Welcome to Your Happy Place

I've worked on the web for a while now and I've built my share of sites, but when I came across this one, I experienced a 50/50 combination of wonder and a immense relief that I wasn't the one with the responsibility of launching this bad boy into the world.

I'm referring to CleanIsHappy.com, a website for the Washlet. What is the Washlet? I'm thinking that you already have a good mental picture, but I won't spoil the fun of exploring the site for yourself. I'll just walk you through a few of my favourite parts.

First, there's the site's main navigation which, of course, had to include people's faces. Here's the scene in my head of how the talent negotiations went down. Everybody except one person said, "I'll do anything for this Washlet thing as long as nowhere on the site is there a simultaneous occurrence of my face, a toilet, and the word happiness".

Sooner or later in this sales pitch, you're going to be wondering the exact logistics of just how the Washlet gets things done. And that's where the illustrative 3D animation comes in to close the deal.

But, by far, my favourite part was this bit of assuring voiceover:

Washlet makes it all so easy.
You just sit down. Do what you came to do.
And then ... you reach for the remote!

The REMOTE!?!

Yes, the remote. A thing of beauty. And I'm thinking that if you're the type of person who has ever dialed a pay phone with your elbow, this is your nightmare for tonight :-)

All in all, I loved every minute I spent on this site. I'm sure I doubled their traffic stats for that week alone. And speaking of stats, if nothing else, they must have had one of the most successful ad campaigns in terms of clickthrough when the ads driving to this site looked like this:

Thank you, Washlet, you've made my afternoon. And one other good thing has come out of this. When I sent the URL on to the wise Mr. William Azaroff, he was inspired to coin the phrase:

Yeah, that's crazy. But is it Washlet crazy?

I really hope it catches on with the kids.