"Delightful" as a word has always tickled me. Not sure why. It's used in this industry by higher-ups to describe or define intended user experiences... They say things like; "We have to delight the user, see. It has to be delightful!" But for me, if every site I visited was delightful, I might have a seizure from the sheer joy of going from one page to another. It'd be like that sun baby from Teletubbies staring at you and giggling every time you opened a browser...
So with that in mind, here is a list of sites that I have found delightful recently. There is no criteria, just some places that I think are doing something special... see if you can find the pattern...
- Newsvine - My source for news. It gets better everyday. I love the look and feel, interaction, purpose, and brand development.
- ShopWiki - Lots to love here. Decent product search and very good product matching natch. But the wiki aspect of the site is sweet. Providing a way for users to contribute to the product and category content is great, but just using a wiki platform for content creation and management makes things so much better for the publisher. They do need to surface this stuff better, so dig around and you'll find it.
- PopURLS - Saves time and wastes time at the same time.
- Threadless - I feel like a nitwit... I had not been to Threadless before today. Here I am, one who prides himself on the t-shirts I wear as well as knowing about great e-commerce and social software experiences... I am ashamed. Threadless kicks ass and should be considered along with Etsy as the archetype for social commerce. Here's why... all merchandise is submitted and design by users, the designs are then rated and commented on by the community, winning designs are made into t-shirts, the community then purchases the t-shirt and submits images and blog posts featuring the shirt in use... it's a perfect circle of commerce. On top of that they have a great affiliate marketing program and the site design is near flawless... I want to cry.
- There is no number five...
