Quick usability test for you. Which of the following buttons would you most like to press?

If you are like me, you will have said “The one with the whopping great exclamation mark, of course”.

Perhaps the key as to what the buttons actually mean will help you change your mind?

No, saying not to press something just makes me want to press it more. And where does it take you?

To the website of boyband 911 where, if I was a typical user, I would stay and buy a copy of “Party People” on cassingle, rather than returning to Supergrass’ site where I would have definitely have bought all 3 versions of “Mary” on CD instead.

It’s not just usability where Supergrass went wrong in their 2000 web marketing, another is in their SEO.

There is a trick called “cloaking” in which you provide content just for search engines. It’s likely to get you slapped by search engines if they catch you doing such a thing.

Now let’s go to Supergrass’ shop…

What’s that? A list of keywords. I guess, they could always say it is something else other than cloaking. I don’t know – off the top of my head – the lyrics to a list song in the style of “We Didn’t Start The Fire” by Billy Joel. Yes, that will do. But wait…

Oh dear.

At least the record label allowed Supergrass to build their own sub-site, and not worry about all the marketing mumbo jumbo.

Here we discover that someone in the Supergrass camp is skilled in the art of the animated gif…

Now, to play “Caught By The Fuzz” on MIDI and sing along with the gifs.