I came across an interesting website the other day - Tag Your Cause (http://www.tagyourcause.com). (NOTE: Apparently this domain is no longer active. Thus I have removed the link, but I still show the original URL.)

The word “Tag” has a number of meanings depending on the context. Two that came to my mind are the tagging we do on blogs to associate keywords with an article and something to do with graffiti (try Wikipedia if you need more information). But I wasn’t right.

In this case it means the things put on luggage to identify the owner. What’s different here is the tag has logo of a charity or cause, as well as the space for the owner’s details. Here’s a sample on their website …

Sorry if that took a while to display. Unfortunately the image they used is actually larger than the displayed size by about a factor of 10. That means it wastes a lot of bandwidth and therefore time to display this image at this size. So why not show it full size? Good question. It’s not my image to play with so I can’t alter it, and I don’t have layout space to do it justice. That’s my reason. What’s theirs? I have no idea. If I ever am in contact with them it will be on the discussion list.

Anyway, back to the thread. Why am I writing about them? First, because it seems like a reasonable way to help some charities (the ultimate recipients of the profit from the sale of the tags). Second, the site is the project of local entrepreneur, Matthew Beeche, and I like to identify and encourage local entrepreneurs. And third because there are some things on the website that I think should be discussed.

Let’s start with the landing page. The primary focus of the landing page is a Flash script. Anyone who’s read much of my writings knows I’m not a big fan of Flash. This script is OK. It’s graphical, it’s not too large, and it doesn’t try to convey too much information. I think it’s a pity not to tell more of the story of the logic behind the website in this most important part of the landscape - above the fold. My objection here is there is no fallback. Whoever built the site uses JavaScript to load the Flash and has a fallback of using a NOSCRIPT tag to load the Flash if JavaScript is not available. But what happens if Flash is not available? Nothing! A big emptiness. What about loading a static image and then loading the Flash script over it? What about using some alternate text - just in case. And I don’t mean really helpful text like “you need Flash to see this image, you can download it at …”

Why the concern about Flash? Has anyone noticed that Flash is not supported on iPhones and other portable Apple browser appliances? Last I heard Steve Jobs is not relenting on this decision. So if you want to cater for the flagship of the portable browser market reliance on some alternate content is definitely worth considering.

Here are some other things I noticed …

The title text for all pages is “Tag Your Cause | Help us give back to those who need it most!” There’s once exception in the seven pages and that’s the contact page, and its title is “Contact us - Tag Your Cause | Help us give back to those who need it most!” Not very inventive. And this only compounds the limited “on page” content. The title tag is still regarded as one of the most important elements on a page.

The link to the LuckyTags Twitter page shown at the bottom of every page didn’t work for me. Twitter told me “Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!” This is also known as a broken link. Not a very polished look.

I’m not familiar with this spelling “orgainsiations” (last paragraph on the About Us page).

And finally, that’s an interesting form at the bottom of the Causes page. With no border on the input fields (in Firefox 3.6 and IE 7.0) it takes some guesswork to know what’s going on.

For the record, I have no affiliation with this site or the charities it is serving. I make these comments not to denigrate the site but in the spirit of there’s something to learn in every situation. If the Matthew or a representative of Tag Your Cause has any issues with my comments I would be happy to discuss their concerns and give them and opportunity to change my opinion.