Warning: this Click is entirely self promotional. Feel free to delete it immediately.

Many companies invest heavily in getting you to their website and then aim to be as boring and straight and uncontroversial and unmemorable as possible once you get there.

I think this is a good use of Salesforce's homepage:

The Click #18

Warning: this Click is entirely self promotional. Feel free to delete it immediately.

Last Click I was prattling on about the importance of prices on a website. Half way through I realised our site totally ignored all the advice I was giving. A bit further on I was hit by an idea so momentous that I was worried it was a brain spasm. I checked with my partners. They said it wasn't. So here goes:

Mint - take it or leave it

For £450 we'll mock you up a new home page.

What's the big idea?

Many people we meet know their website isn't up to scratch. A major stumbling block to improving the situation is the fear that a new one won't be any better. Or, more precisely, that it won't be sufficiently better to justify the expense.

This frustrates us. Every single client we've had agrees that their site has been, at the very least, a very worthwhile investment.

So we want to remove the fear from commissioning a website. The plan is we have a chat on the phone and then create you one home page redesign. This allows us to you show how much better your site could be, without you having to make a big commitment.

As part of the deal, we ask for an hour of your time to pop in and discuss what we have created. (A mock-up inevitably has loose ends that are best discussed round a table.)

What then?

Well, the choice is yours. We can discuss how we'd take the design and make a site based round it. Or you can take our ideas and use them yourself.

Or, if you don't like it all, you can walk away (well, we'll walk away). It is called 'Mint - Take it or Leave it' because if you (really, truly) don't value it, you don't have to pay us a penny.

What could be less risky than that?

Sign up now! Email andy@mintdigital.com or call 020 7193 7312.

By some fluke, 3 sites have rolled off the production line at the same time:

Adopt an olive tree at Nudo Italia.

Buy lovingly designed jewellery at Advanced Jewel-Craft.

Start a firm with the advice at Business Bricks.

"SaveMyAss is a personal assistant that keeps your girlfriend or wife happy by sending her flowers on your behalf, on a regular but semi-random basis." - http://savemyass.com/

The one bit of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style that is widely remembered is 'Omit needless words'.

I've often tried to apply this principle to design.

It's nice to hear a different perspective. Yagoda notes (quoted in the fab FT magazine), Strunk and White's "implicit and sometime explicit goal is a transparent prose, where the writing exists solely to serve the meaning, and no trace of the author - no mannerisms, no voice, no individual style - should remain."

"We think of shopping as basically an application of search" says Jan Pedersen at Yahoo (quoted in John Battelle's new book. Cracking excerpt in the FT).

It reminds me of Marc Andressen saying years ago that Netscape would "reduce Windows to a set of poorly debugged device drivers". It sounds right but its going to take a while to figure out what it means.

The Click #17

We recently completed a project for a telecoms/ISP client comparing their website against its competitors.

Their main motivation for commissioning the project was the fear that other websites might have clever functionalities that they were missing.

We found something else.

User after user just wanted to see prices. No one cared about Company X's white paper: 'A vision for the future of telecoms'. No one wanted Company Y's site personalisation options.

If a user is scanning a page, a price catches the eye and shows that something is for sale.

But that's not all.

Web usability 'guru' ('bore', some say) Jakob Nielsen puts it well: Price is the most specific piece of info customers use to understand the nature of an offering, and not providing it makes people feel lost and reduces their understanding of a product line. We have miles of videotape of users asking "Where's the price?" while tearing their hair out.'

The price hiding impulse Most of our clients are nervous about displaying their prices.

I know the feeling.

With the initial draft of the Mint Digital site, I tried to be up front about our prices. I was advised by wiser heads that it would limit our flexibility.

But I wish I had stuck to my guns. The web has increased the pay-off from clarity.

Even if you can't be totally clear, you can give some indication.

Our friends at Natural Training mainly do bespoke training for big firms. It is hard for them to state a price as every course is a one-off. However they also run open workshops – fixed price group training for individuals. They've recently added prices for the open workshops to their site (which gives all potential clients their bearings) and a prominent quote request form for bespoke training.

It has made a big difference to their response rates. Their conclusion: 'prospective customers surfing our site want to find out as much as possible before making contact'.

I need to drink my own medicine I'm keen to make the Mint site follow this advice. While writing this Click I've hatched a plan. If my partners agree we'll launch it next Click. Read next fortnight to be the first to hear about 'Mint: take it or leave it'.

Welcome, sports fans! Suggest the best new slogan for our banner and we'll invite you to watch the cricket from our roof on Sunday.

Either leave your slogan in the comments or email andy@mintdigital.com.

NOTE: THIS COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED

(Note: the view from our roof is blocked by the video replay screen. With a bit of luck you may be able to squeeze along the roof. Otherwise, it is pleasant to watch it on TV and hear the atmosphere.)

Click #16

Bloggers solve murders. Law professors make techno. Illustrators draw on rubbish.

There is a shift from professional to DIY happening all over the web.

The creative urge Clever websites tap in to this.

eBay lets you play at being a shopkeeper (the line between play and reality quickly blurs). Wikipedia invites you to read (like a conventional encyclopaedia) but you can write it too. Boing Boing and CollegeHumor have content submitted by thousands of volunteers, edited by a small core team.

