Mark Forrester - Independent digital designer and online entrepreneur

10 days ago I ordered 2 t-shirts from the US based Oddica.com. I bought the t-shirts in the October sale, 2 for $34, with a $10 postage fee.

Today I received my package in the post and I was most impressed. Inside the lovely packaging were my two branded American Apparel t-shirts, along with some complimentary postcards, stickers and 2 badges with the matching designs printed on them.

Anyone selling a product online can learn a lesson from these guys. They could have sent me my t-shirts in a generic brown paper bag with a receipt attached. Instead they have paid special attention to the packaging of the product, creating more of an experience when opening your branded goody bag.

First impressions count and Oddica have assured themselves of a repeat purchase from me.

This little podcast made my morning. Of course you should really be a supporter of the Springboks to really enjoy this humour.

This month has seen a nice surge in website traffic, this is not attributed to the Digg effect or the Slashdot effect, but the ever growing StumbleUpon effect.

I’ve written about StumbleUpon before, when I first discovered it through my web stats almost a year ago now. It continues to impress me, both in the content it finds me, and the hits it sends me.

“According to eBizMBA, StumbleUpon ranked at number 6 for the 30 most popular social bookmarking sites for July 2007. The site was ranked above both Slashdot and Reddit but still is one of the least appreciated sources of traffic. The reasons for this are because people misunderstand the nature of the site. Because StumbleUpon was conceived as, and continues to be a site that is heavily used to explore content consisting of art, design, and photography, people think that other kinds of content cannot become popular on the site. “

Source: The unappreciated Stumbleupon effect – Pronet Advertising

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Autumn has certainly gripped London. In fact, it’s almost winter, what a depressing thought.

Autumn is not all dull and gloom though because with Autumn comes a beautiful pallete of reds, golds and russets as London parks put on their final show before winter bites.

At 6am on Saturday morning, yes folks 6am, the morning after friday night, I braved the outdoors and drove down to Richmond park with my mate, Bryce, to snap some shots with our Canon SLRs. 2 degrees it said on the car themometer and 2 degrees it was. My hands could have been used for the Dulux colour card for colours violet to blue.

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