All of these are from today

As you can see, most of my visitors where looking for , which is a pet supply franchise chain. That’s because I blogged about how badly ‘s Luxembourgish website sucks. Not only is it configured in a way that omitting the “www.” will get you nowhere, even if you make it to their website it’s difficult to locate their biggest store unless you know where to find it on a map (or keep zooming out). This quickly became the most popular post on my blog (pathetic, I know) which means that I’m obviously not the only one who had trouble finding what I wanted on their site.

So here’s a quick reminder of the very basic content you should put on your website (examples are geared towards a brick and mortar store).

The 5 friggin’ Ws – things you should definitely put on your website

Let’s simply take the well-known 5 Ws from journalism and reinterpret them from the perspective of a website visitor looking for information (which should also get us pretty close to the perspective of a search engine trying to determine your website’s ranking). Apparently these basics are so obvious that they’re often forgotten (either that or many people just have no clue of what to put on a website).

Who?

Who are you? Example: We’re “Zombie Megastore”, Luxembourg’s leading store for all you zombie needs.

What?

What exactly is it that you do? Example: We carry a large selection of… well, maybe I shouldn’t have chosen the zombie store example. Anyhow, here’s where you list the things customers can find in your shop so that 1. they’ll find you when searching for your city + a certain item or brand on a search engine and 2. they don’t have to call and ask if you sell product XYZ item before taking the trip to your store.

When?

Opening hours. If you’re closed on certain days, put this on your website. If you’re closing your shop for vacation, put this on your website (yes, I’m looking at you, Luxembourgish shop and restaurant owners who like to take long summer vacations).

Where?

Your address (you might want to include your phone/fax number, email, link to contact form, etc.).

Why?

This is the place where you might think you’ll have to come up with a wonderful story to justify why you’re doing what you do (“when my grandfather turned into a zombie, I realized there was no shop where I could buy thinks to make his… uhm… ‘life’ just a bit better”). That’s cute, but I suggest staying with the customer perspective and just answering the old basic “why should I buy from you”-question. It can be as simple as “we are the biggest store for zombie supplies in the entire state”.

That’s it, the basics. Of course a website can do much more than just answering these questions, but not answering them means you’ll lose potential visitors/customers every day.

I discovered this when receiving my first Google Adsense check from Google’s bank in Germany. This sort of intra-EU payment might have been “cutting edge” a century ago. Nowadays it’s just odd and annoying, because I have to leave the office during the very restricted opening hours of my bank to cash the check, which costs me €15 in fees (or about a week of Adsense revenue). Someone at Google should look up Regulation (EC) No 2560/2001.

It’s not just Luxembourg, though, it appears Google doesn’t like smaller Eurozone countries and Greece (bad vacation experiences, maybe?):

Population data from Wikipedia

Here’s a demo showing how it’s supposed to work (in French only, like the entire website).

Hat tip to business review (print edition May 2008).

Links: Wort.lu has pictures of the construction and a “special report” (PDF, in German).

Apparently, some sort of Luxembourgish product and retail store search engine is in the works, too. The idea seems to be that you enter the product and it tells you where you can find what you want in Luxembourg and why you shouldn’t drive to Trier instead. Just kidding about the Trier part.

BTW, the young woman chewing on her shopping bag on goodidea.lu is file number 3563163 from iStockphoto [affiliate link].
Happy shopping!

Note: This blog here has moved to a new server at Hosteurope [affiliate link] (and has been updated to the latest version of WordPress), please let me know if something’s broken.

At least, that used to be the situation until…  well, I have no idea when they actually changed this, but anyhow: It’s finally possible to withdraw money to a bank account in Luxembourg!

As you can see, you can alternatively withdraw funds to a credit/debit card (this feature had been announced on the Paypal Blog in September).

I’m just glad I didn’t go through the trouble of establishing a bank account in the U.S. just to be able to withdraw funds.

***

In other “news that I apparently missed”, Paypal competitor Moneybookers [affiliate link] is allowing merchants to accept payments with the French Carte Bleue. As far as I know, this is the first and only option to accept the Carte Bleue without the need to establish a merchant account (compte commerçant) with a French bank.

While most Carte Bleues (>90%?) are nowadays co-branded with the Visa logo, giving potential customers in France the additional option of using the Carte Bleue Nationale sounds like a good idea to me, especially if the implementation is as simple as it is with Moneybookers.

I’m about to change my company’s online shops’ payment pages and might post again in a few weeks about the acceptance of Moneybooker’s Carte Bleue payment option.

“SAS’s flight operations have always enjoyed an excellent reputation and there is a risk that use of the Dash 8 Q400 could eventually damage the SAS brand,” said John Dueholm, Deputy CEO of SAS.

According to Wikipedia, “in all, seven Q400s have had landing gear failures while landing during 2007: four in Denmark, one in Germany, one in Japan, one in Lithuania and one in South Korea.”

This makes me wonder if Luxair is regretting their purchase of three Q400 (with an option for another three) and the publicity surrounding their recent start of operations. Although I think it is highly unlikely that Luxair’s brand new planes will suffer from similar problems anytime soon (SAS was an early operator), passengers’ doubts about the safety of this type of aircraft could quickly offset all cost advantages.

Ironically, the planes were originally supposed to “reflect and emphasize” Luxair’s goals of establishing itself as regional carrier known for “quality and security”. Now they might very well have the opposite effect.

Note: For the latest rumors and news on the Q400, visit PPRuNe.org (direct link to thread). 

