I have had some badly rendered emails appear in my inbox in the past. Regardless of the email client; Outlook, Thunderbird, Hotmail, Gmail and more. Companies like Campaign Monitor & the Email Standards Project should be utterly applauded for their efforts to try and standardise emails in a similar way to web browsers.

However, nothing, and I mean nothing can excuse mistakes like this. Morrisons are a huge UK supermarket and have a 7-figure online budget. They use multiple online agencies to manage their web presence. Presumably (and a little through experience on this one) Morrisons use an agency to send their email marketing. OK so it is wishful thinking for me to imagine they would test in every email client and ensure a readable mail for all the big ones, but you would hope that the email contained something legible.

I have had some badly rendered emails appear in my inbox in the past. Regardless of the email client; Outlook, Thunderbird, Hotmail, Gmail and more. Companies like Campaign Monitor & the Email Standards Project should be utterly applauded for their efforts to try and standardise emails in a similar way to web browsers.

However, nothing, and I mean nothing can excuse mistakes like this. Morrisons are a huge UK supermarket and have a 7-figure online budget. They use multiple online agencies to manage their web presence. Presumably (and a little through experience on this one) Morrisons use an agency to send their email marketing. OK so it is wishful thinking for me to imagine they would test in every email client and ensure a readable mail for all the big ones, but you would hope that the email contained something legible.

What an amazing idea! tillymoss.com sells beautiful hand-made fabric sleeve covers to protect your MacBook. Gorgeous, classy & original. And the site by AP is pretty cute too

Take a look at tillymoss.com here.

What an amazing idea! tillymoss.com sells beautiful hand-made fabric sleeve covers to protect your MacBook. Gorgeous, classy & original. And the site by AP is pretty cute too

Take a look at tillymoss.com here.

It’s bad enough when forms are over-long and boring, but when a web form is actually completely unusable, frustration is an understatement.

This example of a web form by Churchill (whoops, actual link is https://churchillpet.com/ but beware, the secure certificate is out of date!) shows us the worst example of poor web standards and testing procedures. The form is so confusing and mind-boggling, it is actually impossible to finish it. Take a look at the check boxes to answer the all-important criteria questions:

Now without looking at the source code, is there any way to be absolutely sure whether you are selecting yes or no? Most visitors would be confused.

Admittedly, this was in Firefox. I haven’t checked but I am sure it works fine in IE6 but that is hardly the point - Churchill are one of the big insurance providers and should be considerate about usability and standards. 10% of the market is alot to lose.

I got my new pet insurance elsewhere.

It’s bad enough when forms are over-long and boring, but when a web form is actually completely unusable, frustration is an understatement.

This example of a web form by Churchill (whoops, actual link is https://churchillpet.com/ but beware, the secure certificate is out of date!) shows us the worst example of poor web standards and testing procedures. The form is so confusing and mind-boggling, it is actually impossible to finish it. Take a look at the check boxes to answer the all-important criteria questions:

Now without looking at the source code, is there any way to be absolutely sure whether you are selecting yes or no? Most visitors would be confused.

Admittedly, this was in Firefox. I haven’t checked but I am sure it works fine in IE6 but that is hardly the point - Churchill are one of the big insurance providers and should be considerate about usability and standards. 10% of the market is alot to lose.

I got my new pet insurance elsewhere.

Awesome London web agency twentysixlondon.com have just relaunched their web presence with a simplified, prettified and scaled down site. The portfolio slideshow looks great and the showreel is simply inspired.

Check it out.

Awesome London web agency twentysixlondon.com have just relaunched their web presence with a simplified, prettified and scaled down site. The portfolio slideshow looks great and the showreel is simply inspired.

Check it out.