Delightful Cards, But Pitiful Choice (dooyoo e-cards)

Member Name: splodgethecat

Product:	dooyoo e-cards
Date:	24/08/01 (106 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Delightful designs, Animated and interactive

Disadvantages: Not enough choice

I wasn’t aware of Dooyoo ecards until I came across this category section. So I thought I would mosey on across and take a look. What I found were a mere five cards, two of which contained birthday wishes and three of which were romantic style cards. Every card is animated, therefore you and your recipient needs Flash to view them properly, however there is a link to install Flash if you don’t already have it, so no great problem there.


The two birthday greeting cards are delightful, it must be admitted. The first one shows a light aircraft flying backward and forwards across your screen carrying a banner, which can be customised with your message, which is really neat. The second one simply fills up your screen with many coloured balloons, the last one of which can be ‘popped’ when you click on it. When the balloon bursts, there is your personal message.


The romantic cards are very similar. Number one starts with a heart right in the middle of the page, which when clicked upon melts into a number of hearts which form a border with your message inside. Number three is simply a screen full of red hearts that ‘wobble’ in sets of three or four. Simple but nice. You may think I’ve missed out number two. Well, I have, for good reason. Although the static display shows a little cupid firing an arrow at a red heart, when you click on the demo, it simply brings card number one up again. Therefore I couldn’t get to play number two card. Although I would imagine that cupid fires his arrow, bursts the heart and there is your message :-)


You send the cards in a similar way to on other sites, by putting in your and your recipient’s name and email address. THen, simply add your message and send. The recipient is then sent a URL link to click on which displays their card. I sent a card to another email address to test out how quickly it arrives and it was there in under a minute. Very
good. What is particularly nice about these cards is that the recipient can interact with them, by clicking on them to get their messages. This makes them a little out of the ordinary.


The only grumble I have with Dooyoo’s cards is that there simply aren’t enough to chose from. For those members that like to refer others to Dooyoo, it would be really useful to have some ’general‘ greetings whereby you could send them to people, ‘inviting’ them to join the community. This would make members' promotion efforts a little bit special, and possibly more effective? No doubt in time, Dooyoo will add to this selection, but I just don’t think at this moment in time the ones they do have will draw lots of attention to the site. OK, when recipients click on their URL link they are taken to Dooyoo to pick the card up, but I would imagine after reading the card, people would simply surf out again.


All in all, I would give 5 out of 5 for the cards, for pleasing design and application, but only 3 out of five for the concept. Dooyoo lose two points for a; not having enough cards yet, and b; not having a ‘general’ greetings card. Having said this, the facility is useful to have for those of us who end up spending loads of time on Dooyoo, who might suddenly remember they need to send a greeting to someone. Rather than searching for ecard sites, you have these here already to use. However, unless it’s a birthday or love greeting you’re out of luck.

Summary: