Shiatsudo Blog

I thought I would balance out my dislike for the Shiatsu Society’s web site with a little bit of a positive post. I’ve been trying to get some good pictures of shiatsu to put up on my website so people can get a visual idea of what shiatsu is. It’s pretty difficult to get good pictures - especially since I’m a point and click photographer. Composition? what’s that? F-stops? White balance…..I don’t know, I just set my little digital camera on automatic mode and hope for the best.

Well, at least the Shiatsu Society provides a bunch of royalty free shiatsu images, that are rather nice. In the meantime, its back to the camera and photoshop with me….

Type “shiatsu” into google in the UK and the first hit you get is the shiatsu society. Great! The governing body of shiatsu is right up there at the top! So why does the website present such a poor user experience?

I alluded to this yesterday in my post about European Shiatsu Week. In just under a month, we have a week which should be dedicated to increasing public awareness of shiatsu, but the society’s website has very little information about what is actually happening. In fact, if you just browsed to the site and had a brief look around, you wouldn’t even know Shiatsu Week was happening. I’ll help you out though…..scroll half way down their home page and look at “Media Events”. Blink and you’ll miss it. Here’s a screenshot in case you did:

I find the shiatsu society’s website on the whole to be disappointing. Navigation is difficult and the menu structure is confusing. I rarely even get into reading the content because I don’t feel I know where to look. I don’t feel drawn in. Not to mention the fact that the website doesn’t display properly in Firefox (my browser of choice). It is a cliche, but first impressions do count, and the first impression of shiatsu on the web is poor.

Surely the society can do better!

The third annual European shiatsu week is fast approaching…..though I wouldn’t be surprised if you you’ve never heard of it. I can’t say I’ve seen anything in the media that would bring it to your attention. Even the shiatsu society’s web site seems be downplaying it, relegating some info about the week to half way down their home page….and they are the governing body for shiatsu in the UK! You would think there would be a big flashing sign on the website…..Ok, maybe not a big flashing sign - that kind of web design went out long ago, but it would be nice if it was right up there in your face.

Anyway, shiatsu week is all about promoting general public awareness of shiatsu. We will be running a few promotions to entice people to try shiatsu. When we have our “press release” finalised, I will post it up here for all to see