Easy self-expression It isn't always obvious how to let your customers stick their heads above the parapet. This site for world environment day does it well.

Mint are making a site which lets you adopt an olive tree. Our favourite idea is an interactive map that lets you check out all the orphan trees. When you adopt a tree you'll upload a message - 'Happy birthday, gran', 'Freddie Flintoff ate my hamster' or whatever. This messages will become part of the map - defining neighbourhoods and influencing future adoptive parents.

We are currently reworking Matt Weston's BusinessBricks. The aim is to create easy - but meaningful - ways for readers to interact. When we get the infrastructure right there's lots of scope for a community to flourish.

Let 1000 customers bloom Ten years ago, you sat there while TV bludgeoned you over the head with advertising messages. The internet - especially the way it has developed over the last 18 months - lets much more interesting interactions happen. How can you let your customers bloom?

Cycling back from Pecha Kucha, I stopped at the lights in Parliament Square.

This huge American couple approached. The woman was taller than me and twice as wide. The man was much, much bigger.

'Excuse me, where's the Big Ben?' she asks.

'Up there', I point. (It was less than 50m away and directly visible.)

'Oh, I was expecting it to be big.'

Nowadays, Aussies gloat over a draw.

Read the Guardian's over-by-over Ashes coverage.

Intimate, informal and current - great web writing. This is their desciption of Warne's wicket last Sunday:

WICKET! Australia 220-9 (Warne hit wicket b Flintoff 42) Freddie does it again, albeit in bizarre circumstances. Flintoff speared a swinging yorker in towards Shane Warne's leg stump, it missed by quite a way, but Warne did a Cruyff turn on his off stump and sent it flying. You couldn't make it up, and luckily you don't have to. Priceless slapstick.

(There's two types of writing. Know which you're about.)

We've just launched two new sites Our most pared back ever: Taranto Consultancy And our most colourful: James Byrne

Click #15

This Click is about the art of creating enjoyable journeys through websites. Check these examples:

1. BustedTees thank you page

Thank you pages are usually dull. This hip made me smile.

2. PledgeBank email confirmation

It is a hassle being forced to enter a username and password. PledgeBank gives you the opportunity not to bother. What joy!

3. Getting Real sign up

This page has one function: to get you to sign up to a mailing list. The copy is over-sized. I got a silly spark of happiness when I entered my name and it was big too.

4. Gmail threaded conversations

This is a lovely way to display an email conversation. Grouping conversations makes them easier to manage. Colour improves the page's usability.

Why this matters Offline there is a disconnection. Say you see a cracking advert for a mobile phone network and the next day you have a miserable experience with that firm (maybe you get put on hold for 30 minutes then the line goes dead). Your brain separates out the two. The benefit of the lovely advert isn't totally obliterated by the terrible service.

Online it is different - the brand message and the customer service are the same thing. The user's experience becomes a concrete expression of the brand. So creating pleasant interactions will pay dividends.

Great to see that there's a move to start a UK organisation to protect digital rights: http://www.pledgebank.com/rights

The flowering of creativity that results from open source thinking means this organisation could be a valuable counterweight against the lobbying power of old media. Hope they get to 1000 pledges.

My article for Marketing Week has just been published. It was supposed to be about the importance of details in web design (based on Click 12) but after interviewing some top web designers, it got blown off course.

Now it's about how to create interesting interactions - and why that is such an important part of a company's public face. And how commercial web designers are learning from blogs and fan sites. And how that's leading to warmer, more expressive web design.

The Click #14

The last few Clicks have been rather serious. I apologise. Websites should be fun. People want to be entertained. Make someone smile and you've made a connection.

Flashing lights My bro-in-law (hi, Tim!) sent this email from Australia:

"I came across this website www.ozcableguy.com, and thought you might like it - it is so crammed full of useful information I feel I just have to buy the otherwise pretty commoditised product (a wireless broadband router) from him. For some inexplicable reason I love the van! Normally I hate stuff like that."

OK, Tim mentions "useful information". But I bet it is the flashing lights that got him enthused.

Corporate hugs Last week I interviewed the creative directors at two of the UK's most on-the-pulse web design companies: Poke and E3.

Both were fascinating guys, coming at web design from different perspectives. A striking similarity was that they were both striving to make sites that are warmer, more communicative and more fun.

Poke's Webby-winning jamieoliver.com aims for the vibrancy and intimacy of a good homemade site. It's punchy, fluffy and loveable.

E3's site is a carnival of colour and action. How different from the minimalism that used to rule web design (and still does, in some corners... erm, like mintdigital.com... new site in the greenhouse).

A hug from a stranger Be careful. It's great to be friendly. But overstep the mark and it feels like a hug from a stranger.

Even neo-bubble darlings get caught out. Anthropolgist Grant McCracken dissects an email from Flickr:

"Here’s the thing that really struck me, the people at Flickr call themselves Flickroobies and they call us Flickreebies. Suddenly, I feel like I am back at a United Church summer camp"

The winning hug For my money you can't beat Skype. A dry product (internet telephony) is bought to life by playful animation and excellent text focusing on the product's stand-out benefit - free global chat. What a loveable site!

For more info or to send your CV, email andy@mintdigital.com.

Excellent Flash work: Don't click - testing assuptions of interactivity Casualities in Iraq - testament by date and location