Today’s house hunting sites are getting more and more advanced in helping us gather enough resources to decide whether or not I like a particular property. Be they ample photos, 360 degree tours, streetview, detailed floorplans, or detailed energy consumption stats. We can easily create accounts, add / remove properties, and book viewings from our desk. Where the whole experience breaks down is when estate agents can’t be bothered to update their site when properties become under offer or get sold. When agents don’t bother updating these key details it can mean users – their clients – wasting valuable time pondering, calculating, and imagining houses that are no longer available. By this time, it doesn’t matter how great your website, leading potential clients ’round the houses’ can mean an irrecoverbly bad reputation with the public, leading to negative word-of-mouth. Worst culprits so far are Kinleigh Folkard Howard in Hayes and West Wickham. Shame on
you … tut tut.

Just can’t get enough of iconography. They add so much more visual engagement (for me anyway) to a list of ’stuff’ …

In all the world’s major cities, our cosmopolitan society means in any given 100 people segment you’ll find people who originted from all corners of the globe. The same can be said about your site’s visitors. Where previously most of them would arrive after typing your domain name into their browser’s address bar, they now come from all places and they’re ‘driving funny cars’. Ok, the bit about funny cars is me drawing a (very) loose comparison with the different types of ‘browser’ users use to view your site … if any at all. Here are a few common ‘use cases’:

Using the common web browser from a computer (laptop / desktop / netbook)

Not-paid-for

1. User arrives at your site after conducting a keyword search on Google (other browsers of similar performance are also available…)
2. User clicks on an ‘image’ in a Google image search
3. User types your domain name into the browser address bar
4. User clicks on a link provided in a friend’s email or IM chat
5. User clicks on a link on a social networking platform such as: a twitter tweet / re-tweet; a URL link on a community member’s profile page; a Facebook post; Facebook fan page; Facebook Group page; a Delicious bookmark; a YouTube video page; a Digg post;  Wikipedia page; widgets and badges;
6. User clicks on a link in a blog post, in a post comment or on a poster’s linked username
7. Forum posts and community discussions

Paid for

1. Banner ads: skyscrapers, MPUs, text ads on search results pages, text ads on third-party sites (e.g. blogs or article pages)
2. News stories (BBC, iGoogle, Netvibes)
3. Articles (About.come, CNET)
4. RSS feeds …
5. ATL campaigns driving keyword searches or direct entered-URL visits
6. Sponsored site / co-branding links

Other

1. Mobile phone browsers … man checking football scores / email / updating web 2.0 sites while waiting for partner in the fitting room … writing a blog post while waiting for food in a restaurant … sending a photo to Flickr / blog / Twitpic while on the street (guerilla journalism) … last two are probably more content publishing than site visiting
2. Widescreen TVs … watching online / downloaded videos via a connected laptop

Will add more as I think of them …