Rounding down
Anywhere is walking distance if you’ve got the time.
IKEA has a new idea, advertised on posters instore. It suggests you leave the car at home, and try walking instead. It’s greener, it says. Last weekend we only had to pick up one item, so we gave it a go. Our local IKEA happens to be IKEA Edmonton - infamous for its first day chavalanche. But, according to the catalogue, and this map, it’s a short 1 mile hop from the tube station.
Except it isn’t. It’s double that. Actual distance (according to Google Maps) - 1.9 miles. Maybe IKEA meant a country mile, or maybe Google’s figures are out by 90%. But much more likely IKEA was just doing what big “they” businesses always do - rounding down. IKEA’s marketing wonks probably think if it says 1 mile, “they” (the customers) are marginally more likely to make the journey. But what would happen if IKEA - and others - stopped rounding down, and started rounding in favour of the customer?
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YOu should RSS Feed your site so that people can add it to their aggregators and automatically know when there are updates….
by Sarah on 29 Sep
Matt Weston says:
Sarah, thanks. That’s one glitch we’re working on right now. Should be up shortly.
by Matt Weston on 29 Sep
Mark says:
I second that RSS request!
by Mark on 29 Sep
andy bell says:
blink and it will be done!
by andy bell on 29 Sep
Mike Bird says:
What the is an rss feed / aggregtor?
by Mike Bird on 29 Sep
Stephen Moretti says:
Mike, aggregators are just clients, either web-based or on your computer, that gather all your favourite blogs and web feeds (not just RSS, but atom and other types as well) in one place so you can view the new posts at a glance rather than having to visit every site all the time.
Check out the Google Desktop - that has an aggregator built-in, as well as everything else it does. It adds RSS feeds it finds as you are surfing, so you want to watch out that it doesn’t flood you with information you were only interested in once.
Matt, Like the new logo and the cleaner/fresher look, but I’m not sure about the slightly obsure navigation (the flickr nav works for keywords on flickr, but I’m not so sure for section in business bricks directory) Also, there doesn’t seem to be any description that tells the casual visitor what they are actually looking and what a great resource it is. Will you be putting the archive of old newsletters on here too?
by Stephen Moretti on 29 Sep
Annette Sharp says:
I wouldn’t put too much faith in Google maps - if I type my own home postcode into Google, the Google Map it shows me tells me I live in Horsham, which is about 15-20 miles away from Worthing, whre I actually live. The map itself is correct, but the town name Google gives it is incorrect. When I emailed Google to tell them this, they said
a. they didn’t guarantee the maps were accurate and
b. they weren’t able to change the maps based on customers pointing out errors
So if your IKEA distances are wrong according to Google, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Google is right and IKEA is wrong…and isn’t Google itself heading towards becoming a big “they” company?
by Annette Sharp on 30 Sep
Marian Bore says:
I like the new look site, Matt. You’ll let us know when we can sign up to be told about updates, won’t you? There’s no way I could go to IKEA on foot a) because I live too far away, but b) more importantly, I never leave with less than a van full! Seriously, though, I am a great one for plain speaking and not rounding up (or down) to suit the message ‘they’ may wish to blind customers into thinking. I am far more impressed with something that ‘does what it says on the tin’ than something that claims it’s ’simply the best’ dry cleaners (or whatever) in town.
by Marian Bore on 30 Sep
Fuji Saki says:
is it easy to create an rss feed of your own site. i would be interested to know how.
by Fuji Saki on 30 Sep
Andy Bell says:
Fuji - most content management systems come with RSS feeds nowadays. For instance, this site is built on top of an open sourse (that is, free!) content management system called WordPress. Wordpress creates RSS feeds and does lots of other useful things too!
Matt - I’m not sure I agree with this one. If I understand you correctly, you are saying that Ikea (and other businesses) would benefit from being more honest. While I’m all in favour of honesty - I don’t think it is as simple. I heard (in a pub, it might be rubbish!) that Innocent uses a major food processing company to crush their fruit. For me, that rather spoils the illusion that Innocent work so hard to create. Do you suggest they should advertise that fact?
Or to take another example, the directors at the firm where I used to work at decided to be honest about the financial requirements of the projects we needed to win. Most of the staff were turned off by this because they were motivatated by creativity rather than profitability. Money talk, while honest, highlighted the business side of things that many staff prefered not to think about. What would you recommend in this situation?
by Andy Bell on 5 Oct