The two big sites that operate in the ‘ham are Groupon and LivingSocial. Groupon has a unique difference, in that a minimum number of people have to buy before the deal is valid. Early purchasers’ credit cards aren’t charged until the deal “tips,” or until the minimum number is reached. About 98% of Groupon deals are successful.

These sites can be a real boon for small businesses. Here’s why you should consider running a deal on Groupon or LivingSocial:

• It’s risk-free. The sites takes a percentage of each deal sold, so you never have to write them a check. They just send you the money you’ve made. With Groupon, you don’t owe them money if your deal doesn’t tip.
• It’s easy. The sites handle all promotion and payments from the end user. That means all you do is post the deal and cash the checks.
• It gets new customers in the door. Online coupons give people a real incentive to try something new. And once they’re in the door, they’re more likely to come back or refer a friend.
• It reaches a targeted audience. Not only are you targeting locals, but you’re deal is reaching people who have signed up for the service. That means they’re primed to buy.
• It harnesses the power of social media. People who use these sites are already social online, so they’re likely to spread the word. Running a deal can generate buzz if you are starting a new business.

Keep them coming back.

At the moment, neither Groupon nor LivingSocial provide businesses with contact information for people who buy deals. Which means that even if your deal is a hit, you have no way to follow up with those customers. I suggest having a secondary deal in place. As people come in to redeem their coupons, hand them another coupon. That brings them in the door at least one more time and gives you an extra chance to make them a repeat customer.

What business owners are saying.

Jan Moon, owner of Dreamcakes in Homewood, recently ran a Groupon deal to get $12 worth of cupcakes for $5. (If you’ve tasted their wares, you know what a deal that is. Put one of their red velvet cupcakes on your head and your tongue will slap your brains out trying to get to it.) 1,602 deals were purchased. Here’s what Jan says about her experience:

So fun to work with. They [Groupon] really do all the work and you get lots of new customers and a whole day of advertising directed at people in your city. It really generated lots of excitement about our cupcakes.

For contact info and more details on what Groupon and LivingSocial can do for your business, check out Why Groupon or Feature Your Business on LivingSocial. Have you run a deal or purchased a deal on one of these sites? Share your experience in the comments.

If you live in a city of over 100,000 people, you likely have a functioning Craigslist. I have gotten some amazing finds here in Birmingham, Alabama: furniture, kids’ toys, and and the house I’m currently living in just to name a few. It’s cheaper than eBay and local, so you can buy and sell things more quickly since no shipping is involved.

You’ve probably heard about some of the sites PR problems recently concerning the Personals category. The Craigslist Killer picked victims from Adult Services. (An entire category that’s beyond my comprehension, but it is what it is, I guess.)

Craigslist is notorious for it’s non-design. And the reason why has been addressed from the top:

It is the same reason that craigslist has never done any of the things that would win approval among Web entrepreneurs, the same reason he has never updated its 1999-era Web design. The reason is that craigslist’s users are not asking for such changes.

“I hear this all the time,” [Craigslist CEO Jim] Buckmaster says. “You guys are so primitive, you are like cavemen. Don’t you have any sense of aesthetic? But the people I hear it from are invariably working for firms that want the job of redoing the site. In all the complaints and requests we get from users, this is never one of them. Time spent on the site, the number of people who post—we’re the leader. It could be we’re doing one or two things right.” via Wired

So a few subtle changes are kind of a big deal. Here’s a rundown of what I see that’s different:

• White background instead of grey
• Lightened up the grey panels
• Added a “nearby CL” column on the right
• Increased font size of headers
• Narrowed the overall width by a few pixels, mostly by paring down the right-hand column, but also by narrowing the one on the left

The white background to me gives the biggest improvement. The links feel like they have more room to breathe, and removing what amounted to hundreds of little boxes around the links clears away a good amount of visual clutter.

Very good job, I’d say, and still without changing the heart of the site.

Share your thoughts in the comments.

But as it turns out, iPhone users have more sex. Who can argue with that?

Since Apple does things pretty well, it’s really frustrating when something doesn’t work the way it should. And when I pulled up the App Store on my iPhone recently to update a few apps, it kept asking me for the password to an outdated account. Weirder, the account was correct in the Store settings on my phone. So what to do?

Ultimately, I deleted and redownloaded the apps. Fortunately they were all free; although I know all the apps were purchased under my existing account, so I’m sure even if they weren’t free I’d have been able to download them again without paying.

Thanks to Google I know a few other folks have had this problem. If you have, tell me how you fixed it in the comments.

Really don’t be fooled, on the other hand, into pondering you will discover authentic tips at deliver the results below. Just as “The Matrix” was a clever mish-mash of a dozen superb, but aged, ideas, so too is “Inception.” The suggestions present the following are already a part of discipline fiction for sixty years. The kind you study, not view.

I could explain to you in great detail why I decide to change the name of my freelance design business, how I decided on Awful Cool, and a hundred other things — but I won’t. Mostly because I’ve been rolling this stuff around in my brain for six months and I’m tired of thinking about it.

(By the way, if you notice any unfinished sentences, dead links or other detritus, please pay them no mind. All part of the creative process.)

Instead I’ll show you what’s been going on around here lately. For starters, I posted my moodboard a couple months back. Since then lots of sketching:

and lots of website mockups:

I would like to point out that the process illustrated here is nothing like my process when I design for other people. Designing for myself involves going a million directions at once only to settle on the first thing you thought of – like the yellow plaid.