My wooden flooring is now in my room and it looks really nice, as does my new bed. My room actually looks good! But, that could also be due to the fact that there's nothing in it besides my computer and my bed. All of my stuff is either downstairs or in the living room and there's still cupboards to be put in my room too, which means it'll probably look a lot more messier by the time it's all done. Still, I'm happy with how it's going.

My mum came home today from Gary's after being there for uhh...actually, I can't remember how long she's been there now, she's been there that long. She was here for an hour, then she left again. I didn't see her because I was in bed, but I heard her come in and then I heard her leave again.

Because my mum isn't here no more, this house is getting pretty scruffy. It's not even because of me. It's Laura. I chose to test this too, just to make sure.

The first was to clean the kitchen completely. Wipe all of the tops, mop the floor etc, you know, everything. It was spotless when I had done it.

It took exactly six hours or so for it to become an absolute mess again. Not because of me but because of Laura. This would be fine with me, but she doesn't clear up after herself until a day or two later which is just horrible. Plus, since of course I need to use the kitchen too, I find myself having to give things like the baking tray a really good clean because she doesn't bother to do so.

I always got the blame for making a mess when my mum was here, yet it's never me and I've proven this. It's all Laura's doing.

The second test was more simplistic. I had noticed that the bathroom mirror had lots of what looked like small smear marks all over it. I was pretty sure it wasn't because of me, but couldn't remember, so I cleaned it. Then, every time I've been in there to either get a shower or go to the toilet, I've checked to see whether the mirror is still clean. If for example, I had had a shower and the mirror was dirty, then I'd know that I was the cause of it. But it wasn't. It took about a day for it to get in exactly the same way as it was when I cleaned it.

I don't even understand how you get a mirror dirty. I mean, why would you need to put your hands all over it? It's attached to the bloody wall and it's not an adjustable one either so there goes that theory if you were thinking that. Seriously, what the hell can Laura be doing in there that makes the mirror dirty? It both confuses me and annoys me because it's not like she cleans it and again, it's down to me.

I don't actually mind cleaning whatever, it's the fact that I'm cleaning up after her. I'm happy to clean whatever, but it's not like she ever does and so I'm usually relegated to either cleaning up after her or waiting days for her to do it herself.

I don't understand what's so hard about washing a plate or two instead of letting them pile up next to the sink where she's put them to begin with. It takes what, a minute to wash them?

Just another reason why I want to move out so very much.

I signed up to a website called freestuffjunction.co.uk a while ago and it sends me a newsletter now and then with free offers. Most of them are quite crap, but now and then there's one that interests me. In a newsletter that I recieved earlier, there was an offer for a free bottle of Cwella, a fruit drink so I decided to go fill out the form to get the voucher for one. The form was actually a feedback form, which was supposed to gather information like do I like how the product looks, have I bought it before etc.

I really wonder what this company was thinking when they hired a company to design this website. You can go and check it out yourself here. It's bloody awful. I'd be absolutely ashamed of myself if I produced something as shoddy as that.

So, I decided to send them an email, giving them my indepth thoughts on both their product and their website. This is the email:

I'm writing to you to express both my curiosity about Cwella and my disappointment at your website. This was stemmed by your feedback form, which I thought I would take the oppurtunity to expand on and write to you directly instead with a better explanation on my thoughts about Cwella. Bear in mind this is a length email, as my feedback is thorough.

While Cwella is seemingly an interesting product and of course there is a market for the type of drink Cwella is, I do not feel that neither the bottle shape, graphic design or product name truly work.

The bottle, while unique and interesting has one downfall that few soft drinks seem to have these days. This problem lies with the fact that the bottle is not clear. In having a bottle which the consumer cannot see what's in it, I feel it puts them off purchasing it over a rival brand of soft drink. In addition to this, being able to see what's in the bottle even after you've bought it is helpful in knowing just how much is actually left. Consider the likes of Oasis who sell a similar product to Cwella and do very well in terms of sales.

Secondly are the graphics you've chosen to use on the bottle. It's great to see a graphic depiction of what the drink is supposed to be made of, however, this does not make me want to buy it. The background colour does not go well with any of the bottle colours and makes it look out of place, while the images of the fruits, while helpful, are taking up valuable real estate which could be used in better ways. This could include making the product name a little bigger, making the name of the flavour bigger and also, slightly more graphic design would be a good idea, such as the way your website has been designed.

The name "Cwella" is a strange one. I feel that it has been a failed attempt to create a unique product name. However, this would cease to be a problem, should the product become hugely successful, as the name would then become synonymous with a refreshing drink. Currently, I do not feel your product has reached that stage.

