CuppaGemma

On summer holiday my father would take us to several different places. He liked to go to car shows and get parts to restore his roadsters, but he also enjoyed the simple task of walking around and rummaging through piles to find an interesting tool an old book or something or other that could be haggled over and showed to mom. He liked the hodge podge markets that had a bit of everything.

I thought about this as a friend observed my shopping habits for groceries. “Strategic.” I want in then out have a list in my head or on the back of a receipt and prefer the experience sans children. I tend to go to butcher, the fruit and veg market and the little import store that has good bread. Stop and shop is like cleaning the toilet, necessary but unpleasant, so I prefer to get it over with efficiently.

It’s about choice, and there are times when meandering loses its luster. I don’t want nine varieties of juice. I need this OJ (and thanks much for putting the packaging style back to what we all know) that grapefruit juice and this type of shampoo. These are fixed and unless something is going to make my life that much easier or cheaper, I am not going to change habits.

In Tokyo we had a the milkman come and leave us bottles outside three times a week. It was easy, the milk was cold and the rattle of glass bottles and his motorbike got me up before five. Nothing to lug up the hill and if needed I could just ring the little Meiji store and ask for an extra bottle if I were running low.

Here I am bombarded by constant reorganization of items, additional product varieties, and overly large containers. And with our attention and time increasingly committed to other things some Web sites seem to be evolving into Sunday flea market stall meets Costco with bells and whistles and please please someone twitter this now! going on.

Time out. You lose my attention with too much noise. Hold on a tick, why would I stick around on this sort of site for that kind of content tumbled in with this kind of content.

Darn, it’s like integrity gets lost with the rush to mash, to link, to cobrand, to widgetify, to do something anything everything in order to keep the reader there a bit longer. Rummaging to find what you need is tiresome. Rummaging because you can’t figure out what it is you are supposed to be there for is worse than an irritating sales pitch, it’s memorably bad to the point of comedy.

Maybe we’ve lost the point. If we know who we are and what we are about- that’s clear and consistent. If we know who we are trying to reach, and what their interests are, and how our site or content fits with those interests, two points for the Gipper.

But if we keep adding and changing and shifting and thising and thating, it’s only a matter of time before the shininess of it all gets lost and feels formulaic.  Glaze over and click away. Don’t come back since trying to find what you need is like getting to Solla Sollew, the Dr Seuss story about a place with no troubles.

The milkman had a solid sale with us because he was consistent.

He made it easy for us and we liked the uniqueness of his service. He didn’t also try to get me to buy vegetables or chocolate or another newspaper subscription. He did his product and did it well. He kept our business because he built a relationship with us. Making sure to give the kids a “service” (which is how you would describe for free in Japanese) of a yogurt drink or a little apple juice when we went by. His shop was likely at the station since it was built.

I wonder about how long sites last with so much noise and change. Clearly the needs of audiences are different- but the desire to have something that is consistently itself- whether it’s  an online magazine, or an Internet tool is there at an integral level. I think they sit flashing like storefronts somewhere off the Internet superhighway, bright and frozen in their empty moment and always waiting for the crowded tomorrow that will not come.