website or via RSS feeds, and also for promoting Google services royalty-free”
• I’ve used Picasa for years. For some reason don’t like it.

Facebook (wikipedia article)

• well. not exactly a photosharing tool but a social networking website. Has some sharing tools and your buddies are already there, aren’t they?
• free account, “unlimited amount of albums” – though in each album can only be certain amount of photos
• TOS permits Facebook to do just about anything with your photos (highlights by yours truly):
  “By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide licence (with the right to sublicence) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorise sublicences of the foregoing”
• Used this one, too. Somehow the abovementioned gives me the shivers, though.

So, no decent shots to Facebook. Picasa web is not for me. Perhaps should (again!) try to use Flickr and then use some plugin with my blog.

Or then I’ll just post the photos here.

Any suggestions?

Related posts:

1. Whiteflash and Google keywords
2. links for 2008-07-10
3. links for 2008-06-16