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Joseph C Lawrence: Columnist

Joseph C Lawrence has had lots of thoughts for a while now about the way in which evolutionary and cognitive psychology can help us improve the way we experience the web. Understanding the way our minds work and process information can give us amazing insights about web design, web marketing, and web commerce. He’s had these thoughts for a while, but feels like a beginner at putting them into practice. He aspires to be a great designer, User Interface boffin and web marketer all rolled into one. Unfortunately for him, his career to date has focused more on science than art, but he has had the good fortune to work at SA Camera, Cyberlink Software and Clicks2Customers where he has always been surrounded by excellent people and been challenged in interesting ways. He is currently working as a UX Designer/Information Architect at Quirk eMarketing.

RECENT POSTS

• How will Google+ make money?

  Google+ is clearly Google’s most successful foray into the social web thus far, and it looks set to get a lot of usage. One thing puzzling many commentators, however, is the business model.Google have stated that they will not be putting advertising on Google+, so its primary business model is seemingly being foregone. Other very successful Google services and products, like Google Docs also don’t have advertising on them, but Google Docs is by no means as obvious a ...

• The importance of listening to expert users

  It has always been the case that customers can end up knowing more about a business than its owners.In the world of modern web based businesses with vast user bases however, it is so much more prevalent and significant that it should form an integral part of business strategy. Smart web businesses do this, as do smart 'offline' businesses with the help of their web presences.This user expertise can take many forms, and can be leveraged in many ...

• Why can’t Google win at social?

  The number of times that Google has failed at delivering a successful ‘social’ product is in danger of rising to an embarrassing degree. Google Wave is no longer actively developed for use; Buzz has experienced low usage, and seems to most to yield little value; Latitude never gained traction like Foursquare has; Orkut (Google’s Facebook like social network) is perhaps its most successful project but can claim little popularity outside of Brazil and India.Recently the latest attempt to make headlines ...

• Google builds its energy business with $100M wind farm investment

  For a long time now, the company that built its business on search and advertising has been rooting around in the electricity and energy arena. In February 2010, Google was granted an order by the US government allowing it to buy and sell energy at market rates.At the time, the line from Google was that it was not interested in becoming an energy supplier, but rather in buying clean, green energy and using the green credits it would get to ...

• Is the internet making us more peaceful?

  The modern, real-time web allows us to get instant notification of news and events around the world. More often than not, the stories that are newsworthy enough to spread quickly through the social web are ones of dramatic turmoil, and disaster.Even in the past two months we have seen the important role that social media has played in spreading information about the unrest in the Middle East, and the Tsunami in Japan. Despite what we see every day, we ...

• The Dark Side of Virality

  Not too long ago, the only application of the word ‘virus’ in the context of IT and the internet was a malicious piece of code that wreaked havoc with your computer. Fast forward a couple of years, and whilst ‘virus’ still means the same thing, it is overshadowed by ‘Viral’ – the mystical holy grail of online marketing. Every online marketer and content creator dreams of creating something that ‘goes viral’, spreading like wildfire through the web: a snowballing meme ...

• Apps vs. The web: A big debate

  Not long ago, the ‘apps vs. the web’ debate only really made sense in the context of mobile. Now, at the initiative of companies like Apple, the issue is spreading not just to tablet computers, but to the desktop as well. Apple’s App Store has ported the concept of low cost or even free Apps from the mobile arena to the desktop, and brought with it the same controversies for both users and developers.What is an App?The term ‘App’ obviously ...

• New Facebook messaging: The good, the bad & the ugly

  Facebook started rolling out its new messaging platform at the end of 2010, adding new functionality as well as a new interface to the service. One of the most widely mentioned new functions is the option to get an ‘@facebook.com’ email address, allowing friends (and of course people who don’t know you at all) to send a message into your Facebook messages inbox via email.Another key new function is the addition of text messaging integration – a service with ...

• Do no evil? The Google & JC Penney controversy

  We usually associate black hat Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) tactics with spammy sites selling get rich quick guides, or porn, or any other slightly dubious online business. This is why it is so surprising (and intriguing) when a major US retailer gets caught with its SEO pants down.The New York Times has released an article describing how black hat SEO tactics allowed American retailer JC Penney to rank first on Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for a large number ...

• Is digital marketing becoming the new traditional?

  One of the "Big Discussions" in advertising at the moment concerns the growth of digital, and the effect it is having on the industry as a whole, as well as the agencies that belong to it. So-called "traditional" agencies are expanding into the digital space, while the digital agencies that started off on the more geeky side of online marketing are becoming more creative by the day.A fantastic example of a creative triumph by a digital agency occurred recently at ...

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