Greetings, readers! Welcome to the April 2009 issue of ZooNews, from professional Web site design company Zoonini Web Services. Don't hesitate to let me know what you think about this issue, or share ideas for future topics.

My hubby and I really enjoyed our first cruise (to Alaska) last summer, despite not being in the geriatric set most people think of when you say the word "cruise." Since then, we've been bombarded with promo emails from the cruise line – we're talking several a week at times. Even though I was interested in learning about their other cruises, every time I'd click a link to view an itinerary I was asked to enter my country of residence and language preference, after which I'd be led to the cruise company's homepage, not the cruise deal I'd been promised.

After months of this frustration, I finally had enough and replied to a promo email with:

Hi there. You send *way* too many email advertisements. I just received a nearly identical one yesterday. Even more frustrating, when I try to click through to get details, it asks me to select my country of residence, language, and a couple more things, then I'm sent to your homepage. There is no way to get directly to the deal being advertised. Extremely cumbersome, frustrating, and definitely not going to achieve the results you're looking for in terms of boosting cruise sales.

Perhaps not the most diplomatic email I've ever sent, but it felt good getting that off my chest. More constructively, I was offering feedback that might even improve future customers' experience – and in turn result in a better response rate for the company's email promotions.

I didn't expect a reply – though it might have been nice to know that someone is actually responding to customer criticisms – but I certainly didn't expect what happened next:

Please do not reply to this message, as direct replies are routed to an unmonitored mailbox. We are happy to help you with any questions or concerns you may have. Please contact us directly by visiting [our contact page]. You may also call us at [our toll-free number].

I dutifully went to their contact page to search for an email address or inquiry form where I could submit my feedback. Neither was to be found anywhere, even though they refer to an email address in a few places. Since I wasn't about to call them, that's where my customer-service journey ended.

Well not quite: I then promptly unsubscribed from the cruise line's newsletter... which is sad, because I was actually interested in what they're offering, and I'm aware of the hard times cruise lines are currently going through.

What's the lesson here? Don't send out email promotions if you do not have in place an efficient way of handling reader feedback. You will only achieve the opposite effect than that intended: your subscriber numbers will go down – and so will your sales.

A techno-term being bandied about more and more often these days is cloud computing. To explain what clouds have to do with computers, I interviewed Alistair Croll, a "startup acceleration" consultant who helps new companies build and launch their products. Alistair also writes, researches, and runs events on cloud computing for Bitcurrent.

What is cloud computing?

At its simplest, it's the idea of being able to get computing resources on-demand, as a utility.

It's called "cloud" because it's something that's opaque to outsiders. For example, the Internet is often depicted as a cloud – you send data into it and it comes out the other end, but you don't see what's going on inside. By this logic, you could draw the postal service as a cloud, too: You put letters in one end and they come out the other, but you don't need to worry about the mail carriers, airplanes, and delivery bags.

Cloud computing is an extremely broad term that some believe encompasses everything from web-based email to photo-sharing sites. But it's often more narrowly defined as computing resources. By this definition, cloud computing is a set of services that companies like Amazon, Joyent, Rightscale, Google, and Terremark offer which can replace your in-house servers.

Consider what it would be like to buy and deploy a new server in 30 seconds. Or to have a thousand servers you can use for three days, then forget about. That's the idea of cloud computing.

Personally, though, I'm not that excited by clouds themselves. I'm much more excited about what clouds let us do – access computing from anywhere, use mobile applications, share information with millions of people instantly, and so on. Cloud computing is really the next layer of the Internet.

Instead of using your own hard drive, for example, you can use Jungledisk or Drop.io to store a backup of your files in the cloud, where they're less likely to go astray next time you spill wine in your keyboard. You probably already use "cloud" services like Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, or GMail to send data to other people, too; you can use Google Docs as a substitute for a desktop office.

What are the benefits of cloud computing?

There are three big benefits:

• Cost-effectiveness: You don't pay for cloud computing until you need it. You can start a company without any servers, and if you become popular, add capacity quickly. This means the up-front costs to start a company are lower; it also makes it easier to experiment with things without having to buy equipment.
  
• Burstability: Big cloud companies like Google and Amazon have far more capacity than any one company needs. If Oprah decides to talk about your website, a single server won't handle it. But if you've built your site on a cloud computing platform that can scale with demand, you can handle the sudden burst of attention.
  
• Operating efficiency: Odds are, your core business isn't running websites. I know I'd trust someone at Google more than I'd trust myself when it comes to things like adding new machines, negotiating for electrical power, or defending against hackers. Clouds let you focus on what you're good at rather than having to deal with operating servers yourself.

Although some people have questions such as what happens if the service goes down or goes completely under, Alistair says that these concerns are being addressed.

"We already depend on the cloud of the Internet for business," he adds. "Cloud computing just adds a layer of processing and storage atop it. I seldom hear people saying, 'No, I don't want to use the Internet – what if it goes down?'"

Got a technology term you'd like demystified in ZooNews? Send it to questions@zoonini.com.

This month we launched a brand-new site for Les Deux Concierges, a New York City firm offering personal assistant and concierge services. We built the site based on a fanciful, retro-themed mockup designed by AT Creative. Featuring optimized copy from A.C. Riley Communications, the site highlights the benefits and variety of services offered, which range from making travel arrangements and planning events, to securing hard-to-find tickets for Broadway plays.

My close collaborator Charlotte Riley and I were interviewed in Hour magazine recently about using the Web for promotion. Not only did we discuss some things to avoid in a business Web site – such as the audience-repelling animated spinning logo – Hour printed our entire roster of ten "Deadly website sins that can kill your business" as a sidebar.

And on that note, if you've ever found yourself asking "Do I need a Flash intro?" – the age-old question has now been answered. Enjoy.

À la prochaine,

kp
aka Kathryn Presner