Jaap Willem | Mobile and Online Marketing

Usability and Site Review of the Four Seasons Website

jaapwillem — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:55:27 +0000

Usability and Site Review of the Four Seasons website

And there we go, the first thorough usability and site review from the Four Seasons 18 million website.

The tell all quote:

As UX expert Tom Stewart commented ”despite the umpteen millions it cost, it still appears to have been designed by a photographer (they are stunning) and a computer programmer”.

One Year

jaapwillem — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:26:56 +0000

One Year…

One year ago I could touch you the first time. I could see your skin and hear your breathing, feel your warmth and hear your voice.

25 January 2011 at 7:38AM you were born and enriched our lives even more.

And what a year it has been.

You have grown up enormously and learned so much.

From the first time that you opened the eyes, the first time that you laughed, the first time that you smiled, the first time that you ate solid food, the first time on holidays, first time in Paris, first time in Belgium, Germany… The first time that you stood on your feet, the first time that you smashed the food on the floor and the first time that we laughed together about a little thing..

It hasn´t been always easy, neither for you and neither for me or the family but one thing always got first place.. Our love and happiness for each other…

For the upcoming year and years, thank you very much for teaching me your knowledge and being a guide for me in this live.

I will always love you from the bottom of my heart and I will try to understand you every time a little better and become a better father every-time.

I love you Lucía Yolotzin and I´m very, very happy and proud being your father.

Jaap Willem

18 Million dollar for a website

jaapwillem — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:35:28 +0000

Four Seasons got a lot of buzz last week with the announcement of their new website. As announced they dropped down 18 Million dollar to have their new website up and running.

This is a shitload of money, for a website.. This weekend after I was joking around with a few other people on Twitter I started thinking about it and how it could get to that amount of money.

Let’s analyze how they could have “invested” this money.

First up is the design of the Four Seasons website.
The design is nice and clean with even responsive design coming in . This is especially important with about 70% of their costumers using mobile phones and about 60% tablets.

Second I really hope that they’ve tagged the shit out of the website.
So they can find every little error and UX error and being able to improve upon. With 30 Million visitors this will costs quiet a lot of money as well.

Third the CMS and CRM system behind it.
This will have costs the most money to connect the new website with their backend and the backend from all their hotels. Furthermore I suppose the hotels will be having a unique entrance and area where they can upload new information and see what they write about the hotel.

Social Media Integration.
The integration is very well done with Tripadvisor, Twitter and Facebook integration. It’s one of the nicest designs in the hotel business I’ve seen.

But now I get to a point I absolutely don’t get…

So they recognized the need for mobile adaptations, hence the responsive design.

But where ARE the mobile Apps?

If 70% of their customers are carrying a smart phone and 60% a tablet, you want to be there if they look for apps.

Not only for the booking process but as well the moment they arrive and give the best customer service they could have imagined themselves.

This is the point where they really should have invested and getting the most out of their dollars. I have no idea if they will be launching new apps soon, if yes, I’ll certainly check them out.

The conclusion of the Four Seasons story.

While I suppose it was a good investment, a bit overpriced but still a good investment I’m actually surprised with the fact that they’ve invested in the current and yesterday’s way of booking and not for tomorrow’s.

I suppose they’ve done their calculations before they gave the go-ahead, but I think it’s gonna be hard with this new website to an extra ROI from this 18 million dollar.

And I think it’s a shame that they haven’t invested more in their mobile efforts and less in the desktop experience.

Have a look at the this post from econsultancy with some very good comments

Sven de Meyere has a SEO directed write-up on his website (In Dutch)

iPhone 4s is sooooo disappointing | Result: Apple – Analysts: 1 – 0

jaapwillem — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 14:11:11 +0000

Apple is so disappointing… They lost their swagger and their new phone is very very disappointing…

Let me check back again:

4 + Million iPhones 4S in 3 days
25 + million downloads of iOs5 in 5 days
20 + million users of iCloud in 5 days

I would love to be disappointing as a company with these numbers…

Results: Apple – Analysts: 1 – 0 or maybe already like 20 – 0 when viewed over the years….

Apple Press release

HDR Panoramic View on Leinsweiler – Germany

jaapwillem — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 07:10:07 +0000

HDR Panoramic view on the Leinsweiler village in Germany

We were in Leinsweiler last August (2011) for a wedding and stayed at the local Leinsweiler Hof Hotel.

After suffering a lot of rain during the summer in Holland, we were very pleasantly surprised with the beautiful weather in Germany.

This HDR panoramic picture is from the sunset when we arrived in Leinsweiler and made of 3 different photographs. As usual it´s post-edited with Photomatix and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, soon I´ll share my workflow within these 2 programs.

If you have a chance to visit the area of Leinsweiler, you definitely should do this, not only because of the beautiful surroundings but as well because it´s part of the wine region in Germany. The wine is very nice as well

I expect to publish more photographs soon, in the meanwhile enjoy this HDR panoramic photograph :)

Blackberry outages – Great gift to Apple

jaapwillem — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 17:23:52 +0000

Blackberry Outages are a great gift to Apple, just with the release of the new iOS5 tomorrow

Is this one of the last nails in the Blackberry coffin?

Blackberry User revolt on disruptions

Over 1 million iPhone4s preorders in 24 hrs

jaapwillem — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 13:07:11 +0000

Apple has recorded over 1 million iPhone4s preorders within 24 hours.

Some impressive numbers published by Apple this morning. The pre-order sales of the iPhone4S is more than 1 million.

It seems that the number of phones sold is actually accelerating. See the graph below. It will be interesting to make a diversification by Country and Carrier.

And I thought Apple was losing its Mojo and it was a disappointing device??

Thank you Steve Jobs… My 5 cents…

jaapwillem — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 20:07:08 +0000

Thank you Steve Jobs…

Thank you for making the products I use daily… Computers, iPods and iPhones.

Thank you for inspiring to do things you´re really good at.

Thank you for teaching your unique way of giving presentations..

Thank you for the endless evenings during keynotes or special events and hitting reload every second to learn about the new product.

Thank you for the person you were and showed it to the world.

Thank you for making my tech life easier..

Thank you for these lessons and I´ll do my best to keep them in mind…

Rest in Peace and my deepest thoughts to your family and loved ones…

Thank you

The IPhone 4S

jaapwillem — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 20:50:51 +0000

The iPhone 4S product page. With very nice HTML 5 integration and effects.

iPhone 4S

Your HTC Android Phone is open for everyone

jaapwillem — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 14:50:00 +0000

A total different way of defining open. It does remind me of the Sony backdoor policies back in the days.

Check this blog if you a HTC and want to be secure.

Massive Security vulnerability | androidpolice