As for the Cwella website, I found myself very disappointed. While I realise this is not a direct result of the team at Cwella and the blame lies with E-Novations, I'm extremely surprised you would give the green light to such a shoddy piece of website design. I'll explain why.
I found your site via your offer of a free voucher for Cwella, which was found on freestuffjunction.co.uk, so this is the first page I will comment on.

The text on this page made me feel a little less like a statistic and more like a valued consumer, as it was frank with a touch of humour. This is great to see, as so many companies lack this these days.

However, there were many things wrong. The first thing was this sentence:

"Cwella is a fruit juice drink made with real fruit juice and a touch of natural sugar (but not too much)for the taste."

"natural sugar"? No matter what you put in front of it, sugar is sugar. Putting natural in front of it does not make it sound more appealing.

Secondly was the use of an emoticon. That instantly made me think this webpage was amateur in design. No professional company in their right mind would put such an ugly emoticon on one of their webpages, let alone one that E-Novations has not even bothered to correctly set the transparency on, which is why you get that horrible white outline. What you get is an amateur emoticon, that looks completely out of place on a website such as this.

I'm then presented with six Cwella bottles, none of which I can read the text on to see just what the flavours are. Yes, I can see the pictures of the fruits, but that isn't enough as the pictures are too small to 100% correctly identify them.

In addition to this, you've chosen to place the bottles in front of your own brand name. Why? You're trying to promote the product, yet you've just obscured the name of it to the point where it's almost illegible. This is especially true, because it's a word which is not in the vocabularly of the majority of people. The brand name should have been placed either above or below the bottles and proudly displayed.

The feedback form itself is very poorly designed. Although the first question offers a yes/no response, the second question then assumes that the user has answered yes to the first. "Does it rock your boat?" - Well, I haven't tried it so how would I know and therefore, there is no correct option to check for such a consumer. This also means you get back inaccurate results. Quite unproductive, considering you're trying to get feedback on what people think of your product.
The rest of the feedback form is filled with capitalisation errors. In addition, there's one instance of Its instead of It's and one instance of no right parentheses.

After submitting the information, I'm directed to a page where I'm able to click a link to view my supposed voucher. It was certainly amateur. You instruct users to print the coupon out, yet even onscreen, both the instructions on the coupon and even the barcode almost aren't legible! Can you imagine what that image is going to look like printed out? Awful, is the word I'd use. The solution? Get the high resolution version of this coupon and save it into a PDF file, as any other company would. As a consumer, I really should not have to be telling a supposedly reputable company how to do something as simple as offering me a voucher.

Sadly, the rest of Cwella's website is disappointing as well.

The homepage is where you're supposed to introduce the product and tell me just how good it is. What I see is a picture of the product and nothing else. That doesn't help me. It doesn't make me want to explore and learn more about the product.

The use of clip art fruits look awful. They're not even all from the same set of clip art. Look at the shaded orange compared to the two tone pineapple. This is shoddy work at best. Your design team haven't been able to even select four designs that go together correctly and for the money you've paid them, they most certainly should be able to do so.

In addition to this, all of the link images are far too compressed, resulting in badly presented graphics. This could have easily been solved by using gifs instead of jpgs. Again, this is basic graphic design which should be second nature to your design team.

On all Cwella pages, there are spelling mistakes and punctuation errors. It's terrible to see. I would only just about expect to see this on someone's personal website, not on a drinks manufacturer's website.

And finally, the website does not load correctly when viewed in Firefox. This is important, as it means that the Cwella website has not been coded to W3C (The body that deals with web design) standards. This is something that makes the site less productive and more prone to error. Also, considering that nearly over 11 million people have downloaded the Firefox browser, there's a good chance some of them will be viewing your website. Do you really want them to view a site that doesn't look right?

I would really take these issues up with your website design team and ask yourself whether you parted with the cash for it a little too soon, as this is certainly not what I would call a finished piece of work.

I hope that in writing this email, albeit lengthy, important issues have been raised regarding both Cwella as a product and Cwella's website. I would also appreciate a reply.

And one final thing - Your contact form does not work! I wasn't surprised. It's saddening to see that even when someone such as myself is trying to give a company helpful tips, that I can't do so with ease because the form on your "Contact Us" page doesn't work. This is because whoever designed it hasn't even bothered to set up the form correctly and actually provide an email address in it to sent this message to. I've had to send it to you manually instead.

I'm beginning to think that perhaps you should consider asking for your money back from whoever designed this website.

I look forward to your reply,
Neil Martin

I'm really hoping they do reply. My points are all just and some are so very obvious. I'd love to know how much this company parted with to get a website like that when I could certainly do a better job and probably cheaper. I'll post the reply here if they do actually send one.