However, recent developments point in a very different direction. Here’s a list of internet projects which show that the e-conomy (sorry, I’ll stop this now ) is very much alive in Luxembourg:

• Hotcity.lu: Luxembourg city is offering free WiFi access with dozens of hotspots currently spread throughout the Oberstadt and plans to cover the entire city area! I tried it last Saturday and being able to access the internet for free and at a decent speed certainly increases the attractiveness of the city. Unfortunately, my laptop’s battery didn’t last as long as my girlfriend’s “shopping stamina”. BTW, Skype seems to be blocked.
• Power supplier Cegedel lets you save money by switching to electronic invoices and by providing them with your meter readings online.
• The local subsidiary of French hypermarket giant Auchan is selling a number of electronic and entertainment products on their website (not limited to customers from Luxembourg).
• Startup epicerie.lu is working on making the trip to the supermarket superfluous.
• Schoolbooks.lu – you guessed it – lets you order the books for your kid’s next school year.

While not as newsworthy as big players moving their European headquarters to Luxembourg, these developments certainly contribute to an “internet-friendly” climate in Luxembourg. Please leave a comment if you know other interesting projects.

Finally I get some spam made in Luxembourg (even if its being sent from a server in Germany)! Thank you, Alternativ Demokratesch Reformpartei <jengelen@chd.lu>! My spam filtering software (MailWasher Pro [affiliate link]) was so surprised that it couldn’t decide how to classify this newsletter. I chose not to delete it right away as I’m still working on a project to print spam on toilet paper but to click on the unsubscribe link instead. This led me to a “communication agency” in Germany and the following text appeared on my screen:

“The newsletter is being cancelled. You’ll receive an e-mail with a link for deactivation”. Wow. A truly brilliant system, testament to the superior intelligence of its customers. I click on a link in an e-mail to unsubscribe and they want me to click on another link in another e-mail. But there’s more: Unlike the original newsletter, my spam filtering software classified this second e-mail as “possible spam” because it didn’t have a “from”-address:

The message itself also looked kind of messy because they needlessly put a multipart boundary inside without defining it first. I must admit I was a bit disappointed when I clicked on the second link and saw a confirmation that I had successfully unsubsribed. That was just way to easy. I’d suggest alternative unsubcription procedures involving pictures of ADR politicians and hotornot.com but I have to do some real work now.

Edit: Should you receive spam from ADR or anyone else in Luxembourg as an individual (not as a company), you can do and should do something against it! Consult the website of the commission nationale pour la protection des données (CNPD) to read more about your rights. Article 11 of the “Loi du 30 mai 2005″ (Page 1172) sounds interesting (up to 1 year imprisonment and fines up to 125000 EUR), though I’m not sure yet if it can be applied to newsletters sent by political parties.

To put things in perspective:

“Fighting spam, spyware and malicious software: Member States should do better, says Commission

[...] “It is time to turn the repeated political concern about spam into concrete actions to fight spam,” said Viviane Reding Commissioner for Information Society and Media.  [...]

Massive volumes of unsolicited email are still being sent: Security firms Symantec and MessageLabs estimate that spam is between 54% and 85% of all email. In 2005 Ferris Research estimated spam to cost €39 billion worldwide [...].”

So far, there were only two restaurants listed in Luxembourg, so I added my 3 favourite places. After providing valuable free content to Skype, I’m going to post my mini-reviews here as well. I might come back later to update this post (there are so many great restaurants in Luxembourg it’s hard not to gain weight). As I’m a vegetarian, the restaurants mentioned below are veggie-friendly. Should you happen to know any other great restaurants in Luxembourg that you think I should check out, please leave a comment (note that I don’t like very formal places and no, seafood isn’t vegetarian even if Chi-Chi’s thinks otherwise).

Restaurant Royal Chine: My favourite restaurant in Luxembourg due to the great choice of vegetarian dishes. Of course, they serve traditional Chinese food, too, as well as some Korean specialities (like Kimchi). It seems there’s a Chinese restaurant on every street in Luxembourg now, but this one really stands out and I suspect many of the friends and family members who come to visit me actually just want me to take them to the Royal Chine.

Disclosure note: I’m good friends with the owners and designed their webpage (for free). However, this doesn’t make anything I wrote above less accurate or true. In fact, you can take advantage of my “guanxi” and send me whatever sincere comment you might have concerning this restaurant and I’ll mention it to the lǎo bǎn next time I go there. Or you could pretend being a friend of mine to see if you get a discount.

Restaurant Star of Asia: Lovely Indian restaurant with great food, relaxed atmosphere and very friendly service. Popular with locals and expats alike. My favourite dish is Bhagara Baigan (Aubergine curry) plus Chilli Naan (Indian bread). I’m getting hungry right now just from writing this comment.

Disclosure note: I’m good friends with the owners, designed their webpage (for free) and also did an ad for them which was printed in Paperjam magazine. This shouldn’t make you think that I’d write an embellished review. Quite to the contrary, I wouldn’t consider designing a website for a bad restaurant!

Ristorante Dal Notaro: This would be the perfect Italian restaurant – if only it was closer to my home! Seriously, I love going there because it’s always a totally enjoyable experience. Great food, great atmosphere, what more could you want? Wine, you say? They have a superb selection of great (mostly Italian) wines, too!
The menu is apparently only available in Italian, but you can always ask the waiter to translate. My favourite dishes: Melanzane e mozzarella (starters) and Pappardelle alla trilogia di funghi.

Disclosure note: Nope. I wish, but there’s nothing to disclose. No connection other than me often going there.

BTW, the “sushi” picture above isn’t really related to this article as it was taken at a Japanese restaurant in Taichung, Taiwan. No luck finding a veggie-friendly Japanese restaurant in Luxembourg so far.