Online Coupons are a must-have for all smart money netizens. You know who you are. You cut coupons from the newspapers, ask which credit cards offer a discount before paying for dinner, remember which item is cheapest at which supermarket. Yup, that's you. In this age of increasing inflation, there is no smarter option to manage your money: spend less.

If you want to save money online too, here is the way. I've blogged about other online coupon sites before but this one, Rather-Be-Shopping, includes a neat bonus: a blog which offers you advice on how to save money and be frugal. This double deal is one I haven't seen before and the blog is written in a friendly down-to-earth manner that is easy to read and relate to.

My first impression of Rather-Be-Shopping itself, to my information architect's eye, is that there is too much information there. The centre column, which is the most precious real estate on any site, would have done great with a feed from the blog, instead of the Macy's and Home Depot promos (et all). Those can easily be placed below the fold and the list culled to show the most recent 5.

The "informational info", by which I mean the About Us and How Coupons Work section should ideally be moved to one side (traditionally the top left side) to "humanise" the site, while promos and categories be put on the right. Since the top navigation bar already has an All Coupons link, the categories can be moved below the fold.

That said, the brand is very strong, clear, and unequivocal. The Save $ logo is what gives it an oomph. Props to the designer who made it! Still, it looks a little squished at the top and it should be clickable back to the home page. A bit of white space (perhaps 10px) on the top would give it more of the space it deserves and more prominence, as would moving the promos in the centre to the side.

People come to coupon sites for one reason only: to get the coupons. Hence to ensure the eyeballs return, the Email List is aptly placed above the fold on the right. While it looks a little lost right now, swooping it one step up above Coupon of the Week would make it harder to miss. That and the Bookmark Us now star.

The blog itself is well-designed. My only concern is that the duplication of the title is wasting precious above the fold real estate. Perhaps using Photoshop to add the word Blog to the already nicely-designed logo would suffice, removing the text title above.

Design aside, there's lots of good advice there and I could spend all day reading it. But for now I have bookmarked it because I'd really Rather-Be-Shopping. :p I see a few coupons already calling my name: the American Eagle Coupons, JCPenney Coupons, and the Expedia Travel Coupons. Oh yes, there are also Printable Coupons for those who need them. Don't forget to use recycled paper on an ink jet.

The key difference between this site and other coupon sites I have seen so far is the love that is put into it. It cares that you save money. It wants you to. Hence the blog is so critical. The human face to a site is often what makes the difference between one that succeeds and one that doesn't. And you know, the Washington Post and MSNBC agree.

If you're running Share Online with Vox and Flickr already, note that you might need to exercise some manual dexterity if you update to Share Online 3.08(7). Many users, myself included, lost their Flickr service for Share after we ran the update. As far as I know it is geographical, which is kind of weird since they gave you the service in the first place.

Here's how to get Flickr back. Click here for the config file. Copy and paste it into your phone memory and click it. Voila! It is back.

As for Ovi, I found a solution online. It didn't work for me initially then I realised I might need to shut down and restart the phone. It worked. Now I have all three services running! :D

Technorati: Nokia N82, Share Online, Share Online 3.0, Nokia, Vox, Flickr, Ovi

If you recall, my tag board on the right had a vertical and a horizontal scrollbar. Very messy. So to remove it, all I had to do was add this snippet of code in the BODY section of the tag board CSS editor in Blogdrive:

overflow-x: hidden;

An alternative use is to embed it in your style sheet:

style="overflow:hidden"

Neat huh? Credit goes to the girlie matters.

Technorati: remove scrollbar, CSS tips and tricks, coding tricks, tag board